Lethbridge punk and garage rock bands have the lifespan of fruit-flies, so I wasn’t going to miss the last ever gig from Lethbridge punk pop trio the Moby Dicks, Dec. 18 at the Owl Acoustic Lounge.
The Moby Dicks, featuring bassist Paul Lawton, guitarist Evan Van Reekum and drummer/ vocalist Joel Butler, have had a really good run of at least three ye
ars, some of the highlights being having recorded several singles and touring all over Canada, plus playing with B.A. Johnston.
So they went out in style with their usual set of fun filled, garage rock flavoured pop punk reminiscent of the Ramones, Buzzcocks and countless ’90s pop punkers.
They had a good sized audience crowded in front of their stage as they blew through most of their catalogue including crowd favourites like “Red Dog,” about the Red Dog Diner.
As happens a lot in the Owl, I couldn’t make out much of their lyrics, but the crowd was singing along anyway despite a few false starts and mis-cues.
They showed just how good they can be when they are not only playing sober but also have decent drums.
Before that, Floods drew a lot from the well of Black Flag, except tuning their instruments down, during their adrenaline fuelled, ear-splittingly loud set of upbeat hardcore punk with a touch of modern metal music.
They have a lot of potential, as the audience not only shouted along with the howling lyrics, but cleared the front of the stage for a handful of wildly flailing moshers.
The lead singer stripped off his shirt and leaped into the middle of the frothing crowd during the last song where he was immediately buried beneath a mass of writhing bodies.
Stressed Out were also on the bill, but I wasn’t able to stay around to hear them.
