Life Harvester #9: Skull Fest, Skull Fest, Skull Fest, Skull Fest, Badamo's Pizza
Life Harvester is written by Colin Hagendorf and edited by Rebecca Giordano. This is the email version of a print publication available for free throughout the United States and for low cost individual subscription.
HELLO HELLO HELLO
What’s up dipshits, welcome to my newsletter. If you hate email like me and want a paper copy, you can find one in any of these cities for free. If you’d like me to mail one to you every month, that’s gonna cost money.
SKULL FEST 11
The night before Skull Fest, Pittsburgh’s annual 4-day d-beat bacchanal, I was covering a shift at the vegan pierogi restaurant I used to work at when I got a text from my friend Stefan in Austin. “Are you up? Can you take a call right now?” My stomach immediately dropped thinking I was about to get a call telling me that a mutual friend of ours who had recently relapsed was dead or in the hospital. Ten minutes later I was sitting on the toilet in the restaurant and my phone rang. I answered and Longmont Potion Castle was on the other end. My friend was at one of his live events and had given him my number. He talked to me about pancake makeup. //
An hour before the first show of the weekend, I was eating a hotdog at Costco and found out that they’ll give you a little ramekin of sauerkraut if you ask for it. An auspicious start. I texted my friend Dave to ask what time his band Nandas was playing and he told me 6:30, so I rushed home, grabbed Becca and we went to Babyland, a warehouse event space, for the inaugural gig. Pulling up on a dusty backyard full of punks is nerve wracking, even if I know most of them. I’ve always felt uncomfortable in large social settings. Drinking helped for years, but even then I couldn’t’ really stomach the beginnings of things. Once I slot in, it’s fine. But, early on, it’s always touch and go. I dart my eyes around while I talk to people, I ping pong from one conversation to another and never really settle in. I fear my anxiety isn’t perceptible, that people misinterpret my constantly moving eyes as a social climbing lookout for better conversational prospects, which makes me more nervous.
Nandas started just in time to give me something to do right as my emotions were becoming almost unbearable. I love them, have always loved them, will always love then. Every time I see them, I think about how they seem to exist inside a fictional universe—a punk band from an issue of Sandman or one of Sarah McCarry’s Metamorphoses novels. They all look so cool. Nile behind the drums with her bra showing through two holes in her tanktop, Dave wearing a Fugs shirt to the punk gig, Anahit, the singer, a perfectly frenetic mess in a tattered dress, the rest of the band a frenzy of energy around her. Becca and I were most concerned with Peter’s style because last year he wore overalls and a bucket hat with the front tipped up and when Becca joked about him dressing like sex tape-era Tommy Lee, he looked genuinely sad for a moment before quietly responding, “I was trying to dress like Paddington Bear.” I had hoped that perhaps he’d moved on to Alvin and the Chipmunks and would be wearing a baseball cap and tall-t with a P on them and no pants. I was dismayed to find him dressed like a normal, albeit exceedingly hot, punk rocker, until Becca pointed out that he was wearing cheap velcro slides that he’d hand studded. Prayer hands emoji, angel baby emoji. //
Sex Pill from Houston played minus one guitarist, (Jacob, who was stuck at the side of the highway with Cody and Harris from Glue), and they still brought the fucking house down. They play a kind of Noise Not Music™ that has never been my thing to listen to in my free time, but I really appreciate live when it’s done right. They came to Austin a lot when Becca and I lived there and we were always thrilled to see them. The band holds it down for sure, but their singer, Swervee, is possibly the most charismatic frontperson in hardcore. On stage he is simultaneously the entertainment and the master of ceremonies, an MC in the classic hip hop sense. He moves the crowd. Think Crown of Thornz-era Ezec.
Prior to Skull Fest the most I’d ever interacted with Swervee was a single utterance. It was right after seeing Sex Pill play for the first time. I was taking up too much space in a narrow hallway. I felt a tap on my shoulder and then heard a low, gentle voice in my ear. “Pardon me, playa.” I turned to see who it was and Swervee slinked by me. Reader, I blushed. //
Friday night, I worked the door at an Asshole Parade show. (In fucking 2019. Why?) At one point I walked into the bathroom to find a security guard standing at a urinal, a stall with two dudes in it, and an empty urinal in between. I sidled up and started to piss, snorting sounds echoing from the stall until a voice broke the silence.
