The location is simply “Dave’s House” – the address fortified under administration’s careful watch. The event, delicately dubbed “F**ck It, It’s Christmas”, beckons with a whopping six hundred invited friends on Facebook, but the interest appears alongside the ninety (and steadily ascending) invitees who RSVP’d “going.” My friends decided to accompany me because they wanted to experience the shows that I have recently been attending regularly, and after they stressed about the dress code (casual) and party situation (straight-edge, but definitely bring your own cigarettes), we arrived in quiet suburbia outside a brown, spacious home.
Skeptical, we waltzed around to the back following the orders of a discreet 8x10 sign on the front door. We were greeted by a young man in a houndstooth shirt and Kangol hat skating in a kidney-shaped pool, along with a few others wearing a fair amount of black paired with Vans under individual clouds of cigarette smoke. Arriving just in time for the first band along with a not-quite-there-yet audience consisted of gently swaying to the existential lyrics and grungy tone of Harvard On The Hill as they found comfort in a festively lit basement with its own miniature stage. As the night descended, more and more sour-faced adolescents with stiff bodies crowded into the stuffy basement to watch Glume, Hang Tight, and Never Sometimes – all friends from around the area, borrowing each other’s expensive equipment, all musicians who understand the struggle together. The good nature of the audience and performers mirror the reason the concert was held in the first place, which was to raise money for a charitable cause.
“F**ck It, It’s Christmas”, with the help of the previously mentioned bands, raised over two hundred dollars for The Closter Animal Welfare Society, or CLAWS. Bands Jean Pool and Basement Beers recently held a wildly successful concert at Monclair's Meatlocker whose proceeds both benefitted the ACLU and collected gallons of clothes and food for Cumac and Oasis, nonprofits that work towards feeding and clothing the homeless.
Some of your favorite punk bands started out like this, too. Modern Baseball and Pinegrove are both bands who began playing out of their parent’s basements and into sold-out arenas. However, these mild-mannered bands with anatomically focused lyrics have more in common than their music scene – they also have big hearts. Through Bandcamp's "name your price" option on their album "Elsewhere", New Jersey's Pinegrove push all proceeds made to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit legal advocacy group specializing in direct action against hate groups and fosters educational programs on tolerance. Perhaps inspired, Pinegrove's labelmates Modern Baseball, mewithoutYou, and Crying all followed pursuit in donating the money made on Bandcamp to Planned Parenthood.
