Moss Punk Rock

Imagine Punk Rock. Now take away the self-importance, the PC nazis and the macho fuckhead element and fill the space with joy and high energy shows. That's pretty much was Moss Punk Rock was like. A bunch of great bands and even greater people. Before going I had a pretty big fight with my parents about wether I was going to social rehab or Moss Punk Rock but I don't feel like getting into that since it's just a hold up of all the wonderful experiences. I hooked up with Fredrik in Oslo on friday and we headed down to Moss with the direct line. We were there about half an hour till seven, the weather was great. I gotta say the first surprise was Kåntra. I've never been to Kåntra before MPR 08, but Fredrik had told me a bit about it. Actually being there though, was a whole lot different. Kåntra is a one year old selfran youth house that is currently receiving benefit from the community board or however the fuck I'm supposed to say kommunestøtte in english. Anyhow, it didn't take long before I fell in love with the moss scene, all though most of them were pretty young, these are pretty much the most fun kids I've been around in ages. Among the most interesting people I met were Albert, this fucking smart pink-haired ska-kid/rudeboy/whatever they call themselves these days, the way I understood it he was traveling through Norway with some friends of his. He was also one hell of a dancer. Then we had Sandra, possibly the most mature 14 year old I have ever met in my entire life. She's like a fucking carnivore though, I think I alone have 7 bitemarks from her, she also ripped up the sleeve of Fredrik's stupid hippie t-shirt with her teeth. She hung out with me and Fredrik most of the time and we got piss drunk, I think we were constantly drunk for at least 60 hours. Some of the things that happened during these hours I'll talk about, the rest of them are none of your biz-shit. Then we had Steffen, punkkid from half an hour from where I live, surprised I never heard of him before. I get quite surprised these days, seeing all these patched up, mohawk kids. I never looked that hardcore when I was 15. Syver and Marijona were these two other people who gave us booze, we also slept in Marijonas house the second night. Anyhow, we managed to get down two pints each before the first band went on, Grevling Batong. I never even heard of them before but they were fun, didn't catch all their songs unfortunately. I think they were a moss band cause pretty much everyone had their logo somewhere. After that, me and
Fredrik went out to drink with whoever it was. I don't remember the line-up after that correctly, but I do remember Skandale Vandale. Now this band is fucking awesome, they play like fast, catchy punk rock and manage to sound pissed without sounding unoriginal like some bands tends to do these days. Pretty similar to Cheap Sex with a twist of GBH and that stuff, just with norwegian straight-from the gut lyrics. Even though we were like five punx in the pit we still moshed like fuck. I even sang along on the songs Snut and Livet er en vits, which are pretty much my favorite songs by them. Still pissed they didn't play Elverum Brenner though. After they played I got a discount on a t-shirt from them and a button, which makes me one of two people outside Elverum with a SV shirt, thouhg it's way too big for me. (I wear it anyway.)
I don't think I catched that many bands after that, there was this danish band called Human A/SS who I liked but I was too drunk to remember what they sounded like, Kohu played too, crusty as fuck, also there was this band one of the teachers on my school plays in called Dözarne who were a LOT faster live than on recording, I'd talk to him if it wasn't so fucking akward. Nuff said. I was surprised to see how many Oslopunx who showed up, since they usually never cross Ring 1. I also found out a lot more about Martin, who I from before had mostly gotten the impression that was simply the drunkest drunkpunk in Oslo, well he is, but I found out he was also really reflected and was boosted with self-irony. Fredrik had a coffecup of özo while I was gone which he shot from Syver and Marijona so he got the drunkest the first night. We went home, listened to a shit-load of music, watched a few Henry Rollins performances then crashed. Next day we woke up pretty early, ate some really delicious greece salad. We went back to Kåntra, only today I borrowed Fredriks sisters camera. We came, hooked up with Syver, had a couple of beers, then he left, Sandra came, more beer. we saw like two minutes of sengekameratene and Di Kjipe, can't remember which of the two bands who covered Wasted by Black Flag, we spent more time drinking than watching bands. Later we came to watch Pink Dirt because Sandra kept ranting about them. They were great though, possibly the third best band of the festival next to Tarmer and Skandale Vandale. They had lighthearted, catchy songs who were easy to sing along too though I never heard of them before that day. They were like the second oldest band at the festival next to Angstemblet, both these bands shows that you can be old as fuck and still be more punk than most kids in the scene today. Pink Dirt even threw out like ten free shirts while playing "Fred, Frihet og Alt Graits" (Peace Freedom and everything for free) which was also the slogan on the shirt. I didnt get a shirt but pretty much everyone else in the pit did. Right after Pink Dirt we opened the second bottle of cheap russian wine and shared it with the lead singer from Skandale Vandale.
Imported russian wine is tasty and affordable for the avarage punks. The plumwine was espescially good though it was only 12% or something like that. We headed back to the vegetarian BBQ outside Kåntra and just enjoyed being buzzed in good company, I was also able to get my hand on some bud while I was there which only improved the experience, even though it lead to Sandra biting my arm so badly it still hurts like hell when I poke it. Ouch.
Anyhow, right after this, the next band went on. The band I had been waiting for a year to see ever since I got my hands on their LP. Tarmer! Four fucked up, piss drunk, pissed off bergenpunks playing piss drunk, pissed off streetpunk, drinking down pint after pint just to smash the glassbottles at the audience and fighting the crowd. I must mention that Kåntra is very strict on the alcohol policy so Tarmer and Di Kjipe were probably the most hated bands at the festival. I can't help loving them though. I remember their lead singer shouting at us before the show "Fucking poserkids sitting there just snuggling and ranting bout the fucking internet when there are cop cars to burn". Still, no one can say Tarmer didn't put up a good show, skanking skins, moshing punks and even some persons dad who was a surprisingly good dancer thoguh he was the squarest guy in the crowd. Great singalongs and great energy. I remember espescially well when Trond (their lead singer) got down from the stage and started kicking everyone within the circle around him and I was the only one who kicked back, we had a short but really fun fight and this was pretty much the energy level of the rest of the show. I didn't see any more shows that night though this kid tried to convince me to see Bikjaa which he described as more alternative than alternative and a fuzion of punk and metal which sounded like something I could have said when I was 13 so I decided nto to see them. We just went out and had more beers. After the show, Tarmer started snorting speed, burning benches and turnin up the music in their van. We went boozehunting and asked them if they had any leftovers. Trond said there were some in a green tent, there wasn't any. We went boozehunting some more but only got a few cigarettes. Then Syver went home and me and Fredrik crashed at Marjona's place. The next morning I woke up drunk with a cat on my chest. Fredrik had went home to get his sister her camera before she headed to sweden. I ate some sandwiches and had a cup of coffee. I really liked Marjona's house, she said it was 80 years old or something. There were all these books, decorative items and all this other cool stuff. Marjona was also a pretty rad painter, she showed me one of her paintings which made me feel pretty miserable about my stuff. Darn Steiner youth. We went back to Kåntra, drank the beer the bands hadn't sipped down and me. this old guy and Martin smoked some bud before Fredrik arrived, needless to say this caused me to receive more bitemarks. I went home afterwards that afternoon, it sucked though because i really fell in love with Kåntra and the whole Moss scene. Me and Fredrik were invited for more drinking sometime soon. I can't wait. Remember my previous post when I wondered why I was looking forward to the holidays? This is definetly the reason,unfortunately I wasn't able to take any more for now. But I will browse the internet to look for more. I can't wait to go to next year's festival. I plan to get even drunker.
Peace out, bitches!