ShIt loRd qUesT: An Oakland Pilgrimage After Casy & Brian

The first time I saw the Religious Girls was on Halloween in Oakland and I wasn't drunk enough to have done anything I would regret. I was standing outside with an acquaintance working out how we would be heading back to San Francisco. “Fuck no, not yet...” my friend replied, and then “they haven't played yet.”

Then a naked man came running out of the apartment where the show was meant to happen.He was one of the keyboardist in the Religious Girls. I asked him about it later and he said it was the drunkest he'd ever been while playing. I hadn't seen very many naked people in Oakland that week, weather and all, so I was surprised when three more guys ran out behind him with their knobs out for an autumn evening. When I finally went inside the apartments where the bands were playing; converted stockyard storage structures passing as cheap studios, the stage was in the kitchen, a drum-set pressed up against a wall next to the fridge, the kitchen floor was a stringy mess of wires and chords and there were keyboards mounted on racks near the dining room, where people were looking for places to stand.
Their rhythms were like war drums from space and there was day-glo orange bright green war paint everywhere, by the end of the set folks in the pit bounced like walking super balls speckled like cosmic Easter eggs, grinning like a unicorn had licked their faces, bobbing up and down with their mouths open, in what used be called awe before the words mind and fucked were united in one grand descriptive verb. The show was all over too soon. I wandered out into the parking lot and found them packing a van. I started helping them pack up and leave, trying to hide my band crush. Someone said they were going to be playing in Temescal; the hipster district in the middle of Oakland where the CCA art studenst paid too for decrepit Victorians and had fuck rad parties. The second time the Religious Girls played they had mutated the living room into a fully wired stage; dozens of peddles, gaggles mics and suddenly Nick Cowman,Dylan Reznick, Guy Culver, and Chris Danko were up again sending primal vocalizations through their amps the drums, sounding like something between the Battles and Amon Tobin, sending paint through the air. On April 17 I saw them play again after getting an invite from Guy Culver I saw them play in their garage at DeepSpace, the bands home and current venue. They played after Casy & Brian who killed so hard there were kids hanging form the rafters. After they played sat around afire and tried to roast hot dogs.