Review of 40 oz. to Bad Santaria

I’m a hipster intellectual, and I need my coffee-shop-proximity meta-discourse like I need my Djarum Splashes. That said, a few things in this World are better than the meta-discourse, and tonight, 40 oz. to Bad Santaria tried to make it onto my list of Better Things. Did they make it? (Cliffhanger?)

No, they didn’t (thanks for asking), and I don’t even know if their name is 40 oz. to Bad Santaria (I changed the name to protect the innocent?). But I do know that they were playing at the swanky Paradise Bar & Grill(e) to a lively-in-that-depressing-sort-of-way crowd of Palm Beach poseurs, thirty-something divorcees, and booze hounds, so their name—which I derived after they played more Sublime songs than a Midwestern surf shop circa 2005—isn’t really important. Corn Barrels, an Iowa-based Surf-n-Sk8 Shop, aint got nothing on 40O2BS, after all.

Or maybe they do. See, the shitty music they would play in their store if they existed would be recorded by reasonably good musicians (and, in some cases, by the people who actually wrote the songs!). So the mythical farmsurfers win big, even if it’s true that “surfing” is really just code for “mixing household cleaners and Sudafed in the bath tub.” (Kids these days.)

I should note, though, that however bad or depressing 40O2BS was, the name I’ve ascribe to them doesn’t do them justice. They did play more than just Sublime covers. Between their off-pitch, off-tempo rendition of “Bad Fish” and their off-pitch, off-tempo, and unfaithful attempt at “Santaria” was an off-pitch, off-tempo version of 311’s international smash “Amber,” which you might remember as that “ska-but-not-really-but-kind-of” song from a few too many years ago. Yeah, that one. For me, this was a trip down memory lane to a time in the not-so-distant-past when I had a nightmare about getting drunk, coming out, and ending up at the wrong karaoke bar — that is, the karaoke bar that didn’t have ABBA and Cher discs queued up at all times and instead exhibited the repressed, former-frat-boy kind of homoeroticism. (For those who don’t know, that’s the less fun kind of homoeroticism.)

The rocker-dudes also tried their luck at a Green Day song, but I couldn’t tell which one. Maybe that was on purpose — as a deep criticism consumerism and the mainstream music industry’s willingness to push mindless, pre-fab songs that break our collective will as Persons-In-Society by presenting a cohesive, attractive, and overly-optimistic worldview. And maybe — just maybe — Luis will someday be cool. Ha — I know. Why entertain such notions?

Well, it’s important to entertain such notions, because otherwise we end up having to listen to bands like 40 oz. to Bad Santaria while sober, distracting us from the sidewalk intellectual masturbation that I need for cred. (Luis definitely needs the cred more than I do, too — he just joined the 40 oz. to Bad Santaria fan club and email list.)