The Underlings went to Salem last night to play at a crusty college-aged party, complete with a backyard teepee, hobo kids and vegan sausages frying in a pan in the World's Dirtiest Kitchen. Yes, there was a PA and, thanks to Dan Jones' buddies Les Nunes, there was also a microphone. Dan played a great set of mostly new songs on his acoustic - Panther Girl, Pink Pansies, the Doggie Song and a really great song about painting 52 landscapes in a year. I recorded the set but oops! I recorded over when the other bands started playing. The Underlings had a real fun time during our 10 song set, which took about 35 minutes. The crusty kids danced to our pop songs a rocked to our rock songs. Really nice, and we loved looking at the wall-art as we played. The Salem group Phantom played next and they were absolutely savage. A really fantastic, raw rock and roll group. I would have liked to have heard the vocals better, but I could tell that the screaming sounded pretty good. THe Shy Season, a band purported to be from LEBANON(!)(one of them told me nervously that they were from...um...ah...Salem or Portland or something, as if it were shamful to be from LEBANON!) went last and they were good, kind of indie rock with great teenage hair. I recorded some songs from both bands on my cassette recorder and I noticed some other kid had an old-school tape deck also. There were all these 80's metal cassettes of artists like Dio, Black Sabbath, the Descendents, Yngvie Malmsteen. I got inspired and busted out my boombox and cranked a tape I had of side 3 of Husker Du's Zen Arcade in between sets because nobody else was playing anything. I think perhaps some ears perked at hearing some classic angst music that doesn't get heard much by today's generation, but really the room cleared out pretty fast ha ha! I felt like a fucking geezer, but I always think, it's good to be true to whatever music or culture or whatever you think is cool, not worry too much if what you like is out-of-sync with the times. The same savage emotion of Husker Du's rock was present in the music the bands we played with last night; maybe the times don't change as much as anyone ever thinks.