Roboto Chest Pain

June 21st, 2014 was Free RPG Day. I went to Phantom of the Attic in Oakland at 9AM and was the second person in line. I was totally exhausted, I barely slept the night before, but I was really excited too. I never get to these events early and always miss the better stuff, but this time that wouldn't happen. I ended up with the 13th Age starter module, the Dungeon Crawl Classics Blades Against Death module, a set of purple and green FUDGE dice, and the Free RPG Day 2014 die. I ended up playing in a few different games: FATE, FATE Core, and Dungeon Crawl Classics. The first FATE game was part of the Dresden Files universe, which I'm totally unfamiliar with. The GM was mostly trying to teach his friend how to play RPGs so he skipped some of the more interesting rules, such as the Aspects, which to me make FATE what it is. The FATE Core game used characters from Crono Trigger, I played as Ayla, and we had to raid a fortress. I had to drop out before we finished the game. Dungeon Crawl Classics was amazing! There were eight players and I played as a priest. We fought monsters and things got really dark and surreal, but in the end everyone survived.

After Free RPG Day I had to watch a show at the Mr. Roboto Project. It looked to be pretty good, but I was even more tired than before. I got to Roboto early and took an extremely short nap before opening the door to nobody. Some of the members of Rabid Pigs showed up in the next half hour, but it took a while longer until the promoter and other bands arrived. I played some musick from my Zune as we waited for the touring band. I actually ended up falling asleep for somewhere between 30 minutes and an hour, but when I woke up we still didn't have any word from Chest Pain.

Swingers Club played first. They were very heavy, almost Swans-ish. The only played for about 20 minutes. Afterwards there was talk of Hindsight playing the show to replace Chest Pain. Rabid Pigs played second. They play fast, noisy grindcore. I don't see them on a lot of bills, but they played at ADD Fest 2013 and it was pretty rad. They only played for maybe 15 minutes.

Chest Pain ended up arriving in time so Hindsight sat out. Chest Pain is one of the better bands I've seen. Heavy and loud with a wild, shirtless frontman, Chest Pain reminded me of S.O.A. I got totally caught up in their energy, and thought that this must be what it would have been like to see Black Flag back in the 80's. I ended up buying two t-shirts from Chest Pain because I couldn't pick between two designs, an insect with a human head and a black punch card. Don't miss out on seeing this band!