Kill Lincoln, Big D and the Kid’s Table, The Best Of The Worst – The Black Cat, DC
Jan 13th 2024
You can generally gauge a good show if you wake up the morning after and still feel the pounding of amplifiers deep in your bowels. It’s not the same as the abuse you might give your head and liver after drinking pounding pints in some dingy bar, no, that ringing in your ears, your trembling bones, and that hazy recollection of whatever the hell happened last night is a symptom of being a part of a special moment in time.
Such is the case of Kill Lincoln’s birthday show in Washington D.C. at the Black Cat on January 13, 2024.
The bill that night included, Hell Beach, The Best of the Worst, Big D and the Kid’s Table, with Kill Lincoln headlining.
Unfortunately, I missed Hell Beach as I was caught up photographing kids trying to throw bloody baby dolls over the four meter high fence on the north lawn of the White House. But that’s a different story…
By the time I was able to get to the other side of DC, The Best of the Worst, a New Jersey five piece, were just taking the stage. Kill Lincoln saxophonist, Matt “Food” Ellis, was subbing for BotW’s trombonist, Liz Fackelman, who fell ill after a show in Asbury Park, New Jersey the night before.
BotW tore up the stage with a set of absolutely savage skacore that even included C.J. Uy playing guitar on a cover of Limp Bizkit’s “Break Stuff.” Their set sent shockwaves through the checker board floors of the Black Cat. By the end, the crowed was searching the floor for jaws and sphincters, whichever dropped first.
Boston’s Big D and the Kids Table was up next. With almost 30 years under their belt, Big D has shared a stage with some of the biggest names in ska and punk. Under most circumstances, they’d unquestionably be headlining, but Big D still kicked out a vicious set that kept the circle pit of sweaty, skanking idiots kick-stepping so hard that it became impossible to get a decent photo of the whackjob in a banana suit who came to fuck shit up.
DC’s Kill Lincoln have been around so long that I actually had to dust off old hard drives to find grainy photos a Sunday punk matinee in the back of a little Mexican restaurant in order to remember how long it’s been since I first saw them play.
About a decade later, Kill Lincoln is arguably one of the vanguard’s for contemporary ska and its resurgence. Their short break-up and reformation, and the founding of Bad Time Records, is a testament to the roots of ska, punk, and the unmistakable power of saying, “fuck it, we’ll do it ourselves.” And I’ve never seen a Kill Lincoln show that didn’t have that same kind of energy.
The show started with a large box being brought out that secretly contained Drew Skibitsky, the band’s dancing hype-man. The show’s in DC and Asbury Park, respectively, marked the birthdays of Drew and Kill Lincoln singer/guitarist, Mike Sosinski. The two met back in 2003 at a Big D and the Kids Table show. Six years ago, when Mike and Drew first celebrated their birthdays together with a show, they held it at a banquet hall in Baltimore, Maryland called, Hawks Pleasure Club — which was about as odd as it sounds.
A lone light shined on the mystery box as the crowd sang its war through a few bars of the birthday song. Suddenly, Drew popped out of the box, the band rushed the stage and immediately launched, “Wake, Wait, Repeat.”
Or at least I think that’s how it went. My memory gets a little fuzzy after that. I had planted my ass at the front of the stage, but the packed crowd made functional journalism almost impossible. There was simply no way to take notes, shoot photos, and keep my brain securely fastened inside my skull without sacrificing something.
Shortly after a confetti drop and a silly string attack midway through their set, some hapless meat puppet decided the handle on my camera bag was panic bar for the massive circle pit raging just behind me. The bastard kept jerking me back and forth like a goddamn toddler on a playground spring horse. My goddamn brain felt pulverized! I was left with only two sensible options: slug the brute, or push my way through the crowd and collect myself in the relative safety of a bar.
But then, looking at my archive of photos from Kill Lincoln shows over the last 10 years, that all seems pretty normal. Pure fucking ska-punk and chaos.
Words and Photos: Dominic Gwinn
