Holy Freaking Awesome: Blueprint Reunites (Temporarily), Plays this Weekend

Wow. There aren’t all that many shows that honestly make my jaw drop (old and jaded; what can I say?), especially reunion shows, but this one hit me like a brick to the face. Er, assuming that brick were actually made of chocolate and I was then allowed to eat it and scream and run around like a crazy person.

Now, many of you young’uns out there weren’t around back then, I’m sure, but trust me when I say that back in the day, {Blueprint} was the band. They were local heroes, riding the crest of the emo wave before anybody’d really even given it that name and playing awesomely post-punk melodic rock with introspective lyrics that wore its heart on its sleeve. Hell, they even put out a split with this Arizona band nobody’d heard of called “Jimmy Eat Somethingorother.” If they’d timed things better, you might know ’em better nowadays than, say, Sunny Day Real Estate (who I generally found to be overrated; these guys kicked their collective ass).

When Blueprint finally called it a day, the band’s ex-members basically spawned what became the indie music scene here, with subgroup after subgroup heading off in every conceivable direction, from quirky smart-guy Merge-style indie-rock (Celindine, Trompedo) to hardcore (Will to Live, Gun, Cedar of Lebanon) to garage-punk madness ({Fatal Flying Guilloteens}, {Black Congress}) to indie-pop ({Spain Colored Orange}, Broken Span) to country-rock (That Gospel Sound) to dance (um, anything Damon Allen‘s been up to) to whatever the hell else. When yours truly first started to put together the official-ish H-Town Band Map, Blueprint ended up pretty much dead-center at the heart of it at the time (it’s expanded quite a bit since then, as you might’ve guessed).

There’re two down sides to the band getting back together, mind you. The first is that, well, it’s temporary — I wouldn’t hold my breath that the Blueprint crew decides they’re having so much fun, they’ll keep it up (as with the Suspects reunion) and start doing new stuff.

More bleak, though, is the reason they’re getting back together, and that’s to help out fellow old-school emo/pop-punk scenester Alex Arizpe, formerly the drummer of The Tie That Binds/Badger, Sore Loser, & The Business Machines (who were all also pretty badass, themselves). Alex has cancer and is apparently in a pretty bad way, health- and finances-wise, and so Blueprint and a handful of their long-gone compatriots are coming out of retirement to do a benefit show & help raise funds for his medical bills and whatnot.

Astute readers may note that this isn’t the first benefit that’s happened for Alex — back in 2008, a bunch of cool friends & other folks got together to help the guy out, as mentioned back over here. This time out, though, the old-timers are reuniting to help.

This is actually a set of two shows, one up in Austin on Fri., June 25th, at Red 7, and one down here at Walter’s on Sat., June 26th. Not sure about the Austin show (although I think a lot of the bands are the same), but the most recent lineup I’ve heard for the H-town version goes as follows:

{LJ All Stars} — 8:00-8:30
Pretty Boys — 8:45-9:15
{The Tie That Binds} — 9:30-10:00
{Latch Key Kids} — 10:15-10:45
{Blueprint} — 11:00-11:45

I never saw the LJ All Stars (“LJ” short for “Lake Jackson,” I believe, at least originally), and I’ve got no clue on the Pretty Boys, sorry, but I can vouch for the other three being absolutely great, great bands. The Latch Key Kids came back to life last year after being dead & gone for several years there, and they’ve been cranking along nicely ever since, doing the speedy, California-style pop-punk thing they’d nearly perfected before they imploded back in the day.

The Tie That Binds (known as Badger before some lameass hair-metal dudes threatened to sue) was up with with Blueprint as one of my absolute favorite bands, once upon a time. Another hearts-on-sleeves emo-punk band, they were on the heavier side of things, they sadly only released one excellent full-length, slowly sinking under, and a handful of 7″s and comp appearances. They were damn, damn, damn good, too. (And supremely nice guys, to boot.)

If you want to check out any of these bands, btw, I’d wholeheartedly recommend checking out the amazing {Texas Punk Treasure Chest} site, run by another old-time scenester, Mark Twistworthy, who’s got stuff up on the site by Blueprint (even the flexidisc — woo!), Badger, The Tie That Binds, TTTB spinoff Sore Loser, and pre-Blueprint band Refuse To Fall, which included now-DJ Damon Allen on vocals. Download to your little heart’s content and then send all your money to Mark so he keeps doing what he’s doing, eh?

Now, as to why I’m only now posting about this… I was a little nervous ’til recently, because for a while there Walter’s had been double-booked for the 26th — both the benefit show and the also-cool-sounding Athlete show (love those guys, too) were listed for the same night. Thankfully, the Pegstar crew kindly stepped in and shifted the Athlete show over to Mango’s, so the Blueprint/etc. show should be good to go.