CKY - Another Nightmare (by Jay Hale)

No matter what some concert promoter may tell a prospective band, the difference between Worcester, Massachusetts and Boston is on par with apples and dump trucks. CKY got that impression as they pulled up their bus in front of the Palladium while making the rounds with Fireball Ministry and The Knives on their first U.S. tour in support of An Answer Can Be Found. During their previous trips to Boston, the band walked down the block to shop for music, hit up one of the numerous neighborhood bars or ventured out on the town to find something that piqued their interest. Aside from the crowd queued up in front of the Palladium for the show, Worcester was pretty much dead so the band holed themselves up on the bus with little to do but count the minutes until their set — six hours after the club’s doors were opened. This evening’s itinerary was in stark contrast to the rest of the stops on the tour. CKY and their traveling companions were bundled as part of a two-day event dubbed Skate Fest and the band found themselves knee-deep in everything they hate — commercialized, trend-fitting music performed by, as drummer Jess Margera likes to say, “whiny, emo fruits.”

“The only reason we were asked to play Skate Fest is because of my brother,” Margera laments in regards his older sibling, Bam, as he walked from the bus toward one of the city’s most popular watering holes, The Irish Village. “For some reason, people have always considered us a skateboard band. Some asshole went as far as to call us ‘snotty skate punks from Philadelphia.’ I mean, what the fuck? Maybe I was a snotty skate punk when I was 14 but I’m 27 now and I have a daughter.”

Regardless of the billing, there was no half pipe in the Palladium parking lot nor was there a single skateboard to be found. Just wall to wall metalcore bands and a lot of bad tattoos sandwiched in between CKY and their touring counterparts. Although they’ve always prided themselves on not running with the pack, Margera and the rest of the gang felt obligated to fit in with Skate Fest’s roster so moments before they hit the stage, CKY grabbed a few Sharpie markers and performed a little impromptu inkwork. The results may not have been visible to those in the back of the room but when guitarist Chad Ginsburg asked if the “scenester pussies” in the crowd liked the body art on his forearm that read “Cool Tattoo to Fit In,” the holdovers from the night’s metalcore hoedown slunk closer to the exits. By then it was primarily a CKY-supporting crowd anyway and they relished Ginsburg’s antics.

click here for more...