Therapy For the Speed Bumps
Life likes to challenge your ability to do what you love. The ones you stick with through the hard parts are the things you tend to care for the most. I suppose that is part of the challenge. Life wants to tell you that the only way to survive is paying the bills and doing the job to that end. I ask where the fun in that is. What fun would life be if you were to be part of the status quo? If you only have one life to live, that is a shitty way to live it. With that, I’m working through my financial hardships to keep this going because I fucking love doing this. It is the brightest thing going while I sort out the next steps of a current or new career for income. With that, I lead you into a little show of two bands playing their passion one night at Rips.
First up is a gem of the Phoenix scene, Pride Through Strife. These guys play with their heart and soul. You can see the admiration and love of their music in their performance. It doesn’t stop there, get the chance to meet the band you can see how polite and amazing they are as people.
If you are altogether unfamiliar with Pride Through Strife, the band features triplets alongside Chris on drums. There is Josh on guitar, Gabe on bass, and Aaron alternating percussion and singing. They play a brand of Reggae Rock that gets a crowd into it with songs like “Valley Girl” and “Music.” Just to further reinforce their love for the rock side of things, they tend to close on a great cover of Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing In the Name.” Pride Through Strife rock and continue to, so without any hesitation I recommend you check out one of their upcoming shows.
Second up were the dudes from out of town, Red Sage. While sharing the common thread with Pride Through Strife in the Reggae portion they go a little more blues and soul in their sound. It makes for a soothing sound to the performance. At the time of the show I was still working full time and made it out for this, almost letting the tired part of my body take hold. You just get into the great rhythm and solid voice from Jordan. Plus I loved the colors of the strings on the six string bass. Red Sage brought brought a excellent set with them from Denver.
