Self Destruct Button, Proletarian Art Threat, Parts & Labor

I took a break from pulling sta­ples and inhal­ing what might be lead paint dust to go to the Beach­land for a show. Just about every­one I know in the Cleve­land music scene was there, which is always a good sign. I’d even found my old “THE BOSSES YOU LOSE” shirt on my last visit home, so I could bust out my old high school con­cert t-shirt again. Self Destruct Button started out, prov­ing that bands in their vector are always better live. They’ve nailed the “craft chaos that tum­bles to order” market. They played an unex­pected Rush cover “Spirit of Radio” at the end of their set which made every­one go nuts in its strange but effec­tive trans­la­tion into exper­i­men­tal punk. Unfor­tu­nately, I’m a jack­ass and didn’t get video of them.

I did get some video of Pro­le­tar­ian Art Threat, play­ing their last show ever. Old style punk rock, and appar­ently they’ve been around for over a decade, off and on but mostly off lately, so I guess it isn’t sur­pris­ing I had never seen them before. Lots of jump­ing off stage and beer spilled.

Parts & Labor wrapped up the evening with their 10th visit to Cleve­land and my 3rd time seeing them. They said that they aren’t always received enthu­si­as­ti­cally else­where and that “there are few places like Cleve­land” which led to a few shouts of “Thank God!” which, I sup­pose, can be read in two dif­fer­ent ways, depend­ing on your mood. I was in a good one. They put on another fierce show, played some new stuff where the vocals got achingly melodic at times.