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by William Ruben Helms

Fucked Up Gives 285 Kent a Raucous Salute, by Kate Spalla

Despite the almost 20,000,000 people who reside in the New York Metropolitan area, the music scene is incredibly small. A few weeks ago, a friend, who I had met at a show invited me to a birthday get together at Mona’s over in the Lower East Side, and while i was there she introduced me to a friend of hers, who was a musician – a musician whose band I had written about on this site several months before. Obviously, this isn’t the only time something similar has happened. Virtually, right after I got off the plane from Frankfurt am Main, Germany, I was at the Crash Avenue PR CMJ Showcase at Rock Shop when a young woman approached me while i was standing at the bar. As it turned out, I met this young woman two years ago at a CMJ Showcase at the Bowery Ballroom that featured Crocodiles and Dum Dum Girls. And when she mentioned it, I immediately remembered the show for a number of reasons – first, for some reason the entire show felt impossibly and torturously long; second, we wound up chatting for most of the entire night about music and the show in general; and third, Dum Dum Girls’ set that night was arguably one of the worst sets I had seen in recent memory. However, to be fair, I caught the band playing what I think was their seventh set in about four or five days. They seemed worn out and exhausted, and worse yet, their set was horribly marred by some of the worst sound I had heard at the Bowery Ballroom. 

In any case, we wound up chatting for a bit during a couple of sets at the Crash Avenue PR Showcase, and we exchanged information. And as it turns out, the woman in question, Kate Spalla is quite a talented journalist in her own right. And she has the honor of being the second guest poster in this site’s history. Hopefully, they’ll be more from her and from possibly others in the future… 

In any case, 285 Kent was a venue that I passed by on my way to cover countless shows at the Glasslands Gallery; however, I had never caught a show there – that is until i had the pleasure and honor of catching Toronto‘s Fucked Up close out the DIY venue with Kate Spalla last Sunday. The words are hers, the photos are mine. Check it out below.

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Fucked Up Gives 285 Kent a Raucous Salute

Fans gripped the stage with their guts squished by the crowd behind them, minding crowd surfers and glaring up at Fucked Up frontman Damian Left in what would have been a normal set for the beloved Ontario punk band. Fucked Up played 285 Kent with a vehement send-off to the now defunct concert space.
After a string of goodbye shows that spanned two months, 285 Kent closed its doors on January 19. The space survived for three years as a DIY music venue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Among random tuning and feedback sounds, Left called for the crowd to give it up for the people who made 285 Kent happen. In some ramblings about how the bands and everyone in the room can do what they want – put on a show or make a band – Left revved up the crowd to rock out one last time at 285 Kent.
In a fun version of “Running on Nothing” with strong licks on the record’s catchy guitar riffs, Fucked Up pulled the set halfway through with some favorites off David Comes To Life. The set darkened, shifting to scraps from tracks like “Remember My Name” before the end of Fucked Up’s hour long act.
Fucked Up ended with a cover of the Ramones classic, “Blitzkreig Bop” before the kids left 285 Kent for the last time.

For these pictures and more from 285’s closing set with Fucked Up, check out the Flickr set here:

Kate Spalla (http://katespalla.com/) makes tech things work by day at mtvU, and covers live music in NYC by night for NY Examiner (

www.examiner.com/live-music-in-new-york/kate–spalla).