Ever get the feeling ideals can't take us where we need to go?

Wow. Leave it to Dave, who I bailed on to go to Warped Tour (sorry again Dave), to be the guy who made me want to write something again. Down below you’ll see a video that happens to be Grade’s last song from a reunion show I never even heard about. And to think I used to all about the punk. Now I’m old and I miss when bands I used to love get back together. That is appalling.

I can’t imagine Grade was ever really anyone’s favourite band. Sure as shit they played incredible music, but I doubt too many people ever said the ywere the greatest band ever. That may be the case but they were easily one of my favourite bands live. They played that screamy emotional stuff long before My Chemical Romance and those other kind of bands (what an awful comparison, but I still think it makes my point) made the shit pop music. In fact Grade’s old label now has a splash page telling people to vote for one of their bands on TRL. That is fucked up. I think I only saw one Grade video ever, and I’m actually pretty sure I just made that up. I don’t think I ever saw a Grade video. That’s too bad because as you can see from the video below they used to throw down.

My favourite Grade memory is what I believe was the third time I saw them. They were playing at the Bassment in Saskatoon, and there were maybe 30 people in the crowd. That didn’t stop them from playing as hard as they could, because they knew people in Saskatoon loved them and they loved us. There were probably 10 people right up front , including me and Mike and the guys who were pretty much running the Saskatoon punk scene at that point. We were screaming along to whatever song it was and all of a sudden Freaky wraps the lead singer in a bear hug, and everyone just keeps rocking out. That probably sounds stupid now that I wrote it down, but at least Mike (and maybe Dave) will remember it and how awesome that whole night was.

So yeah, enjoy the last song grade will ever play together and kick yourself for missing them each time they came through Saskatoon.



Peace.