Doomsday Doomsday Doomsday
Mar 25, 2022 | Roanoke, VA
We had been seeing these punk/absurdist/DIY signs around town for a show of some kind ever since we had arrived. The signs were purposefully cryptic about what kind of show they were advertising, but that sounded perfect for us being people that have no idea what this town has to offer, so we put it on our calendar.
When we pulled up to the location we were pretty confused as to where we were. It was supposedly happening at one "Art Rat Studios" but we were in the middle of a huge, junked-out industrial area. It was old factories and rusted cars and other assorted garbage. I mean, sure it seemed like a place that an art studio could be, but it took us a while to figure out the precise building to walk into.
The guy at the door was wearing a rubber chicken mask and gave us stickers to put on our chest that gave us our "role" or "position" or something. Brian's said "Official Doomsday Manager" while Erika's just had a shit emoji on it.
The part where we made it to our seats was hectic, as we had to walk through a cloud of teenagers rushing around wearing odd clothing. When we sat down the weirdest looking teenager---a girl named Ella who had a big wad of bleached hair on her head and who wore a hawaiian shirt, giant cargo shorts that were also hawaiian but still completely unmatching to the shirt, and crocs with socks---told us that we needed to be on our toes because the audience would be involved in a rap battle later.
We started talking to the guys who were already sitting in our row, and it turned out that they had ridden their bikes all the way from Maryland to get here. They said it took a week. They had planned on going to Knoxville TN, but apparently the journey was a bit bolder than they were able to pull off. They said their friend told them to come to this show. We didn't think anything of it at the time, because we thought "oh maybe this 'friend' isn't sitting with them because they are performing," but after the show they stood around not speaking to anyone, so we kind of think that this person told them to go to the show but didn't actually come to watch it with them.
As for the performance itself, it was absurd, arthouse stuff. A very rough and raw and kind of immature teenagers-practicing-being-weird type show. But it was still pretty entertaining in a "what kind of nonsense are they going to pull next" type of way. After we started to get a feel for what the show was going to be, we noticed that the audience did seem to have a lot of parent-y looking folks in it, and the feeling shifted from our initial expectation which was "whoa hardcore punk artists being crazy" to "aww, sweet weird kids being loved unconditionally by their fam." All in all it was a rollercoaster but ended up being a win.
I forgot to mention that we brought flasks of whiskey to the show, and after the girl mentioned this supposed "rap battle" scenario (which apparently was just a joke because it never happened), Erika started chugging hers to steel up for the awkwardness and ended up getting pretty drunk. So she wanted to keep things going after the show and we went to Sidecar which is a kind of high-end type cocktail place.
