Fun Fun Fun Fest Punk Preview: All, Killdozer

This year's FunFunFun Fest punk stage is bound to be heaven for those weaned on classic 1980s underground punk rock, as the lineup features a veritable smorgasbord of heavies from that period. Some bands never really went away (Bad Brains, we love you), while others have only recently regrouped now that everybody wants to see the bands they were listening to in high school again. Like we didn't see that coming.

Image from MySpace

Taking their name from the group's final (at the time) album, former Descendents Bill Stevenson (drums), Stephen Egerton (guitar), and Karl Alvarez (bass) added frontman Dave Smalley on vocals and issued a steady stream of records in their inimitable pop-punk style, focusing on the basics: girls, angst, loud guitars, and girls. Like pretty much every other punk band at the time they issued one major-label album (on Interscope), were unceremoniously dropped, and wound up on Epitaph, where moving less than 100,000 units isn't as big of a deal. Look up "skate punk" in the dictionary and there is a picture of ALL right there, just above "sklerotic." No, they aren't as good as The Descendents. Deal with it.

ALL
Saturday, Stage 3
7:50-8:40
ALL MySpace

Image from MySpace

While Killdozer aren't quite heavy as their menacing name would imply, the LA-via-Wisconsin grunge trio project bad vibes a-plenty. From their 1983 debut, Intellectuals Are The Shoeshine Boys Of The Ruling Elite, on, Killdozer perfected a brutal-blues style focusing on crumbling guitar distortion and vocalist Michael Gerald's off-key musings on religion, class warfare, and gutter living, delivered with snarky humor and barbed rhetoric (see "Gates Of Heaven" for an example of all three). Killdozer play a fairly thankless late-afternoon spot, but we doubt anything could provide a better soundtrack for that queasy, pre-second-wind-post-fourth-beer feeling. Don't miss it!

Killdozer
Saturday, Stage 3
4:30-5:15
Killdozer MySpace