Back To Life, Back To Reality

Photos by Erin Kalvaitis

Hanging out with just dave last night got me a touch nostalgic for the old Hampton Roads music scene from twenty years ago, back when we all first met and started contributing in dribs and drabs in our own way -- without ever having to pick up an instrument of our own, of course. So you might expect a few photos from my old scrapbooks in the coming weeks, provided I can get over to my brother's house to use his scanner. But I've been going through the pages from the Hardcore Norfolk Facebook site looking at other people's scanned photos and flyers and I ran across these old Buttsteak pics taken at the King's Head Inn in 1993 by my then-upstairs neighbor Erin and... wow. Yeah, wow.

It's Ron's birthday! Julie decorates his cakes.

Buttsteak was one of those urban-legendary bands that were always on the cusp of making it big-time, even after a move years later to Baltimore and I think New York or California, I forget where -- but there were actually quite well known outside of the Hampton Roads area in the underground scene, to the point where some folks out in Los Angeles associated Norfolk with "The Home Of Buttsteak" and much gushing praise to follow. I've already written an extensive blog post about the band some years ago so I will refer you to that for background, but all of those music file downloads are outdated now so I'll add a few new ones here. I have also found an old clip on youtube featuring a compilation of Buttsteak outtakes from one of their many comedy routines that they'd perform right before the show. I think these date back to 1986 and they were taken straight off of somebody's betamax tape.

"Mant" by Buttsteak

"Charlie's Brown Stain" by Buttsteak

(Files available for download for 7 days)