byron. - live @ pac flav 04/24/09

live @ pac flav 04/24/09

1. anarcho cannibal song
2. I love my friends/if I get drunk
3. know yer rights
4. the ballad of marv
5. we're all gonna die

click on the artwork to download (hey dandy... hope you don't mind)

I can't believe it took me two years to hear this recording. I guess it's been floating around the internet for at least that long but I never came across it.

pac flav (short for pacific flavour) was a punk house on north street in halifax. previously it had been known as the scaw house & a bunch of student activists lived there. I don't actually remember anything about the scaw house except for dancing drunkenly in the kitchen during a porch crawl four years ago.
I lived at the woozley farm at the time, another now dead punk house on north street & used to put on a lot of shows in our front room. back in september 2008 we threw a show for a a travelling band from out west called squalor & sloth. a lot of folks came to this show. unfortunately a lot of them didn't really respect our house (it was just travis & I at the time) & it was difficult to deal with.
the show was just about to start & I was already losing my shit trying to tell scum fucks & their dogs to please be a bit more quiet in the backyard.
someone rang the doorbell & of course I thought it was the cops. punks hardly ever ring doorbells. instead as I was opening the door, appeared two crusty looking kids with shitty facial hair & a little red headed boy with a STOP WAR shirt. they came for the show. I wasn't very nice to them at first.
their names were thom, laurie & john, but in my head I thought they were all named john, & I thought that was kind of weird. two of them had rode bikes all the way from the west coast, & the other, the younger looking shy kid had hitch hiked. I didn't think much of them, but they seemed excited about everything.
as the show went on things got worse. folks were tagging the words "faggot", "bitches", & "fags" on our walls & even on my bedroom door. eventually I accidentally smashed the donation jar full of change on my leg & cut my hand open on the broken glass. there were bloody toonies & loonies all over the floor.
amidst the chaos, I was put to bed. I would realize much later that the most important part of the night was when I met john, thom & laurie.
in the morning I was a bit upset about the night before & started picking up empties from our front lawn. among it all there was a huge puke splatter next to the curb in front of our house with a empty faxe ten can crunched up next to it.
the point of this story is that later on that day, those weird kids from B.C. came over to hang out with us. thom, john, & laurie. they were really insistent on being our friends, but the whole time I talked to them all I could do was stare at their awful beards.
eventually they shaved their beards off & thom attempted to grow a mustache. we became really close friends almost immediately & laurie even lived at the woozley farm for awhile. after a couple months of couch surfing, the three of them moved into the former scaw house further down north street & started making it their own. we were around eachother all of the time. our houses were best buddies. after a comment one of them made, I decided to name their house "pacific flavour". no one really ever called it that. it was always shortened to pac flav which people would constantly mishear.
in time, slowly, it turned into the main punk house in halifax & had probably over a hundred house guests & hosted dozens of shows in the basement & front room. people moved in & out. pac flav actually had a longer list of punk alumni (former roommates) than the woozley farm, which had been around several years longer.
the point I am trying to come to is that because of these three B.C. boys moving here, a lot of lives were changed & a lot of life long connections were made. this house was important to people & the time I spent in it were some of the best times of my life. this live recording of byron playing reminds me of this special point in time & this unique chapter in halifax's long punk house mythology.
interestingly enough, my band played this show that the recording is from but I was a sucker & working night shifts as a janitor at the metro centre & had to leave immediately after we played. this was the same night I first met steve believe & jawsh carson, future friends as well.
I love listening to this & picking out voices & hearing drunken friends singing along, voices cracking & strained all to hell. I miss that feeling.
this recording perfectly captures the energy we all had, the hope we all had & most importantly, the love we all had for each other, right as the weather was getting warmer & everyone I knew was planning to skip town.
pac flav (woo!) RIP.
sorry for the (almost) pointless story.

dandy took the photo that is the makeshift cover art. I hope he doesn't mind. check out his photos here.
EDIT: if anyone catches that pun in there, I want you to know it was unintentional & I regret it.