Date				Band			Venue

(1) 11/30/96			Against All Odds		Camarillo Park
				By All Means		Camarillo, CA
				Spies Like Us
				Honor Roll
				24 Elsinore
				Clowns On Crack

(2) 11/27/96			Citizen Fish		Westpark Center
				Burning Dog		Ventura, CA
				Peter Pan’s Army

(3) 11/02/96			No Doubt		     Santa Barbara Bowl
				The Vandals		Santa Barbara, CA
				Weapon of Choice

(4) 11/01/96			Weezer			Ventura Theater			                
                                    Superdrag        		Ventura, CA

(5) 10/25/96			Buck ‘O’ Nine		UCSB Center
				Jimmy 2 Times		Santa Barbara, CA
				Assorted Jellybeans

(6) 9/27/96			311			Santa Barbara Bowl					
                                    Phunk Junkeez       	Santa Barbara, CA

(7) 9/14/96			No Motiv			N. Lantana #32
				By All Means		Camarillo, CA
				24 Elsinore	           (Revolution Sk8
                                   Veteran Flashbacks      Shop opening)
				Hoobustank
				The Tourists
				The Executives

(8) 8/08/96			No Use For A Name		Comm. Center						
                                   Ten Foot Pole		Goleta, CA
				Speed Racer

(9) 6/29/96			Alkaline			Ventura Theater
				Kitty Kat Stew		Ventura, CA
				Apocalypso

(10) 5/24/96			Bouncing Souls		Monday Club
				No Motiv			Oxnard, CA
				Patient Zero
					
(11) 5/18/96			NOFX			Harder Stadium
				Skankin’ Pickle		Santa Barbara, CA
				The Alkohalics          	(Extravaganza ‘96)
				Acey Alone
				Big Bad Voodoo Daddy
				Speed Racer

(12) 5/03/96			Foo Fighters            	Santa Barbara Bowl
				Ween             		Santa Barbara, CA
				Jawbreaker

(13) 4/13/96			Fishbone			Ventura Theater
				Apocalypso		Ventura, CA
				Caustic
				Euphoria

(14) 3/31/96			Handle			Libby Park Bowl
				Kitty Kat Stew		Ojai, CA
				Disfunction		(A Walk In The Park)

(15) 2/25/96			The Upbeat		Johnny Dingo’s
				Guy Martin & Rude Mood	Ventura, CA
				Raging Arb & Red Heads
				Papa Nata
				Whippersnapper

(16) 2/23/96			Rubberband		Ventura Theater
				Fearless Vampire Killers	Ventura, CA
				Punctual Russ

(17) 1/20/96			No Doubt			UCSB Center
				Buck ‘O’ Nine		Santa Barbara, CA
					
(18) 1/13/96			Dance Hall Crashers	UCSB Center							
                                   Unwritten Law		Santa Barbara, CA
				Waterdog

