Captin, My Captin!

Last night I saw Team Dresch play at the Black Cat. Most of you probably don't know who they are so for your reference, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_Dresch.

I discovered Team Dresch in high school through Sarah Yassine. We tried to start a band with my sister, Melissa, on bass and Ian Widman on drums. We called ourselves the Asthmatics and had one practice and one song cleverly titled, "We're the Asthmatics." How Brady Kids of me. Anyways, Sarah told me she had a band she wanted me to listen to that her brother liked called Team Dresch. She brought their first album, Personal Best into our science research class. It took only one listen of the album's first track to realize I was in love.

I have since wore the hell of out my Personal Best CD-R and was too stupid to buy one last night (I did get a rad shirt though). The band's second album, Captin, My Captin is one of my most played vinyls. Team Dresch is one of the few bands along with Nirvana and Elliott Smith I thought I would never get to see perform. However, the band reuinted a few years ago and has been playing shows here and there ever since. The lovely Katy Otto (who also runs my band's label, Exotic Fever Records) asked them to play with her new band, Problems. Luckily for me, the ladies agreed. Apparently the last time they played DC was back in 1994! The only music I listened to back then was Silverchair, Nirvana, and the Dazed and Confused soundtrack (Hi, Daniel Johns!).

To see these four lovely (can we talk about how lovely Kaia Wilson is while we are at it?) play the hell out of their instruments to their badass songs in person was beyond inspiring. Team Dresch is truly an influential band in every sense of the phrase. Almost every punk rock lady will list them as one of her favorite bands, myself included. You know that cliche that you find art/music/books/whatever when you need them most? Well that is how I feel about Team Dresch. I was just starting to write songs and decide that I wanted to do music when Personal Best first graced my ears. I couldn't have seen Team Dresch for the first time at a better time in my life. I'm debating daily if playing music is what I want to do with my life and watching Team Dresch come together over 10 years after they disbanded and as one audience member said "[playing] better than they used to" gave me that extra kick in the ass to realize that yes, I should do music. Especially if I can look as awesome as they do while performing. So please, do yourself a favor and go buy Personal Best right now.

Also, Kaia, if you are reading this, why are you so beautiful?

Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/goodgovernor