Teen Gothic

For context this was an all ages show that is part of the same tour they're on now. I am a big Then Comes Silence fan and my old high school friend putting on the show is a huge Vision Video fan. The band are so cool they make our podunk town a tour stop twice now over the latter friendship. This is admittedly more of a Then Comes Silence fan post. I mean no offense, I am just able to speak on their body of work from a fan's perspective. I offered to help as a Dj and run a goth night across town.

I met them trying to find the venue walking down the street it was on. It was already a pretty funny situation with people in black knowing to follow other people in black, before they even crossed the intersection to properly introduce ourselves. It was a time crunch with less than two hours before doors. So it was all about helping them load in ASAP and setup gear. I didn't actually tell anybody I was the dj except the driver/merch guy. I'm not sure why. Probably because I couldn't think of how to even say it without it coming off as pretentious. I was there to see the bands mostly and help where needed.

The whole crew are a bunch of lovely people. Their driver too! He tried to give me a free TCS 12" when he knew I was a fan and I insisted on paying and adding the newest 12" of Trickery to the bill. The band were sweet enough to sign both for me.

During TCS sound check downtime, I got to tell Alex (vocalist) that I was really grateful they were visiting our small town on this tour. I tried to keep the fan boy behavior to a minimum and express quick earnest appreciation. He was really happy I was already familiar with an LP that dropped weeks prior and was just a super down to earth guy. Really patient during a rushed along sound check too with my green sound guy friend on the controls. Total pros.

Both bands sounded great. I came out from behind the decks to dance my ass off during TCS.

Because the crowd seemed more familiar with the headliner, it was a situation where the crowd started a few steps back but TCS completely won them over within a few songs.

I played music between sets I thought the bands would dig, but low energy enough to make it easy for them to raise the energy when they started playing. Blitz, Killing Joke, 1919, Sad Lovers and Giants, Fad Gadget, The Damned and newer music like SRSQ, Dionysus, XKAT, Void Republic. TCS drummer Jonas came out from behind his drums after their set to shake my hand and properly introduce himself while I was in the dj booth to the side of people. The drummer from Vision Video asked me for a track ID of the last thing I played before fading out. Because he said he was trying to Shazam it on the drum stool waiting for his bandmates and was striking out. Unfortunately I was too focused on when to stop the music to remember what song it was at the time.

Playing Killing Joke also brought up fun conversations with Hugo from TCS about our mutual love for Geordie Walker. I helped them load back into their van and Alex asked for my number in case the hotel was lame. Since I wasn't far down the road and had room. Dusty and other Vision Video band members were getting lots of attention from people on a 1 on 1 basis after the show. So I felt it was important to give them all space.

Overall a lovely night. Both bands and the crowd seemed to have a great time and I hope a return visit is planned!

By far the best made Sisters bootleg I have ever seen! A “limited” edition that includes a 2×7” board recording, show review, and poster.

Unfortunately, the board recording is kind of “meh,” but it’s a really amazing part of scene history.