7Seconds, Youth Brigade, Pressure Point, Boats!, The Knockoffs
Shire Road Club “¢ Friday, Jan. 29, 2010
Words & Photos by Anthony Giannotti
When I heard about this show I was really excited for several reasons: First, I hadn’t seen some of the bands in almost 10 years; second, it showcased a wide cross-section of Sacramento punk rock talent; and third, it gave me a reason to get out of the grid and check out a new all-ages venue. So I made the trip all the way out to The Shire Road Club.
The Knockoffs
First up were The Knockoffs. The band consists of guys from other great Sacramento punk bands The Secretions and The No-Goodniks and Berkeley, Calif.’s Mr. T Experience. Right out of the gate these hometown heroes hit us with three-chord punk that would do The Ramones proud—songs chock-full of sing-alongs, power hooks and quirky choruses about girls. I found the drummer of this band to be very interesting; in fact I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Imagine if The Rock stopped taking steroids and played with the exact facial expression/drumming style of Ringo Starr circa 1964.
Next up was the pop punk trio Boats! The set started out with some equipment malfunction that caused the guitar player to miss some notes and forget chord changes. Anyone that has played in a touring band understands every show can’t be the best one you’ve ever played; you just move on and play better next time. These guys did have some catchy tunes. Similar to something you might hear on a late ’90s Screeching Weasel album, fun goofy three-chord punk. The bass player David blew me away, honestly one of the best young punk bass players I’ve seen in a long time.
The third band, and arguably the best band on the bill, was Pressure Point. I really don’t know what else to say about these guys, they are just fantastic New York style hardcore punk. Apparently I was not the only person who felt this way because the previously motionless, expressionless crowd burst into a wild circle pit, fist-flying singing along to all the songs. These guys brought a little more musical complexity to the night, more than five chords per song and some flashy lead guitar. Pressure Point brought out an interesting observation; punks, skinheads and hardcore kids attended this show. Not a lot of other cities can boast such unity.
Youth Brigade
As soon as Youth Brigade hit the stage I was immediately unimpressed. Yeah I know, punk legends, been around forever, whatever. For some reason Shawn Stern (lead singer) had a problem with the majority of the audience not being born before his band started. He seemed to imply that we weren’t there so we don’t “get it.” This is the equivalent of Boss Hogg telling me I don’t “get” Dukes of Hazard because I wasn’t born in the south. I don’t see this in any other genre of music but for some reason some old punk rockers are ageists. Sorry for being younger than you. I don’t know what you want me to do about it. If you’ve seen the classic punk documentary Another State of Mind, you’ve seen modern day Youth Brigade. They still play teeth grinding aggressive ’80s style barking hardcore punk. Shawn is still singing about politics and playing the same power chords, I didn’t get the impression that he wanted to be there. He acted as if he was going through the motions, to get paid.
7Seconds
7Seconds was the last band to take the stage, they immediately kicked down the doors and tore the roof off. They played fast, loud, and hard. I was surprised Bobby didn’t break a string the way he slammed on that guitar. Steve Youth played about as complicated of a bass line as you can fit into a blazing fast punk song. I loved Kevin’s vocals, that distinct higher range is one of the things that has made 7Seconds so recognizable over there career. What an extraordinary band, they are celebrating there 30th anniversary so get out and see them!
All said and done it was a good night with very talented bands. It was a good reminder of what I love about punk rock. I hope Shire Road Club has more of these shows in store for us.
Youth Brigade (Jan. 29, 2010)
Local rock ‘n’ roll club with rich history is brought back to life, again
“John, don’t let the club burn down.” That’s one sentence that Sacramento-area resident John Webb will not soon forget, especially as the seminal club he watched burn more than 30 years ago prepares to be resurrected yet again.
It was a late night on May 27, 1977 and Webb was closing up shop at the Shire Road Pub in Fair Oaks, a rock ‘n’ roll club that he and some high school friends had opened four years prior. The club’s owner, Gerald Sterchi, was on a motor home trip to Canada and had left Webb in charge. It was a Friday night, one of the venue’s busiest. The band had finished up and the crowd of drunken patrons had cleared. Webb went about his normal closing routine: He cruised through the club, checked all the bathrooms, walked into the band room and made sure everybody was out. Everything looked perfectly fine, just like at the end of every other night, so he hopped in his car and made the long drive back to his home in Folsom.
Webb had just gotten home at about 3 a.m. when the phone rang. He answered, only to hear someone from the fire department speak the dreaded words, “The club’s on fire!” Webb jumped back in his car in disbelief and raced back down to the club. He was driving so fast, in fact, that he got pulled over by the Folsom police. The officer let him go, of course, once he heard Webb yell, “My club’s on fire, my club’s on fire!” But by the time he got back to the bar, it was too late. “I couldn’t do anything but watch it burn down,” Webb said. “They were fighting it, but it was pretty well gone. It pretty much totaled the place.” The club he had helped build with his own two hands burned down right in front of him. “It was devastating. Especially since I was told not to ‘let the club burn down.’ Honest to god, that’s what [Sterchi] said to me before he left,” Webb remembered with a good chuckle.
