Tomorrow Night: Get Yr ’90s Emo Fix On (Plus Brand New Hearts, This Year’s Tiger, & Tigerparty)

Trying to get a little bit of a jump on the weekend’s festivities, in part because yes, this one particular show seriously appeals to me… At Fitzgerald’s tomorrow evening (Friday, June 21st), there’s an awesome, awesome, awesome lineup of bands playing, all of which throw me back to those heady mid-’90s years when my sheltered self first discovered punk, hardcore, indie-rock, and yes, emo.

They’re calling it Steve’s ’90s Live Mix Tape B-Day Show, and for good reason — it’s organizer Steve Duarte‘s (who you might know from {Holder} or from old-school H-town indie-emo outfits The Tie That Binds or Badger) birthday tomorrow, and he’s celebrating by playing music that kinda-sorta points backwards to when he (and I, in this case) was growing up.

{Tigerparty}, who I keep meaning to listen to but have yet to get a chance (but who I hear are really good) are the openers, followed by recently-resurrected punks This Year’s Tiger, who’ve made me happy as hell by staggering back to life several months ago after far too long a hiatus; I’ve been sorely missing the band’s ragged-edged, distorted, but still somehow rootsy punk rawk, seriously.

After that, there’s one of my favorite bands of the moment, local pseudo-supergroup {Brand New Hearts}, which has members of Ultramagg, Bring Back The Guns, Bright Men of Learning, Panic In Detroit, & Lucky Motors (among about a billion other bands) banding together to create some shiny-yet-loud, ridiculously tuneful power-pop, basically, with songs that owe as much to Cheap Trick and The Stereo as they do to Superchunk or The Promise Ring. Sadly, I still have yet to see these guys live, and it’s freaking killing me, I swear. Soon, dammit.

Finally, closing out the night will be Duarte himself, playing with friends & cohorts as the eponymous Steve’s Magical Mix Tape, which he promises will be playing covers of much-loved indie/emo heroes like Knapsack, Jawbreaker(!), Archers of Loaf, Mineral (damn, I miss that band), Pegboy (holy shit; I haven’t heard that name in a loooooong damn time — “Witnessed” is still a kickass song), Seaweed, and H-town’s own Sore Loser. The band promises to be like a real-live jukebox, playing all the songs I loved back when I was in/just out of college and blasting Rocket From The Crypt, Superchunk, and Mineral from the boombox in the front seat of my no-stereo-having hand-me-down Toyota Tercel. Remember those days? Good times, man, good times.

Okay, so maybe you don’t remember back then, but fuck it, you should. Get on out there and rock out like it’s 1994; a mere $5 gets you in.