(1) This was a Battle of the Bands that makes almost every other Battle of the Bands we have played at look like Coachella. It was held on the baseball diamond at a park in Camarillo. It was so obviously rigged. The winning band was the last band, 24 Elsinore, this semi-popular Camarillo ska band. They had more time to set up than any other band, and just happened to still be onstage when they announced the winners.
(2) Still one of the stankiest shows I've ever been to. This was also the first and last time I've ever gone to the Westpark Center; I don't even remember what the place looked like. I think it was held at a basketball court on the inside. Citizen Fish is/was (I don't know if they're still around) members of the Subhumans, I believe, doing a political crust punk/ska thing. All the crusties concentrated into one area made the place smell really bad. A lot of pogoing and moshing ensued.
(3) At the start of the year, No Doubt was playing a UCSB food court; now, they were superstars nearly selling out the SB Bowl. This was on my birthday, which was cool. It was even cooler because we had tix up in the seats, but we managed to snag some pit wristbands from a security guard. During the show, we were talking to this guy who was supposedly on the cover of the first Circle Jerks album. He had a really annoying little kid who we watched for a few minutes while he went to the bathroom. During No Doubt's set, Jeff's old friend crowd surfed over the barrier, was grabbed by security guards, had his wristband ripped off and was banished from the concert area for no reason, because everyone else was crowd surfing. For some reason, they picked on a seventh grader. While Jeff tried to comfort him, I spent most of the show down in the pit with these elitist ska guys who just talked shit about No Doubt the whole time. As far as ND's set goes, it was pretty much exactly the same as all the other shows they did around this time, which means exclusively Tragic Kingdom material. The Vandals were good, and we were really into Weapon Of Choice at the time, even before the show. Strangely, this is the only time we've ever seen WOC. After the show, Jeff's parents car broke down, and we had to cram into a cab with some big driver who was bumping Counting Crows all the way to Oxnard.
(4) The one thing I remember clearly about this show was that it was FUCKING LOUD! This show, more than almost any other, contributed highly to the start of the destruction of our ear drums. The place was sold out, Superdrag sucked ass, Weezer was cool, though I would appreciate this show more now that I'm a gigantic Weezer fan.
(5) UCSB Center has a really slippery floor. I remember slipping all over the floor during Assorted Jellybeans. One comment I can make about this show is that Vince went. Vince was this slick Mexican friend of ours who wasn't into music at all, let alone ska/punk, but he went and actually really liked Buck o' Nine, and bought a shirt that he wore regularly! If you knew Vince, this would be an extremely funny mental image, him skanking it up with us in the pit.
(6) Oh yeah, the show that got me hooked on 311 live. 311 still rules, though the Phunk Junkeez, I later realized, sucked. Jeff actually disliked them here, even though he bought their album and I taped it, while I went so far as to buy a shirt. 311 played a long set and had a really cool light display. This stood as one of my favorite shows for a long time.
(7) This was in the parking lot of Revolution Skate Shop. I've never been a skater, but nearly all my friends at the time were, and they informed me that that place sucked. As for the bands, well.. Hoobustank were kinda popular at the time, and they sounded like a shitty Primus ripoff. That's all I remember.
(8) The bloody nose show. At the end of NUFAN, some fat hick-looking gentlemen stage dove into my face during their closing Dag Nasty cover, and ended up breaking my glasses and busting my nose. Blood was all over my Apocalypso shirt, and my idiot friends just laughed and laughed. This show was pretty good for the time, Ten Foot Pole has always been one of the better new school punk bands in my mind. Although Speed Racer, one of the most annoying bands to come out of the SB area, were there, to be annoying, of course.
(9) Alkaline.. I think they were different from the Alkaline Trio, but I'm not sure.. this was just another local rock night show that the Ventura Theater used to do regularly. We went just to see Kitty Kat Stew.. and of course, Apocalypso was there. They sounded so much like Primus, but of course crappier. We made some remark to the bassist about being "Les Claypool Jr.," which was meant to be sarcastic, but he took it as a compliment and gave us a shirt and their demo. I still have the demo somewhere, too, I should dig it out for a laugh..
(10) The Bouncing Souls show, the first and last show at the Monday Club. Supposedly someone got stabbed here, which is believable since it's located next to a Circle K and Popeye's Chicken in a shitty part of Oxnard. Who knows why this show happened, but it did and it was cool. Me and Julio made some of our fake Bouncing Souls patches, as we often did at this time. We were DIY punks, man! This was the first of many times I saw No Motiv, and for some reason I remember their singer playing without a guitar, and they were really crazy.. they were a totally different band, at this show only. Patient Zero was just one of the many crust punk bands that came and went around here.
