End of an Era

The Matches - Chain Me Free

So last night was The Matches final show. Anyone that knows me well enough probably remembers the yellow bumper sticker on the back of my car (which is still there as far as I know). If you're not familiar with The Matches, they were a pop-punk band from Oakland that my circle of friends in high school was/is all about.

I discovered them in 2003 when I went to a Less Than Jake show at The Warfield (Fall Out Boy opened before they blew up) with Dallas and Robbie. This was my second real concert (after my birthday party in May of '03 at Good Charlotte - before they became gossip garbage, New Found Glory, MxPx, and The Movielife at SJSU Event Center for the Honda Civic Tour). We got to the show relatively early and were blown away by this band we'd never heard of called The Matches. Something about the singer's half-spiked-half-combed down long jet black hair, the guitarist's massive bleached 'fro, the drummer's Weezer glasses and the bassists dyed spiked hair cried out to our angst-ridden high school souls. I'd never seen anything like their set before, and we immediately went to the merch table and bought their album E. Von Dahl Killed the Locals.

I'll never forget the car ride home in Robbie's Tahoe listening to that album for the first time. It immediately replaced Blink-182's Enema of the State in my CD player and probably didn't leave for a few years. For nostalgia sake, I dug up the date of that show - November 14, 2003. That album, fondly known as EVDKTL, will always hold a spot in my top 10 for what it did to my taste in music.

When I got home, I researched this band I'd never heard of before and found out they were a local band from Oakland. At the time they were playing monthly shows called L3 (Live, Loud, Local) at a tiny all-ages Oakland venue called iMusicast which streamed all of its concerts live on the internet. I somehow convinced my parents to let me drive up to Oakland the following January with Morgan (who I really didn't know that well at the time, but is now my best friend... thanks The Matches!) for one of these L3's and had the time of my life. I probably went to about 6 or 7 of these L3's before the venue got shut down. The first appearance I got to see of The Matches in the south bay was a little in-store performance at Streetlight Records in Campbell. We'd managed to get our circle of friends into The Matches and probably had about 10 people at that show. We lined up in the parking lot for autographs and this other local guy from a band called Street to Nowhere asked us if he could play us some acoustic songs. We'd seen the guy open for The Matches at L3 before, but it was cool to see him playing for the people waiting in line. At the time, he was sort of like The Matches' little brother, but has since made a name for himself (still playing, now under his name Dave Smallen). He became another one of our favorites that we'd go to see whenever he played a show.

Anyway, the months went by, The Matches signed to Epitaph which re-released EVDKTL and the two subsequent albums. They continually toured the country on the Vans Warped Tour and on their own tours. We began to take them for granted and stopped going to all of their shows. Their subsequent albums were relatively well-liked, but nothing seemed to recapture the magic of EVDKTL. I distinctly being somewhat tired the last time (their actual "LAST" time, unbeknownst to anyone) and skipping their Monday night set at the Mercury Lounge in NYC. After that tour, they announced that they were going on "indefinite hiatus" (read: breaking up). I'll definitely never skip a concert of one of my old favorites again. I wish I could've been at their farewell show at The Fillmore last night, but I'll have to settle for the youtube videos.