Making St. Patty’s Day Pink
One of the longer running punk bands in the valley are the Venomous Pinks. Over the last couple months the hard work they have been putting has been paying out dividends. They are now signed to a label, Squid Hat out of Vegas. They have an opening slot on the main stage of this year’s Punk Rock Bowling. Now the first fruits of labor under Squid Hat released with a great new EP titled “We Do It Better,” with two of the hardest songs I’ve heard from them titled “Pizza Slice” and “Mantis.” “Radar” has a Teenage Bottlerocket influence according to my ears. So right at the top, I just want to give them a huge congrats on it and everything happening for them.
They assembled a great cast of bands for the night, and there is probably no band with as much smiles on stage as Krovak opening it up. These dudes are awesome. I love every set I catch of Krovak. There’s a good sense of humor up there between songs that makes it clear there is an excellent comradery within. This night showed an easy example when they mentioned it was their last song after playing their famous PBR song, but then realized right after saying it that they had two more songs left. This show marks the return of seeing Jairo play since he had his child too so congrats to him in here. I could not have asked for a better opener tonight.
Following them was probably the hardest band of the night, this side of the song “Pizza Slice,” with Inept Hero. It is becoming clear that the core band that Aarin has put together, since losing the three originals, are meshing well. Their performance is getting better every time I see them. The sound is a little different from the first time I watched, but that comes with the style changes of the people playing. It was a great performance up there, and you can tell how much Aarin loves what he does on that stage.
Following them was the triumphant return of bass in our face, Roger, to Skull Drug. It was clear from the start this was a better set just having him back. Plus watching the moment of Evan and Roger leaning back to back while playing, you know they missed the guy up there too. Trust me, even with one broken bass string for the last song, this was still better than no bass up there. I was, and clearly many others, happy to see Roger back to playing with Skull Drug tonight.
It isn’t a Venomous Pinks celebration if we don’t have the amazing dudes of Creepsville 666 and their Rockabilly styles in the mix. There is such a great vibe from watching these dudes rock it out up there. Also, a great style of performance between Che spinning the bass, Matrick generally propping up on the monitor as he plays toward the crowd, Johnny going to town on drums, and Geno letting his hair out while singing out to the crowd. There has not been a time I haven’t been happy to watch a Creepsville 666 set, tonight was no different.
Last up it was the girls with many reasons to be celebrating, the Venomous Pinks. For the honor, we had Corrie down from her new home of Seattle to join for most the set. They were awesome to get Miranda in for a song up there too, who fills in when Corrie isn’t able to make it down. This has to be one of the most energized crowds I’ve seen for a Pinks show in a little while. It was one of the few times of the night that I was bouncing around that pit going around the Yucca Tap. It just made it a more amazing set of music with the large crowd into every song. I loved the touch when Drea was instructing the crowd to do a pizza shaped hand for the song “Pizza Slice.” The requests for an encore couldn’t actually happen because, per their own words, they had nothing left that wasn’t already played from their catalog. What an amazing night of celebration, and, once more, congratulations to the Venomous Pinks.
