PICTURE THIS: Dwarves @ 924 Gilman 10/11/11
924 Gilman, the place where Green Day got their start, hosted a pre-Halloween punk fest with a crazy line-up of 8 bands to celebrate Devil’s Night. The headlining Dwarves have stopped in many times on passes thru town. They first played there in 1984 (Green Day has played with them). Gilman was the last US stop before a 2 month trashing of Europe.
Lead singer Blag hit the stage sporting a Lucha Libre Mask, and the crowd became a whirling dervish. I’ve seen mosh pits, but this was the first time I ever experienced “polite moshing;” perhaps “conscientious moshing” is a better phrase. Despite the NO sign, lots of stage diving took place, with everybody looking out for one another, making sure nobody got hurt.
If you yelled or flipped off Blag, you got to sing the next verse of a song on mic. All the songs were hits as everybody was singing along. At one point a kid jumped on stage, took the mic, and sang several verses before diving off stage and being carried around by the crowd. When he was deposited back on stage he sang some more.
Looked like crazy good fun. If I didn’t have my rig, I would have dove in there too, but I left content, with a classic Blood Guts Pussy t-shirt and a poster.
More pics from Dwarves @ 924 Gilman St 10/11/11.