Images: Punks in Vegas 3 Year Bash feat. Jeff Rosenstock and the Internet Posers, Hard Girls, Mercy Music May 22, 2014 at the House of Wonk

One thing that Vegas gets that I think is fairly unique is the “I’m going to be in town for a wedding, might as well play a show” phenomenon. We got that just last year with American Football frontman Mike Kinsella and his Owen project, and this year, the honor goes to Jeff Rosenstock. With San Jose’s Hard Girls in tow, the former Bomb the Music Industry frontman brought along his new band, who he alternately dubbed the Internet Posers, then the Morning Glories, then Panic Attack (“Five songs in five minutes!). Throw a Mercy Music solo set on the front of things and you’ve got the recipe for the Punks in Vegas 3 Year Bash, or the “we only book guys named Jeff” show. Music fans from everywhere (seriously, we had a guy from Guatemala, how cool is that?) came out to sing, eat cupcakes and have a great time.

Between Oasis covers, Rosenstock and crew (featuring members of Hard Girls and The Chinkees), belted out songs from the shouter’s i look like shit LP as well as a few new ones (keep your eyes on this site for a premiere – in acoustic form – of one of those new songs). He was reluctant to play anything from his previous bands, having focused practice on newer material, but he did play one Bomb song – “Can’t Complain” – as a personal request from me for my spouse for our wedding anniversary (thanks, Jeff!) and he had everyone singing along to “Twinkle” and “80’s Through the 50’s.” Hard Girls powered through a set that included “Major Payne,” “Hot for the Halo” and “Quinceanera” with a few people singing along and a few more bobbing their heads and tapping their toes. Opening up the show was “Friends of PIV” lifetime member Mercy Music, aka Brendan Scholz, playing a solo acoustic set. “Fine” and “Undone” got hands clapping and it was a great way to kick things off.

Special thanks to the House of Wonk guys for hosting the show, who said we brought out the nicest and most well-behaved group of music fans and that we broke the record for most money raised for touring bands (though the selfish part of me hoped that they wouldn’t raise enough money to leave and would then be forced to live out their days in Vegas playing shows for us every night). One of our biggest goals with running this site is to promote positivity through music. That doesn’t mean sugar coating the facts, it means putting that extra effort into not being jaded. Recently I was asked what makes our scene unique and the first thing that came to mind was the unbreakable sense of determination this scene can breed. Nothing comes easy. Being in a town with a lot of entertainment options, you have to scream twice as loud to be heard and you have to push twice as hard to get bands to come here. But through countless losses of all-ages venues, endless van explosions just hours into tour and a long list of bands who write off this city after one bad show, we all keep at it and work to make it better. We keep going to shows, keep listening to music and supporting each other and, despite its ups and downs, I think the scene gets better little by little all the time. It’s always awesome to see, and I think I can speak for all of us here at PIV when I say that we’re happy to be even a small part of that.

-Emily Matview

Photos by Hunter Wallace | https://www.flickr.com/photos/hunter_wallace/