“Dude, we’re doing drugs right now, dude.” I started laughing. His companion responded, “I know dude, they’re fucking good drugs too. I’m so fucking high right now.” More snorting. At this point I was cracking up at the guileless exuberance of these two dipshits, and also entertained by the frat boy club security seeming unsure of what to do. Then the silence was once again broken by the first dude, who said, “dude, we should fuck.” To which his friend replied, “yeah dude, let’s do it.” Belt buckle and zipper noises, squishing and kissing sounds. Still laughing, I turned to the security guard who looked fucking terrified. “It’s my second day,” he told me in a stage whisper, “I think I’m gonna let this one slide.” //
I insisted that I wasn’t going to any shows on Saturday and yet somehow there I was in the basement of Cattivo watching Institute. I don’t think it was the best set of theirs that I’ve ever seen, but about four songs in when they played “Shangri-La,” a repetitive, midtempo ripper off their new LP, Readjusting the Locks, something about them clicked for me like it hadn’t before. “Shangi-La,” starts with ’Tute’s guitarist, Arak, playing a looping, enchanting riff, the kind of riff you can lose yourself in. The rhythm section joins him before too long—staccato at first before filling the song all the way in. Just when it might be getting too jammy, singer Mose drops a perfectly timed “well, alright.” Mose’s delivery is growled rather than sung, like most Institute songs. In fact, there’s nothing about “Shangri-La” that deviates from Institute’s catalog, which is perhaps why it resonating with me so intensely felt like a revelation in my relationship to the band. Many hours later at my dining room table I described my experience with the song to Arak and he winked at me, “it’s our grooviest one.” //
The headliner at that show was the Rikk Agnew Band, a cover band fronted by the guitarist from the Adolescents and Christian Death. People seemed stoked on it, but honestly the whole set was a fucking bummer. This might be where my sobriety makes me no fun, (although I talked to a few certified drug-doers who shared my opinion), or it might be that I never gave a shit about the Adolescents or Christian Death, but watching an old dude on drugs not keep it together just made me sad after a while. For the first few songs I was entertained enough, and the band was remarkably tight, considering. About three songs in Rikk dropped his pick and looked lost for a second until Jim Shomo from Dark Thoughts crowd surfed up and handed him a new one, a graceful move on Shomo’s part. Rikk took the pick, put it in his mouth, and stuck it to his forehead, where it stayed for the rest of the song. During the next song he took his dentures out. During the song after that someone knocked the mic into his face and he stormed off to a corner of the stage and refused to sing. The sound guy brought up a new mic, but Rikk kicked it over. Gitane Demone—who performers as a singer in the Rikk Agnew band but who’s role seems more like the lover/mother/babysitter vibe of the long term partners of many temperamental but charismatic old man addicts I know—attempted to hold the mic for him. She was clearly stressed by his tantrum and feeling obligated to keep things running smoothly and opted to use herself as an inanimate accessory in a valiant attempt to keep the peace. But Rikk shooed her away and continued to stand in the corner screaming lyrics that no one could hear because he had petulantly refused amplification. The whole thing was deeply embarrassing to watch. The highlight of the show was standing on the sidewalk afterwards finding out that as a teen in Texas, Harris had misheard the lyric “we’re just kids of the black hole” from the Adolescents song “Kids of the Black Hole” as “we’re just kids on the block, holmes.” //
Sunday afternoon there was a hardcore matinee, once again at Babyland. At this point I was so used to constantly hanging out that by the time Becca and I rolled up there was no need to work my way through any anxiety. Got there in time to see Stigmatism, fronted by my bubbala, Marc Grillo, who you may have read about when I reviewed sleeping on his couch in issue 3. Their name is a pun about Agnostic Front’s guitarist Vinnie Stigma’s name, and a New York Hardcore myth that Stigma once punched someone’s eye right out of their head and squished it with his boot. Stigmatism have two t-shirts—one is an eye being punched out of a head, the other is an eye being mushed by a boot. I don’t really listen to NYHC except when I’m mowing the lawn, but I love to watch my friends do it. On stage Marc looks like an exaggerated version of the Brooklyn yutz he is—his long hair down, his three chains out of his shirt (all gold, one a classic thin box chain, the other with a cornicello his girlfriend gave him, the third a Star of David pendant with a skull in the middle made by Chi from Blu Anxxiety, who had played an excellent set the night before) stomping back and forth across the stage. Sonically, I’ve always liked NYHC, though lyrically, listening to most records in the genre feels like getting lectured about Reagan by my conservative uncles in Queens. Stigmatism offer a real solution for me. They sound like Victim in Painbut instead of singing pejoratively about people who are on food stamps, Grillo sings about organizing gangs of Jews to roam the streets beating up Nazis. Yasher koach.
The show ended with a stellar set from Glue. I’d seen them three or four times before, but always on a stage. At Babyland, the 6 inch riser the bands performed on meant that Harris was basically on the floor the whole set, and I’ve never seen him do such incredible crowd work. It’s always interesting to see another side of a person you know well. Harris was one of my best friends in Austin. In our normal life, he and I have spent hours walking slowly through the woods or swimming in streams, talking about books and art and puzzling through the kind of questions that two gorgeous, intelligent people might share. Harris is soft spoken, funny, and kind. On stage, he hunched his shoulders and jutted out his bottom jaw into a Neanderthal’s underbite. He paced the floor, flinging empty beer cans from off the ground at the crowd, showing a studied disregard for the frenzy he was whipping them into.
