The place was like a bar where everybody gathers in a town along the Allegheny River. This is the kind of place that people talk about when the say "Hey I'm going to the bar." Anyway first was the Fuckies. They sounded tremendously better than the last time I saw them at the Mr. Roboto Project with Fuck Telecorps and Valerie Kuehne. There they had severe trouble with feedback and were seemingly unprepared and disorganized as a whole. Now they had replaced Ben Blanchard of the Weird Paul Rock Band with Vince Rizzo as their drummer, improving their sound overall by toughening it up. The Fuckies played cool early 90's-ish rock stuff; they were not at all grunge, but sort of riot grrl or like alt-pop or something. Zoe has a great sound to her vocals and her guitar playing is good. Their record, if it ever comes out, will be great too!
Second/last was Killroom. They played two sets(!) and are sort of like hometown heroes to everybody at the bar. Their songs combined metal, grunge, and pop/rock with themes of missed relationships and lower class, left-wing values. Killroom's vocalist was kind of like a female singer-songwriter mixed with some twangy country stuff, and sometimes she would play bass or acoustic guitar. The guitar player on the right was pretty cool; he had a looser/noisier feel and a semi-punk attitude. Near the end an audience member got up and sang a rap to Killroom's music. She was very young and it wasn't great, but at the same time it was actually pretty cool. At the end the bass player did a cool rap like Public Enemy filled with political fury at right-wing lamers. I remember describing Killroom as Metallica + R.E.M. which seems pretty accurate; they were okay and cool in their own way.
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