Standing guard at the front of the stage in the packed Jewelbox Theater is My Goodness drummer Ethan Jacobsen‘s tenacious little sister. No antics will be tolerated. Crowd surfers are abruptly yanked down by their collars, and when Deadkill’s Bryan Krieger storms the stage, she follows him up and throws him off. “She’ll kick your ass, Bryan,” says My Goodness frontman Joel Schneider. Even Rendezvous booker Nathan Chambers is roughed up for dancing too belligerently. “You know my brother?” she says, glaring like a tigress protecting her young. “Then you know what a big night this is for him.” And it is a big night for the blues-punk duo that first started playing as a one-off at a Neumos employee band night. Schneider and Jacobsen rip through an electric set of material from their first full-length, out now on Sarathan Records. It’s an auspicious performance for an auspicious record. White Stripes comparisons are difficult to avoid; the jazz and classically trained Schneider sounds at times like an unrefined, less-nasal Jack White. But he’s not afraid to scream it all out, and it’s a damn fine thing when he does. From those moments on, the record develops very much into its own territory of scrappy blues-punk riffing and turbulent percussion. Jacobsen is 10 times the drummer Meg White could have ever hoped to be. This seems like just the first of many great moments for My Goodness.
a Secret Location
“We played Denver the other night, and everybody smooshed us and our stuff,” says Lightning Bolt drummer Brian Chippendale as he straps on this microphone-equipped mask made of kids’ T-shirt scraps at the beginning of the set. “Don’t smoosh us.” They’re set up on the floor, and the swarming crowd is inches away. Chippendale has the widest eyes you’ve ever seen, made all the more intense when he straps on that mask. He drums as if possessed by some unseen force, shuffling beats per minute like he’s going for a world record. Bass man Brian Gibson barely moves or looks up as he deploys rolling swaths of distorted noise from the giant stack of amps directly behind him. Lightning Bolt’s in-the-red noise blitzkrieg renders as complete chaos to the uninitiated, but it’s complete bliss to those who’ve come knowing what they’re looking for. Fifteen minutes into the set, my T-shirt is transformed into a sponge, soaked with sweat. It’s fucking HOT down here. Crowd surfing ignites left and right. A multicolored kite hanging from the ceiling is battered with errant limbs. “Hey, that’s someone’s art!” somebody yells from the crowd between songs. Everyone laughs. A hefty bass cabinet, table, and other seemingly set fixtures flux like plate tectonics against the pulsing crowd. There are no parents here, no protective sisters, only noise and sweat. 
Listen to My Goodness’s “Blackout Baby”
you look drunk in your column pic, honey.