Am I Safe? A Few Pics From The Field Day (ex-Dag Nasty, ex-Down By Law) Gig Tonight With Dot Dash And Fallout Shelter
Field Day may have been doing old songs but they performed them with more energy than new bands bring to their own material. Doing classics from Wig Out at Denko's (1987) and Field Day (1988), this Dag Nasty spin-off brought a still-vital pop-punk hybrid form of music to the Black Cat last night. Loads of numbers were burned through, with highlights for me being "Exercise", a bristling "Safe", and an ebullient "Wig Out at Denko's", among many others. If singer Peter Cortner and bassist Doug Carrion are older, you really forget it when watching the line-up in Field Day. Guitarist Mark Phillips of Down By Law ripped up the chords, and drummer Kevin Avery pounded the kit, and the crowd started moving, with "I've Heard" from Field Day turned into an anthem yet again. While the band mixed in a snatch of "That's When I Reach For My Revolver" from Mission of Burma during one selection, it was instead the many mentions of the late John Stabb which warmed the heart of any punk fan last night. July 12 would have been the late Government Issue singer's birthday, and a run at "Sheer Terror" was a really nice touch from Field Day during the final moments of this gig before an adoring D.C. crowd.
Openers Falltout Shelter set a nice tone with their blend of hard rock and punk. With Mike Dolfi of Black Market Baby, Skeeter Enoch Thompson and Kent Stax from Scream, and Gregg Maizel of Vigil/Here Today in the band, it's safe to say that there was a lot of harDCore royalty up on that stage on 14th Street. The band's brand of rock owed a bit more to stuff like The Stooges than Scream, for instance, but the tunes were robust and they gave a number like "Break", from Skeeter Enoch Thompson's solo album, some real menace.
Holding down the middle of the bill were D.C. stalwarts Dot Dash. Offering up a few familiar songs, the three-piece previewed a clutch of superb new numbers. And while I've got the set-list somewhere, I'll say that there was one shoegaze-y song that was a bit like a Swervedriver number -- drummer Danny Ingram was in Swervedriver at one point, after all -- and another was a ballad that sounded a tiny bit like Nineties-era R.E.M. to me, for lack of a better point of comparison. Still, by the time they got to "The Color and the Sound", it felt like we were hearing an old classic from The Jam trotted out once again. And in describing it that way, one gets that I mean that this band's tunes have a real durability, and some classic power-pop construction behind them.
More details on Field Day via the band's official Facebook page.
More details on Fallout Shelter via the band's official Facebook page.
More details on Dot Dash via the band's official Facebook page.
[Photos: me and my wife, 2019]