LA and NY punk collided on December 21st as Fear and Leftover Crack played to a crowd at the Teragram Ballroom in Downtown Los Angeles. While the surrounding area could be described with some lines from Fear’s own “I Love Livin’ in the City,” the venue represents a part of a movement to revitalize older concert spaces in the area. Formerly known as the Playhouse Theatre, this historic building was once a silent movie house before becoming a diner, but eventually became a fairly popular location to film TV and Movies.
The six hundred capacity venue has a compact area for merchandise sales and an adjacent bar with a few tables to order food, remnants of the Teragram Ballroom’s past. The main floor of the venue itself has a bar on its back wall behind the sound booth. Blue lights and big band jazz music gave the hall a 1950’s feel. An ironic sentiment given the night of chaos ahead.
The High Curbs from Chino, CA opened the night, blending punk, hardcore, and nu-metal. This five-piece had a lot of energy. While these genres have some crossover in sound and themes in the lyrics, combining them gives The High Curbs a unique enough sound to differentiate from a lot of bands in the scene. It makes them a little more versatile. For every moment of shredding hardcore there was an equal moment of songs with effects pedals with an evolving set that became more melodic as time went on.
Leftover Crack has always been a band a lot of my friends were into, but never clicked for me. That doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy their set. From their first chord the pit opened up and continued to grow in size and intensity as time went on. Kids were falling left and right and getting hurt all over with at least one kid spraining their ankle, but eventually even that kid hobbled back in after determining it wasn’t broken. There was a group of about five to ten people who would just stay in the middle of the pit while people slammed around them. They seemed to gain or lose a person at different times. Leftover Crack plowed through that included the songs “Nazi White Trash,” “Gang Control,” and Choking Victim’s “500 Channels.” Not being super familiar with their set, some of their songs were moodier than I expected.
Fear was filming a music video at the show. Before the doors opened, we got to see Lee Ving do a few takes of walking up to the venue. Age has set in with Lee Ving, but he’s still entertaining as fuck to watch. Lee goads and provokes the crowd and relishes as the crowd returns the gesture. Fear plowed through a twenty-plus song set list that covers the hits and some of new material. Despite Lee not being able to play guitar anymore, his voice still has some growl and bite. His guitar parts have been given to Henchmen guitarist Eric Razo. Razo doesn’t clone Ving’s lead parts, but is in no way disrespectful to them. This shines through in Fear’s partially bluesy, but low constructed “Beef Bologna.” Newer members Frank Meyer and Amos Cook’s respective guitar and bass playing mesh well with Spit Stix’s precise drumming. With as much as Lee’s own vocals and guitar are a staple for the band’s recording, Spit’s clean and perfectly timed drums remain crucial to their sound, as well.
The punk rock scenes we revere were lightning in the bottle. It’s always a mixed bag on if shows with veteran performers are going to be good. It doesn’t always mean they can’t perform or shouldn’t. It just means it’s going to be a different experience. Lee was still energetic and hit most of his marks well, but he does need the lyrics in front of him for reference. He can’t move like he used to, but he doesn’t need to. He’s done his time in the trenches and came out fine. Lee Ving is still revered in a scene that seems to be moving away from the crass and brash that has made the earlier pioneers of punk infamous in some circles, currently. Through it all, Lee and Fear have endured.
(*Editor’s note: This show was originally scheduled for the 1200 capacity Vermont in Hollywood before getting moved to the Teragram*)
