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I still remember how bummed out I was when San Francisco’s Avengers – one of America’s hottest punk bands ever from 1977-79 – announced their first, totally unexpected reunion shows in S.F. and Berkeley in February 1999. I had been living in the Bay Area for six years from 1993-98, and had just moved to Columbus, OH for graduate school, so I had to miss them. What bad timing that was! But everything worked out: thanks to a summer internship in San Diego later that year, I was front and center for their two follow-up shows in September, at L.A.’s El Rey Theatre and S.F.’s Great American Music Hall.
After moving back to New Jersey in 2000, I saw them plenty more times on their periodic East coast jaunts – including a memorable September 2006 weekend blitz in which they played three shows in two nights, at New York’s much-missed CBGB’s, Hoboken, NJ’s Maxwell’s, and a last-minute “secret” show at Williamsburg, Brooklyn’s Trash Bar. (I even chauffeured singer Penelope Houston and guitarist Greg Ingraham from Hoboken to Brooklyn on the second evening, as well as Big Takeover editor Jack Rabid and two other rabid fans. Despite hitting a horrible Saturday traffic jam in the East Village, we made it safely and soundly to Trash Bar, 20 minutes prior to showtime!) And of course, the band headlined the first night of The Big T’s fantastic two-day festival celebrating the magazine’s 30th anniversary, in July 2010.
To recap, the current Avengers lineup consists of founding members Houston and Ingraham, plus ex-Mr. T Experience bassist Joel Reader and Pansy Division/Plus Ones drummer Luis Illades (original bassist Jimmy Wilsey played in Chris Isaak’s band until 1993 – that’s his guitar on Isaak’s 1990 #6 “Wicked Game” – and recorded an LP of haunting guitar instrumentals called El Dorado in 2008, and original drummer Danny Furious lives in Sweden, and just played with the band in S.F. in September). All that said, how was the show? It was held at cozy Gowanus art/performance space Littlefield, and it helped mark the long-awaited CD reissue of the band’s lone, posthumously-released 1983 eponymous album — AKA The Pink Album — out-of-print for 20 years due to a lengthy legal battle. (I bought the original CD for $36 back in the late ’90s, the first thing I ever won on eBay!)
Like the previous ten times I’ve seen them, nearly all of their setlist pulled from that album, the band ripping through 14 of its 16 tunes. They also added the super-intense “Teenage Rebel,” as well as “I Want In” and “The End of the World,” two older songs that were re-recorded on 1999 compilation Died for Your Sins. From the opening anthem “We Are the One” to the cathartic closer “I Believe in Me,” every song was fueled by Ingraham’s furious, quick-fingered guitar playing, Reader’s rapid-fire bass, and Illades’s crushing drums. But it’s Houston’s passionate, tuneful singing and forceful presence that remains the band’s focal point. Whether she’s writhing on the floor in anguish at the end of “Car Crash,” sharing heavy-breathing moans with Reader on “Uh Oh,” or making humorous baby-crying faces on “Second to None,” it’s almost impossible to take your eyes off her. Even 33 years after the original lineup split, an Avengers show is still, remarkably, a carefree and liberating experience.
