Utica DIY — 12/14/2024 — DarbiCrash, 4th & Goal, Lemon Law, Inertia…and a toy drive!

It’s the Holidays! What better time for a hardcore and technical death metal show! And a toy drive! We’re back in the lobby of the Uptown Theater for Creative Arts (UTCA in Utica — this only dawned on me tonight) and it’s cold out. Yesterday’s snow had only partly melted during the day and subsequently refroze, making the sidewalks along Genesee uneven slalom courses, so folks in various iterations of black walk in the street with toys dangling from their grips, which gives the block a kind of gothy Christmas vibe. Punks, emos and metalheads come bearing Pokemon and RC cars and Elmo dolls and Squishmallow, or they’re paying $5 more at the door so Jeff, the organizer, can purchase such items. A majestic pile of Christmas morning booty has amassed already. Jeff is green and hairy, with a Santa shirt and cap, so he’s either the Grinch in disguise during his fiendish plot to pilfer Christmas, or after he’s converted and his tiny heart has swollen. Perhaps he’s both.

The Grinch welcoming us to the toy drive

I’m still a newbie to the area, so I don’t know too many names, but some faces have become familiar to me. And I meet someone new, Ian, who wears a cap with the brim trained into an upward curve and the back of his tee declaring, “Be Kind To Animals Or I’ll Kill You.” I couldn’t agree more. I’d seen 4th & Goal at AHOL fest a few months back, and they and DarbiCrash set a heavy, scorching vibe for the evening. Noise and power and a crowd eating it all up. Lemon Law is a Utica band who has a following that howls at their set. Jeff calls Inertia the best band in the world in his introduction, and he’s not wrong. Everyone has a best band in the world, or a best song in the world (some, like me, have many), and Inertia shreds for sure, with fingers dancing over their frets, racking up technical points.

UTCA is in the process of reopening, an old theater that first opened in 1927 that’s been revamped and is now a paint job away from adding another full-size venue to the Utica arts district, according to Briana, co-founder of this effort who’s working the door. I feed the donation jar, because who doesn’t want another theater opened?, and it comes up that I’m a recent transplant to the area from northern NJ. Briana looks surprised. “What brings you up here?” she asks. “Not a lot happening around here.”

I’m not a total foreigner to central or upstate NY. For more than twenty years, Utica has been my Thruway exit ramp on the way to my in-laws up in Lewis county. My (now-ex) brother-in-law, born and raised in Croghan, always assumed I saw his stomping grounds as nothing but bumfuck boredom (“You must be tired of seeing snow by now, aren’t ya?”; “Betcha you’re itching to hop in your car and get out of this place as quick as you can”). My proximity to NYC for decades must have convinced him I was one of those city types used to fancy dinners and shows and galleries lousy with chardonnay and froufrou discussions of the latest trends. Perhaps there was a little of that vibe in Briana’s question, but my full-time arrival in Utica this past July, where I knew no one, has been delightful.

Allow me to wax with praise a bit. One of my Jersey friends, when I told him I was retiring up here, asked, “Do they have…restaurants up there?” But since moving to Utica, I’ve found good sushi, some of the best Vietnamese food I’ve ever had (and I grew up around Atlantic City, which has a pretty large contingent of Vietnamese immigrants), and upstate NY can do a fish fry like nobody’s business. But more importantly, I’ve been ecstatic to find this Utica DIY scene and thank my youngest son and his partner, who brought home one of Jeff’s collage promotional flyers while visiting from California.

I wrote in my last DIY post about why I love small venues, their intimacy and immediacy, where you can interact directly with the talent. But with that I think also comes the pleasure of being in a scene that is current and present. I’d been to a few NYC shows where the crowd was clearly holding back, perhaps working harder to maintain an urban jadedness than opening themselves up to whatever energy they were being subjected to at the time. Philly fans are a bit more rabid, but Philly is also well known for booing Santa off the field at Vet stadium, all whilst chucking D-sized batteries at him.

For me, a scene needs to be present tense, something that is in the midst of happening and being enjoyed rather than something you assume is already established. Like being a writer — you aren’t a writer if you wrote something a while back and haven’t scribbled a word since, even if that thing you scribbled won you high accolade or big bucks. Like being woke (the term’s original context, not the weaponized iteration drummed up by those wanting to justify hate and oppression), just like being an ally: it’s something you work at regularly, not something you sit back on your laurels about.

So this another thing that thrills me about these Utica DIY shows and standing in the lobby of a theatre on the verge of reopening its mainspace: I am in the midst of a scene (two scenes!) in progress, not among NYC snoots who think they need to look bored to prove they have culture. Jeff and Briana are making things happen, and they are giving to others in the process. How wonderful! I’m joyful to be here.

image by Jeff Lyszczarz