Things didn’t really pop off until Swervee jumped out from the side of the stage and into the crowd. It seemed like everywhere Swervee went all weekend, chaos swirled around him, and the Glue pit was no exception. At one point during Vaaska’s set on Thursday night someone almost knocked him over from behind and he seamlessly turned his near fall into a 180° pivot, turned his back the band, and waved his hands like he was conducting the other dancers. I recounted this moment to Becca after Glue’s set and she was awed. “He’s like Lucille Ball. He causes mayhem everywhere he goes but isn’t touched by any of it. And it’s all so slapstick.” //
It’s rude to talk about Skull Fest without mentioning that it’s largely a labor of love. My friends John and Krystyna do a majority of the organizing with this guy Dusty I don’t really know. If they make money off it, it’s not much. At every hardcore matinee at Babyland Ana from De Rodillas was serving vegan tacos that she’d made in bulk in the days before. There was a bar staffed by volunteers. Kelly who does Visceral Jewelry (and who’s old band that I kept running into when I was almost an oogle and they were on tour in the summer of 2009 was also called Glue) made gallons of alcoholic hibiscus punch that she served in these refillable Capri Sun pouches with crazy straws. Kelly is an angel who recently had a pretty intense medical crisis and there’s currently a gofundme up to pay back medical debt/help offset money lost from not being able to work so if you have a couple bucks to kick her way, please do! The door at almost every show was worked by a volunteer. Punk is, first and foremost, incredibly stupid and a huge waste of time. But it’s a stupid waste of time that myself and a ton of other people have poured our hearts and thousands of hours of our labor into for decades. It’s nice to see it amount to something.
BADAMO’S NORTHSIDE
There’s this thing about Pittsburgh being kind of a second rate city that seems to be a point of pride to many of the locals, but to me, a dickhead, is a constant source of slight irritation. It’s most succinctly encapsulated by the slogan of 96.9 Bob FM: “We play anything!” The deliberate implications of this slogan for a fucking RADIO STATION are that that they have no discernment, they don’t care for quality, they aren’t working hard. Don’t be fooled that it’s about inclusion of multiple genres. They could’ve made the slogan “We play everything!” which is equally broad, but doesn’t insinuate intentional disregard for quality. Call me bourgeoise, but I want a radio station to refuse to play things that fall outside its parameters of genre, format, or quality. The name Bob FM also reeks of insufferable Gen X randomness. Is the Church of the Subgenius running the show here?
This phenomenon has led Becca and I to develop a critical framework in which we need to constantly specify whether something is goodgood, or just Pittsburgh good.The dosas at Udipi are goodgood, the rap radio station WAMO 100 is Pittsburghgood. The Phipps Conservatory is goodgood, the programing at the Arts & Writers lecture series is Pittsburgh good. You get the drift. And you might guess where this is going, but actually none of the pizza here is even Pittsburgh good.
When I first moved to town I was taken to a place that was supposedly THE SPOT for pizza in Pittsburgh. The shop looked legit and smelled great but the slice itself just wasn’t right. (Not gonna name names, but I’ve since heard a rumor that this place puts either Welch’s grape jelly or the syrup from the fountain Sprite into their tomato sauce.) This is where I realized that there’s such thing as Pittsburgh style pizza and it’s terrible. The markers of a Pittsburgh slice (or a “cut” as they call it here) are that it’s tiny but cheap, is never crispy enough, and has the sweetest sauce you’ve ever tasted.
Enter Badamo’s. I avoided this place for over a year, despite a friend from Jersey saying it was good, because I had met the owner, Anthony Badamo, right when I moved to town and he was really nice. Based on how bad the rest of the pizza in Pittsburgh I had was, I couldn’t imagine Badamo’s being any good and I didn’t wanna tell a nice man to his face that his restaurant was trash, so I didn’t go until very recently. Lemme tell you, my fears were unfounded. The shop itself is clearly the work of an apt student of pizzeria culture, all bricks and subway tile. There are a few counters available to stand at and eat, but no seating. This is somewhere you stop for a slice or pick up a pie and continue on your way. The pizza itself is phenomenal. They sell classic triangle slices from round pies, by far the best I’ve had in Pittsburgh, and they’d still be above average in New York, but there’s nothing remarkable going on. The Sicilian, on the other hand, is unfuckingbelievable. It’s thinner than a New York Sicilian, but still thicker than a normal slice, maybe a quarter inch. When I called Anthony to gush about how good it was, he described it to me as a “souped up Grandma slice.” The dough is absolutely perfect, enough salt, enough air, crisp on the bottom, but with a nice toothsome pull in the center. Anthony makes a sauce that let’s you taste the tomatoes and it’s light acidity is balanced out perfectly by the fat in the mozzarella, which is portioned out all the way to the edges of the pan so it crisps along the edges. It’s a perfect marriage of Detroit style pizza and a New York pizza parlor staple, a fitting slice for Pittsburgh, a town that can’t seem to decide whether it’s on the East Coast or in the Midwest.
OKAY BYE FUCK ICE FREE PALESTINE NO COPS NO CREEPS NO BORDERS