After the smoke cleared, Webb and his associates learned the official story from the fire department. A smoldering cigarette left behind on the couch in the band room had started the blaze. It was indeed a tragedy; Sacramento had lost one of its most happening rock ‘n’ roll clubs. It was the place where 1960’s pop band The Beau Brummels, after having been broken up for eight years, recorded their Live! album; the place where Webb snuck beers to a then-19-year-old local guitar shredder named Craig Chaquiço, who later went on to play in Jefferson Starship; the place where Webb had booked a “little-known band out of the Bay Area for $500 for two nights” called Pablo Cruise, who later went on to have huge commercial success with songs like “Whatcha Gonna Do?” and “Love Will Find a Way,” both of which charted in the Top 10 in 1977 and 1978, respectively. “It’s hard to describe the time that we had there,” Webb remembers of those years spent at the club. “It was a really magical time.”
Fast-forward about five years to 1982. Webb, who obviously was out of a job after the club burned down, had started his own talent agency called Star Attraction and was booking all of the hottest local bands in nightclubs all over Sacramento and Stockton, even Reno, Nev. Sterchi, meanwhile, was dead-set on re-opening Shire Road Pub and ultimately did so in a building on the corner of Auburn and Garfield that had previously housed a bar called Froma’s.
“Geri came to me and he wanted Star Attraction to book the club, so I did that for a few months,” Webb remembers. “Then, he said, ‘John, I’d like for you to come back and run the club for me.'” So Webb did just that—he went back to the club and ran it for Geri and his wife, Karen, just like he had all those years ago at the original Fair Oaks location. He stayed there and managed the place until 1987, when he retired from the entertainment industry.
This new incarnation of the Shire Road Pub also served the Sacramento rock community well, but the music scene was drastically different than when the original club was around. “The rock scene was going largely toward VJs and DJs and getting away from the live music, and music was just changing,” Webb says. “It was going more toward hip-hop and the whole live music scene was slowly dying. We had had about 25 years’ worth of a run and we thought that was pretty darn good for a rock club.”
The Shire Road Pub version 2.0 eventually closed its doors in 1994 and soon after became a strip club called The Body Shop. Don’t think of it as inferior to its predecessor just because it didn’t go out in a blaze of glory; there were some noteworthy bands that played there too. Take, for instance, the hard rock band now known around the world as Tesla, who still called themselves City Kidd when they played the pub; or Steel Breeze, a band from Sacramento whose 1982 single “You Don’t Want Me Anymore,” out on their self-titled RCA Records debut, made it to the Top 20 on the charts. It was a hot spot for up-and-coming local bands like Target and 58 Fury, which featured longtime local musicians Darin Wood and Joe Johnston (who now runs the popular recording studio Pus Cavern). “I remember playing four sets of mostly covers on Sunday and Monday nights,” Wood recalled of the Shire Road Pub. “Kenny Nicholson, the house sound guy at the time, would tell me, ‘You got to talk more in between songs, say some shit. I don’t care if you read the newspaper, just say some shit!'”
George Gosling, a music buff who helped run an artist management company at the time called Pyramid Productions, remembers showcasing bands at the club’s second location. “I did a U.S. debut of a Canadian band that I managed called Stonebolt,” Gosling recalled. They were from Vancouver, had a record deal with a subsidiary label of Casablanca. We did a big party on the opening night and many of my family members, friends and associates were there.” Stonebolt, just one week later, went on to Hollywood to showcase for Billboard, Cashbox, Record World, Variety and the entire Casablanca staff. Yes, the Shire Road Pub was surely a special place that many Sacramento rock ‘n’ rollers remember fondly and miss dearly.
Tom Kimble, owner of the Kennel Club (aka Doghouse Saloon), also on Auburn Boulevard, is definitely one of those guys. When Kimble got word that The Body Shop was closing down last year, he made some calls and was in contact with the building’s owner the next day. He told him about this great idea he’d had to turn it back into the rock ‘n’ roll club that everybody remembers, only this time a little different: the club would be an all-ages venue, with no alcohol available. It took a few visits to persuade the owner, but eventually he saw Kimble’s dream.
“It was important to me,” Kimble said of bringing back the rock club in the same building. “When I walked in there I still pictured what it used to look like.” According to Kimble, the Shire Road Pub was the place to be. “I used to go there all the time,” he remembered. “You couldn’t get in that place on the weekends, it was really happening. If we couldn’t get in, we’d wait. It was always packed, and very loud.”
And so with the owner of the building’s permission, Kimble got to work on the new Shire Road Club (the word Pub got changed to Club since they aren’t serving alcohol). “I can’t put it back exactly the way it looked,” Kimble said of re-piecing together one of his favorite extinct rock clubs, “But I can get it close.” Kimble and a small group of friends and helpers are still trucking along; even as of press time for this issue they were laying carpet, painting walls (local graffiti artists are scheduled to customize the inside of the venue with rock-themed art), setting up stage lighting and basically working their asses off to get everything set up for their first official show on Jan. 15, 2010. It’s hard work that these guys seem more than willing to do for the area’s live music fans, especially the younger ones that so often can’t enjoy a show because it’s at a bar.
Making sure the new Shire Road Club is an all-ages venue was very important to Kimble throughout the lengthy, tiring feat of remodeling and re-opening a venue. He’s spent many years dealing with drunken band members and angry patrons at his bar/venue the Kennel Club, and he’s quick to point out how old that gets. He’s not worried about dealing with hordes of punk rock kids, though, who are typically stereotyped as “bad kids.” He’s got a different outlook on that whole crowd.
“Just because a kid wears a leather jacket with spikes on it, he’s not a bad kid, that’s just what he’s wearing.” Kimble says, “I want to have an all-ages venue where they can enjoy the music that they know and the music that they wrote. Let them express themselves. It isn’t about me dude, nobody gives a shit about the club owner, it’s about the kids. If the kids are happy and they have a place to go, I think I’ve accomplished what I wanted to do.”
