Images: Punk Rock Bowling Hangover Helper Day 1 feat. Pears, Illicitor, No Red Alice May 28, 2016 at the Beauty Bar

There isn’t a whole lot that can get me out of bed before noon on Punk Rock Bowling weekend. Wait. Did you say that Pears is playing a free show with complimentary tacos and all my friends will be there? Alright, I’ll put some pants on.

After bathing in sun screen (I’m aggressively Caucasian, freckles and everything), I made my way to the Beauty Bar’s backyard right as the doors were opening because there was no way I was going to miss the debut of the full band No Red Alice. Sal Giordano has been playing solo under the No Red Alice moniker for many years now, but recently decided to fill out the lineup with his fellow Eliza Battle brethren: The Chrises, Bitonti and Berg (which sounds like a set of lawyers I would trust).

The full band set up sounds amazing and no one could have knocked the smile off of my face during personal favorite song of mine, “Saint Josephine.” A cover of Sponge’s “Plowed” got the three or four people in the crowd who’d heard of Sponge stoked, and in terms of stage banter, Sal brought his dead parent jokes to a whole new Punk Rock Bowling audience. While it made for some slightly awkward shuffling of feet in the audience, my fellow early birds quickly warmed to his personality – and not just because it was approximately a thousand degrees outside.

You’d be hard pressed to find a more talented group of dudes than Zabi Naqshband, Bob Gates and Micah Malcolm from Illicitor. I keep “The Body and The Dirt” and “Jokeman V. Bater” on heavy rotation, and was stoked to hear these songs live after Illicitor was pegged to fill in for the originally-scheduled War Called Home. The instrumentation on these songs is the stuff dreams are made of: angry, screaming, bearded, long haired dreams.

Like most self-respecting music fans I know, Pears has become one of my favorite bands over the last couple of years. I’m an introspective sort of lady, so I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about why I love them so much. Their music is significantly more aggressive than the majority of what I listen to (I’m more flannel than butt flap in my punk leanings) but this band is just so goddamn good.

And you know what I think it is? I love that they don’t seem to take themselves too seriously. They come out on stage to the theme song from Family Matters, and take a brief interlude to the underwater swimming music from Donkey Kong Country (man, I love that game). For all the mean mugging frontman Zach Quinn does on stage, he’s the first to shake your hand and say hello off stage. Brian Pretus is all smiles, Dante, their tour manager, is a super nice dude. These guys are just working their asses off earning every bit of respect they’ve gotten.

New album Green Star was well represented in the set with “I Love My Kennel,” “Cumshots” and “Snowflake” getting huge reactions from a tightly packed crowd of fans who have obviously been listening to that record on repeat for the last two months. The energy of the whole set was just really fantastic, with a pit constantly twirling right up until the band walked off the stage for a mock ending, and beginning again when they jumped  back up to play the raucous Ramones cover “Judy is a Punk.”

As I ran back inside the Beauty Bar to enjoy some much-needed air conditioning, I was thinking that I wish all punk shows started at noon, that every band was as exciting as Pears, and that someone would manufacture me a hamster-style ball that I can roll around in at daytime shows that reflects the sun. Make a porthole at the top for taco and beer insertion, and if you want broader appeal – leave a vent for smoking cigarettes. We’ll sell them here on Punks in Vegas.

-Ashleigh Thompson

Photos by Anthony Constantine | https://www.facebook.com/anthonycphotography