By Jim Testa

“Buy the ticket, take the ride.” – Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas

Those words rattled through my brain as I downed my fifth (or was it sixth?) Sailor Jerry’s and Coke at the Rush Lounge of the Gold Nugget Hotel & Casino. I was there watching JT Habersaat, Joe Sib, and Mike Wiebe, three punk rock musicians, do standup comedy, and minutes before I had shocked the shit out of a couple of kids from Phoenix who had just shared their love of the Ergs with me by buying us all a round of whiskey shots. It made perfect sense at the time; such is the strange self-destructive logic of Punk Rock Bowling, the Stern Brothers’ (of BYO Records fame) annual bacchanalia, music festival, and bowling tournament that brings several thousand heavily tattooed, beer swilling, pill popping, black-clad punk-lifers to Sin City, USA.



The Damned

Punk Rock Bowling began in 1999 as a small bowling tournament with a couple of shows, peopled largely by L.A. punks on holiday; it’s morphed into a monstrous three-day music festival with an arena-sized outdoor stage a few blocks from Vegas’ gaudy downtown, after-hours club shows that run till dawn, and a two-day tournament with over 1,400 bowlers. There’s also a poker tournament, daytime pool parties, enough beer to fill the Hoover Dam, and more mohawks, patched jean jackets, and metal studs than you’ll see in The Decline & Fall of Western Civilization, Parts 1 and 2.

In the past, Punk Rock Bowling would take over one of the fringe casinos on the outskirts of town like Sam’s Town, and a small army of punk rock scum would be set loose to terrorize the morbidly obese, inbred Iowans who roll into town in their RV’s for the all-you-can-eat buffet, or the cadre of Vegas-bound retirees who cash their Social Security checks every month pumping money into the dollar slots. Set loose in downtown Las Vegas though, a few thousand derelict partying punk-rockers barely make a dent, given the zombie-like herds of alcoholic frat boys, Mexican border-hoppers, and Midwestern tourists who trod up and down Fremont Street twenty-four hours a day, ogling the third-rate go-go girls, celebrity impersonators, and blaringly awful cover bands that constitute local “entertainment.” There’s a reason that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas; no civilized person would want to admit they’d spent their hard-earned time and money wallowing in this slime.


The Jersey Beaters


Which brings us back to the small army of warehouse clerks, t-shirt screeners, club bookers, full-time roadies, semi-professional musicians, bartenders and cocktail waitresses, record label minions, and yes, punk rock writers, who come to Vegas for Punk Rock Bowling. It feels more and more like family every year I do it, maybe because the older I get, the more music seems like the only real family I have left. I might not have the tattoos, but I’ve got the battle scars and the memories and, I’d like to think, a certain grudging respect for sticking around so long. Punk Rock Bowling may be the only major punk rock event where teens and twentysomethings are in the minority; Gainesville’s Fest certainly gets its share of punk rock lifers, but you won’t find more gray hairs or Eighties survivors anywhere than PRB Vegas. Maybe that’s the single biggest reason I like this weekend so much; it’s the one place where I don’t have to think about my age. I can even jump into the pool without feeling self-conscious, because fat, pale, and middle-aged only mean I fit right in with everybody else.

In the past, the bowling tournament occupied a much bigger part of the total experience, but this year, with most of the PRB’ers in downtown hotels, we had to be bused to bowling alleys at two different casinos and it was much harder to mingle, hang out, and watch other teams bowl. Plus, unless you wanted to spring for an expensive cab ride, only the teams who made the cut returned for the second day of bowling, when things got real and prize money was at stake.


Punk Rock Pool Party

But there was still plenty to do, including pool parties downtown that capitalized on the summery weather (PRB originally took place in February, when plane fares were cheaper but all the pools were closed) and provided more opportunities to drink and listen to loud, fast music. And then at night there was the music festival.

BYO does this thing right, building a huge stage with professional sound and lighting in a huge empty lot just off Fremont Street. All three nights sold out (I was told that meant 4,000 people a night) but it was never overcrowded like many festivals. Concessions were fairly priced, food trucks provided good grub, t-shirts went for $10 or $15, and the bartenders were friendly and efficient. It felt a bit like a scaled down Warped Tour, only without all the annoying teenagers, the awful emo bands, and the token rap acts striving for street cred. (You don’t need street cred when a large part of your audience already looks like they live on the street. And boy, with Turbonegro and the Casualties on the bill, there were plenty of those.)

Bands started at 3:30 although I rarely got there until after I’d grabbed some dinner, but I still got to the Weirdos, the Damned, the Swingin’ Utters, and Devo on the first night, and the Bouncing Souls, Lagwagon, Turbonegro, and Bad Religion on the second. ( I had to miss the third flight due to an early flight home, and didn’t get to see FLAG, D.R.I., The Subhumans, and The Casualties.)


Devo

This was my first Devo experience – I somehow missed them back in the Eighties – and they still put on a great show, complete with costume changes, a fantastic light show, and old hits like “Whip It,” “Uncontrollable Urge,” “Freedom Of Choice,” “Mongoloid,” “Girl U Want,” and “Beautiful World.” The Damned were much better than when I saw them eight years ago at one of CBGB’s farewell shows, nailing the hits (“New Rose,” “Nice Nice Nice”) and regaling the audience with stories. Bad Religion remain, in my mind, the best punk band on the planet, still a ferocious presence on stage with a bottomless discography of great songs. Fat Mike of NoFX even rushed the stage to sing the chorus of “21st Century Digital Boy” with frontman Greg Graffin. (And was that original guitarist Brett Gurewitz on guitar, subbing in for the mysteriously MIA Greg Hetson?) Bad Religion threw a few new songs into their 90 minute set, including the anthemic “Fuck You” from last year’s excellent True North, but mostly stuck to material from the classic Nineties albums, with powerful versions of old favorites like “Recipe For Hate,” “Generator,” “Sorrow,” and “American Jesus.”

Turbonegro surprised me the most, coming out like a middle-aged punk-rock Village People in costumes (a cop, a cowboy, a Mod) and completely winning over the crowd (including a sizable delegation of the Turbojugend, the band’s motley denim-clad fans) despite having a fairly brand-new lead singer, Tony Sylvester. “I Got Erection” turned out to be the loudest singalong of the night, even surpassing the crowd response for the always popular Bouncing Souls. (Favorite moment: A long-haired teenaged boy there with his punk rock mom, both of them throwing fists in the air and screaming “I got erection!” together.)

Do I miss some of the intimacy of Punk Rock Bowling, back when everything was smaller and everyone was sequestered together at Sam’s Town or Sunset Station? Sure I do. But did I have fun this year? Fuck yeah. And I’ll be back next year, if for no other reason than to avenge the embarrassing scores I threw this year. Jersey Beaters, Punk Rock Defeaters!