Mr Smalls, I may have a new favorite venue to watch shows. Wow.
Last night was the HeavyHitters tour featuring Kingspade and hed pe at the headline down on the Southside of Pittsburgh. (one week removed, and right across the street from the Blaze show I brought up before.) Unlike the Blaze show, which didn’t really include a stellar lineup, this one was great from top to bottom. Though my colleague on WPAJ may disagree, but the Hood Gang was right up my ally. I’m sorry, I they struck all the chords with me with championship belts and a horn section to open up the show. Last I heard, my old friends in Twisted Thoughts had played a show with these guys a couple Halloweens ago and there were only two guys. Now there are upwards to ten. We’re talking drums, guitars, bongos, and the aformentioned horns. It was just a fun set, leaning more towards the WTF aspect. Like I’m back with my fanny pack? Maybe you have to be a child of the 80’s for it.
Insolence was next, and I think I might have seen these guys before. Some good rap/rock/punk sort of things with two front men. This lead to the highlight of a “Bush is a Nazi” chants from the crowd. Definitely worth a follow up. (fun note, their site is in English and Japanese)
I finally got in touch with my press contact for the night, and got lined up, of sorts, get my interviews. First up was Dirtball, but not until after his set with Big B under the Subnoize Souljaz banner. I must have seen this pair at least 5 times on KMK and Psychopathic tours over the years, but always a highlight of the show. We found a place downstairs “quiet” enough to talk and filmed a bit for the WPAJ Interview. This was my first in person artist interview (I’ve done a lot with local wrestlers) and it is definitely a lot easier. There is more room to talk and get comfortable with the subject. I was glad to have Missy, of all people come along with me to help in that aspect, and the camera work.
Got back up stairs about halfway through the Kingspade set, thanks to a lot of conversations we were having. Dirtball and Missfit share a Political Science major in their respective schooling. Pretty cool coincidence. Kingspade was as good as always, from what I saw, of course.
Then hed pe was up. We were talking about how they got the big headline slot, and it was easy to
see why they decided on it. A handful of people filed out directly after the King’s set, and they missed about half the show for the night. hed pe played for about 2 hours. Taking requests, talking with the crowd. Spreading his knowledge between songs. And, of course, it was the most energy the crowd had all night (there there was plenty before). Pits erupted, crowds surfed. Good shit. For some reason, almost two songs from the end, security started cracking down on the pit. Kicking myself and, from what I could tell, Basick out of it. I heard someone from the pit got into a fight with security, so that might be attributed to it. Or maybe it was getting too crazy earlier. Definitely more substantial of a pit than a week ago at Blaze.
So the show ended and we finally got hooked up with Jered from hed to do an interview. We went down to the band office, where BJ the tour manager was doing his work. Jered, as always, is a really good interview. Very informative, very fun to talk to. Then we has some extra guests. Big B, Richter, etc started hitting the room. At one point flashing the interview unfortunately, and walking through, chiming in. Random shit, but all good.
Aside from that, we tried to hook up with Kingspade after, but they had disappeared, likely turned in for the night. Oh well. Two out of three wasn’t bad for the interviews I was expecting. And hopefully I’ll end up hooked up with Richter down the road about the new Kingspade DVD, and the two openers as well.
It was great seeing some old friends. Shit, I hadn’t seen Peewee outside of Sunoco for the longest time, always conflicting schedules to hook up. And of course a huge thanks to Gimpy2Dope and his crew for helping pass out fliers for me while I was trying to track down these interviews.
Like Gimpy said, this was one of the most enjoyable shows I’ve been to in a long time. And as I mentioned, Diesel is a sweet small club. The place is a lot nicer and upscale looking compared to the old Nick’s Fat City that used to be in that spot. The wall behind the band lit up in different colors and added an incredibly epic feel to the last set as it got crazier as the night went on.