After several days of re-thinking the Victims Family show in Petaluma on Sunday night, the thing that sticks out the most is their songs’ unremitting sense of right and wrong. “Times Beach,” “As It Were,” “Insidious”—they all have a direct moral center, which is something that you don’t find in Animal Collective songs. Commenting on society is no longer hip, I’m afraid.
“Punk funk” is no longer what it once was either, which means that when I talk about Victims Family I tend to downplay my enthusiasm in the interest of context, much in the same way I do for golf. No friends my age really like golf. I suppose it’s not that weird; golf isn’t the most, uh, “progressive” sport. Reputation for elitism, wastes a lot of water, lots of old white men. That perception has forced me to talk about golf dismissively, like, “Oh, well, I wouldn’t expect you to care, but I saw Tiger Woods tee off at point blank range and, um, it was pretty cool, I guess.”
Victims Family is the same way. “Oh, they’re this metal-funk jazz thing, kinda punk rock with slapping bass, you probably wouldn’t like them,” I sometimes tell people, when really, I oughtta be saying: THEY ARE THE GREATEST BAND SANTA ROSA HAS EVER KNOWN. A completely elated crowd of over 400 people who packed the Phoenix to see one of their rare shows—the last one was five years ago, in 2004—would agree. Even after just a few practices, they were mind-bogglingly tight as ever, and if you’ve ever tried to play a Victims Family song, you know that playing it correctly, let alone tightly, is a harrowing challenge.
The set skewed old, with “Zoo,” “August 6th” and “Product” from Headache Remedy, “Insidious” from The Germ, and all the rest from Voltage & Violets, Things I Hate to Admit and White Bread Blues (remastered and reissued very soon on Santa Rosa’s own Saint Rose Records). Basically, the show was a veritable onslaught of the band’s best shit, and a patent reminder that here’s a local band that put out seven full-length albums, toured the world, and is now something that barely anyone under 30 in town knows about? That’s a wrong that needs to be made right.
