Photos and review by: Alan Ralph @ARPhotoSF
Over the past month or so, there has been a huge increase in the amount of indoor tours being announced nationwide. Despite the grand reopening of America, COVID-19 policies still exist and are different for every venue and every city and every state. Some are still intensely enforced, while others are not and were put in place just to comply with local statutes.
In early May, shortly after Laramie, Wyoming’s Teenage Bottlerocket announced a 12-date tour, their St. Petersburg (Florida) tour date garnered headlines when the local promoter Leadfoot Promotions announced, for the safety of everyone in attendance, that they will be charging $999.99 per ticket (up to four total) or a discounted price of $18 for those who could prove that they are fully-vaccinated. By the end of the month, the venue in St. Petersburg got cold feet, the show was moved to Skatepark of Tampa, and this story hit the national news circuit on CNN, even as all 250 discounted tickets to the show had already sold-out.
Although San Francisco, the international headquarters of Spinning Platters, is slowly reopening from its now 16-month COVID lockdown, our rock photographer is still in Florida. Since the promoter relied on a crew of volunteers to make the show happen, fully-vaccinated Spinning Platters volunteered to help out, and in the process, was able to photograph and attend Teenage Bottlerocket!
To be eligible for the discount, ticket holders had to bring their COVID-19 vaccination record card, documenting that they received their vaccine on or before June 12, 2021. “We are making a business decision and letting the market decide. If someone wants to come in unvaccinated, they will scare off a large number of patrons and will need to pay the difference.”
Skatepark of Tampa was open for business as usual, with a store, two indoor spaces with multiple skate ramps, an outdoor area with even more ramps, and roughly thirty or so skaters, ranging from preteen to late-twenties, all practicing their craft. In the middle of all this skater chaos, a promoter was setting up a ticketing area, three bands were building merch booths, and two local food establishments (Nah Dogs and Uncle Mince’s Seitan) brought in their pop-up tents to provide some reasonably priced grub for ticket holders, staff, and even a few hungry skaters. Off to the side of one of the skate rooms is a venue space and bar called Transitions Art Gallery. It is here that Teenage Bottlerocket performed on their first tour since February 2020, with openers MakeWar from Brooklyn and Rutterkin from Tampa.
Entering the stage to the intro of Raining Blood by Slayer and seeing many inverted cross inlays on the neck of Kody Templeman’s guitar had us wondering for a brief moment if Teenage Bottlerocket transformed into a metal band over their 16-month COVID break, but as soon as they kicked into the first song of their setlist, that idea became an afterthought.
Kody, Ray Carlisle, Miguel Chen, and Darren Chewka powered through an hour-long set with amazing energy and humor. The set spanned their entire discography and included two new songs from their upcoming album to be released in August. It was easy to see how much they missed performing live, as their last tour was so long ago in February 2020. In fact, since the majority of that tour was in Florida, at one point Ray asked the crowd “how many of you saw Teenage Bottlerocket as your last punk show and are seeing us now as your first show back?!”
There was four or five TVs throughout the room, including two directly behind the stage, that played an endless loop of skateboard videos, including while the bands were performing. Since there was no backdrop or banner, the venue should have put the band’s logo on the screens, but this being a skatepark, it was kind of interesting to look over and watch some of the amazing feats that those skateboarders are able to pull off, although it was a bit distracting at times.
It had everything expected of a punk rock show to remind us what we have all been missing since the first quarter of 2020: loud & fast music, a crowd of concertgoers assembled in close proximity to each other, with moshing, bumping into each other, and getting in everyone else’s personal space. The only thing that may have been missing was any crowd surfing or stage diving, although one guy did run up on stage at full-speed to hug a bear costumed character that joined the band for part of a song.
Teenage Bottlerocket left the stage to Purple Rain by Prince and despite the crowd chanting their name for at least five more minutes, that was indeed the end and they did not return for an encore.
Despite our proximity from Florida, Spinning Platters knew all about this show from the time the tour was announced, and we wanted to experience it firsthand. Believe it or not, we have friends and associates that don’t listen to punk rock (sacrilege!) and don’t live near Florida, and even they knew about this show!
This kind of makes us wonder why Teenage Bottlerocket didn’t run with the idea for their whole tour and practically guarantee themselves more press and a completely sold-out tour in advance…
In all likelihood, the four allotted non-vaccinated tickets were never sold, making this indoor show 100% vaccinated and presumably 100% safe.
Click on any photo below for a slideshow of full-size images.
Teenage Bottlerocket:
MakeWar:
See more photos of all of your favorite Rock musicians at Alan Ralph‘s photo portfolio.
