TUESDAY, SEPT. 4:

Arriving at the sold-out Subhumans show last night with no fewer than twenty bruises already on my person—Labor Day weekend in Havasu, need I say more?—I figured not much more harm could be done, so I positioned myself in the pit. Though Subhumans originally formed in England in 1980, they sounded as tight and angst-ridden as ever, confirming their status in the upper echelon of punk. The setlist was mainly culled from the band’s early archive with favorites like “I Don’t Wanna Die,” “Drugs of Youth,” “Peroxide,” “Mickey Mouse is Dead” and “Subvert City” separated by singer Dick Lucas offering mini tirades in his nearly unintelligible accent, mostly deriding the superficiality and laziness so prevalent in our fair city. My personal highlights from the show were “Rats” off the EP of the same name and “I Don’t Wanna Die” from their full-length 1982 debut, a song which has always sounded best live. Though the songs were recorded before most of the all-ages audience was born, a majority of the pierced and spiky heads knew every single word, proving that kids today really are capable of appreciating good shit. They closed out their set with the powerful “Religious Wars,” inciting ridiculously stupid crowd dives off the balcony and bringing the pit to its peak. Amazingly—and somewhat perplexingly—I went home with only as many bruises as I’d arrived with. (LL)