Tales From the Devolver Side 3/17/01 ATO House, University Park, PA

  Hello. Hope everyone had a great St. Patty’s Day. I could do a whole entry just on great shows I’ve seen on 3/17:  (’93 1st Lucy In the Sky with Diamonds, ’95 Dead at the Spectrum, ’01 Devolver at ATO up at Penn State, the same frat where I partied as a student), but that would deny me entries for my It Was 20 Years Ago Today series. (Yes you’re gonna have to wait ‘til 2013 and 2015 to hear about those tales). But fables from the golden era of Devolver are always on the table. I know some of you probably won’t know everybody I talk about in here and for that I am sorry. But for those that were there and know these people, get ready for a blast to the past.
    As some of you may be aware, I have been writing a book about my experiences with Devolver. I’ve been working on this off and on (more off than on) for quite some time now. But I’ve decided to start writing about some of the adventures and posting them here, and assembling them at a later date in the form of the book. So I am proud to present the first of a continuing, never-ending series, Tales from the Devolver Side. First up 3/17/01 Penn State.

You can stream the show right here

https://archive.org/details/devolvermusic2001-03-17.Devolver

    Devolver got this gig through their contacts with the Corbins. I don’t remember any of their first names, but it was a group of 3 or 4 brothers who went to Hanover High school and then Penn State. I actually knew the oldest when I went to Penn State. I graduated with Chad Reindollar from high school and he was a brother at the ATO fraternity (I try not to use the abbreviation frat, cause frat members would always say, You wouldn’t call your mother a moth, your father a fath, your country a cunt). My first encounter with the Corbins was at a party there my freshman year. The youngest of the brothers passed out and ended having a penis drawn in magic maker on his face.
     I saw a lot of good music there when I went to school there. The best band I saw there was the Dirges. They were heavily influenced by REM and kicked ass. They were the first band I ever heard cover Rocking in the Free World. And if you read my entry about seeing Neil Young in Feb of 1991, you know how important that show was to me.
    ATO does St. Patty’s day right. They get up at 7 for a champagne breakfast and drink all day. They did it like that in the early ‘90’s and they did it like that in the early Aughts. Devolver was scheduled to play right after lunch so we rolled our caravan up and proceeded to load in. This might be the second most inglorious job in rock and roll. The first? Loading out. The band just ripped it up (or bombed) and now you have to tear everything down. (I don’t miss everything about those times.) A DJ, whom I remember from when I was a student, was spinning tunes. It was mostly crap like Jimmy Buffett, Neil Diamond, etc. The crowd thinned out as we set up and did soundcheck.
     So when the Beast was ready to unleash, pretty much anyone who was going to graduate from Penn State during the years of 2001-2005 had left. It was just the Devolver crowd but what a crowd. We had at least 30 people drive up separately from the band and crew. And we took over that place. I honestly don’t remember anyone that wasn’t extended Devolver family there. The boys threw down their typical, mind-blowing show.

3/17/01 ATO fraternity house, State College, PA
Set I
Edge, Bogey, Coming Home, Surprise, Everything Comes Around, Funk II, Tangled Up in Blue, Pedallic Sax
Set II
Turnaround, Looking Blind, C Numb, Side of a Mountain, Cross-eyed>Bogey, Bubblespeak>Dehydration Jam>I’m A Man
    Now being back at Penn State and living out my dreams of sex, drugs, and rock and roll (well, two out of three ain’t bad), you know I was prepared for this show. Made some tea and was really enjoying the show. However, I was also drinking a lot of beer ‘cause I was back at school, ala Frank the Tank. That plus tea leads to dehydration. I was three shades of pale and had to take a seat during the second set. Scott Shimkonis saw what rough shape I was in and got me some H2O. I some how recovered and enjoyed the rest of the show. Would not have been cool had I passed out during the show. Imagine how pissed I’d be had I missed any great jams. So right around the time the boys finished up and we were packing up, people started to return to the house. I guess they all went to take power naps and were now ready to resume their St. Patty’s day festivities. We left and ended up staying at some friends’ place on the other side of town. I can recall walking through town and leading our group via shortcuts, all of which got us to where we wanted to go.
    The next morning Zach and myself had to drive the van back home with all of the equipment in it. We went to The Diner for breakfast and grilled stickies. I frequented this place A LOT when I was a student. We head home and did one of the things I miss most from that time. We listened to the show from the night before. When we got to the Jam after Bubblespeak, I exclaimed, “What the Fuck is this?!?!?!?” Zach said this was a jam they built around the chord structure for Bubblespeak. I totally missed it when they played it because I was barely holding onto consciences. I immediately called it the Dehydration Jam and the name stuck. They brought it back a few years ago into regular rotation. Thus, I had the extreme pleasure of naming a Devolver song.
    So there you have it, the first in many of Tales from the Devolver Side, populated by the coolest people we know.
Dave Kemp
BA American Studies
Ph.D. in Rock and Roll