(11) When I found out NOFX was playing the Extravaganza, I remember calling Julio, my best friend at the time and fellow NOFX fanatic, and told him, and we were so excited. I mean, we were beyond excited for this show. I still consider NOFX an upper-echelon live band. They kicked ass here, and I've never been more crushed at a show. Some girl right in front of Julio had a bottle broken over her head during them, and a guy did a crazy backflip speaker dive into the crowd. Moments before NOFX's set, Much, Screech of Saved By The Bell's band, played. They sucked, but it was reported that Screech got hit with a bottle and had to go to the hospital. Is that surreal or what? We actually saw Screech in the bleachers before the show, flanked by two chicks. I yelled "Screech is a pimp!" and he kinda looked and smiled. Weird. Oh yeah, Skankin' Pickle was crazy, and this was supposedly their last show, though I think they did one more not too far from the SB area.. oh, and during Alkaholiks, my first exposure to live hip-hop, a guy got on the stage, was chased by security guards, leapt off and crashed into the barrier right in front of me. And a big fat guy pushed his way to the front, chomping a cigar, and yelled for the 'liks to pass him their 40. That was a joke among our crew for the longest time. And Aceyalone, someone who I would grow to respect as an MC years later when I really got into hip-hop, had some problems with his set, as records kept getting blown off the turntable by the wind. Pretty eventful show, eh?
(12) This was at the height of Foo Fighters' initial popularity, with "Big Me" a huge hit at the time. They were great, I still like the Foos, even though they're a bit more rock-starish nowadays. Ween had the best song of the day, though, with "Voodoo Lady" rocking the fucking Bowl! Unfortunately, Ween was the band that we'd listen to stoned years later, and they would annoy the hell out of me most of the time (well, at least the album Pure Guava, except for "Reggaejunkiejew"). What happened to Jawbreaker? They had a hit with "Fireman," or something, then vanished off the face of the earth. I never liked them much, but still..
(13) My first Fishbone experience. I don't remember much about this show, except the weird day we had hanging out before in Ventura. Jeff, Julio, and myself met some interesting characters, including Wayne Frederick, the guy who introduced himself to us as Wayne, then minutes later suddenly re-introduced himself as Frederick. He was bitching about watch directions and tried to steal some CDs that Jeff was going to sell to Wild Planet. Then we talked to some stone-faced security guard who was a bodyguard for Glenn Danzig. He said that if someone crowd surfs, he'd go straight for the nutsack. This guy was the inspiration for the first song me and Jeff wrote together, the classic "Bouncers." This was before Fishbone was my favorite band on the planet, and I really don't remember anything about the show, except that they played mainly their hard rocking, insane shit. A year later, though they'd deliver the best show I had ever seen.
(14) You know what I remember the most about this day? When I went home, I burned my hand cooking hamburgers. I still have a scar. This was the first time seeing Kitty Kat Stew.. and they're still together, and we're playing with them a lot. Handle was a really strange group who screamed a lot. When I think about it, they may have ripped off the Boredoms.
(15) OHHHHHHHH YEAH, the Johnny Dingo show. This was an all-day local show at a bar in Ventura. It was really small, but it would end up being a very memorable show. This was our first exposure to Papa Nata, and Guy Jeans. Papa Nata was hilarious during this early incarnation. Jeans would run around the stage in a jester hat with a keyboard around his neck. It was so strange. Later in the show, he came up behind Jeff and crowd surfed him, then acted like a drunk idiot with the rest of us. This started the Guy Jeans legend, as we would see him all the time in Ventura and would go see Papa Nata whenever we could. He's probably begging for change somewhere now that the ska revival has died. The place was packed for the Upbeat, who sounded phat. Afterward, we were all outside and this drunk guy tried to pick up on Jeff, who he thought was a girl. We told him he was a guy, then the lush slurred the famous line, "Why don't you get a life and cut your hair?" What a day that was.
(16) I remember going to this show in the back of Julio's parents' truck. I have no idea why we went. It was just a local rock night, and even at this point, when we weren't too critical of concerts because we hadn't been to too many, we thought this show was a total waste of time, and everyone sucked.
(17) This was right before they blew up huge with "Just A Girl." The 900 capacity place sold out, though, and Gwen couldn't make an appearance without being horded, but they were a lot different live than they would become. They connected on a more human level with the audience, and played a ton of stuff I haven't heard since, like "World Go 'Round" and "Snakes." We became friends with the guys in Buck o' Nine, who we loved after watching them perform a high energy set, and they were actually gonna get us backstage, but we had to leave as soon as the set was over. It would've been cool to say I met the band before they got big, but as it turned out, I pretty much met them when they were superstars in 1999 when they played the Ventura Theater.
(18) My third show ever. Wow. Let's see.. DHC was cool, they were pretty big in the area. I have no idea how big of a crowd they would get nowadays, with the ska revival dead and buried and the band having pretty much fallen off the musical map. Waterdog was a complete Green Day ripoff, down to the last minute detail. Unwritten Law was popular at the time. This fat guy ran head first into Paul's stomach during their set, but of course Paul felt nothing. Fun little show this was.