Lightning Bolt
Lightning Bolt in 2002

watch never-seen footage of Lightning Bolt, Blood Brothers & Get Hustle on 2002's OOPS! The Tour

Back in 2002, The Locust, Arab On Radar, and Lightning Bolt teamed up for OOPS! The Tour, which had different regional openers varying by date, including The Flying Luttenbachers, Erase-Errata, Wolf Eyes, Orthrelm, Quintron and Miss Pussycat, The Blood Brothers, Get Hustle, and more. Matt Driscoll (The Pizza Series), who shot a lot of Locust and Three One G footage in the early 2000s, captured three dates of this tour, and we’ve now got videos with some of Matt’s previously-unreleased footage from the tour, including Lightning Bolt in Seattle, The Blood Brothers in Portland, and Get Hustle in Portland. (A portion of the Portland footage was used in the Three One G DVD This Is Circumstantial Evidence, which also features parts of the Locust and Orthrelm footage that we recently posted in full for the first time.)

We’ll let the people who were there do the talking. Cody Votolato of The Blood Brothers says:

OOPS tour was definitely one of my favorites to be a part of. I remember every nite feeling like a circus from act to act. It’s crazy watching this footage and remembering that we played our songs so much faster than they were supposed to be. I always forget that I toured with 2 Orange half stacks at that time. Not completely sure how I got away with that, but grateful I did for a while. (Maybe because Morgan had 2 AMPEG 8×10 SVT’s.) A lot of volume for a couple of little dudes. I recall the load in at Meow Meow in Portland being a bunch of stairs as well which was super fun with all that gear. Get Hustle toured with a stand up piano, so I guess it was fair in the end. Kids… So much love for The Locust for asking us out on this. I will be forever grateful to them for that.

Maxamillion Avilla of Get Hustle adds:

Here’s a ramble of some things I remember. We were along for about a week of the OOPS tour and we were one of two bands that alternated opening slots (us and Blood Brothers). We were the odd birds in the lineup in that we really did not “rock” in the traditional sense – we were the only band on this leg of the tour with no guitars or traditional amps. Three of us played sitting down, and we had a woman singer. Most punk kids at the time had no idea what to make of a band that only used keyboards to create notes and never played standard tempos or 4/4 time signatures for very long, sometimes with four people playing different things at the same time. It wasn’t free jazz but people thought it was (all songs were 100% composed). It wasn’t Vaudeville but punk kids called us that. Yes we did try too hard but I think that’s ok.

Here is one quote of what were up against at the time: “First up were girl-fronted band Get Hustle. Backed by drums and twin keyboards, they did their best to get on the crowds side, but they just seemed to be trying too hard. A real bunch of odd balls, there was a Nice Cave clone sitting at the small keyboards, flanked on the opposite side by an awkward geeky type on the bigger piano sized keyboards, while the girl seemed to be mostly flailing around on the floor wearing a leather cap. There were some good interesting parts with unusual time changes and rhythms, but it just wasn’t enough.”

Being the alternating first band of the night was nice because we had a somewhat complex gear setup (we used a full sized 250lb Hammond M3 and a fully weighted 88 key digital piano), we took way longer to get started that any of the other bands (Brian Gibson would prob be close second slowest with his wall of bass). We alternated in the second slot every other night with Blood Brothers, so in the second slot it was a bit more stressful time wise but also really fun because Lightning Bolt was always in the third slot… They would set up wherever they wanted (they didn’t need the PA or a stage) and would start immediately the moment we stopped… They would sometimes even finish the ends of our songs for us. It was sweet. Mostly I remember that playing with all five bands was like hanging out with your best friends or relatives – there was not one person in all the bands that was weird to be around. Such a great time, I’m so glad we got the chance to be involved.

And videographer Matt Driscoll says:

OOPS! The Tour… was probably the best thing to happen in 2002. I was able to document three shows on the West Coast leg of the tour. If you were fortunate to have caught any of the OOPS! shows, you know what a treat they were. Eighteen years later and I can’t recall a more amazing line up of bands to set out on a tour. Happy to share this raw footage (Blood Brothers/Get Hustle) with everyone that was used for the Three One G DVD. I’m definitely missing these days and all the amazing people involved.

The videos are as awesome as they sound like they’d be. Watch:

RELATED:

* watch never-seen footage of The Locust and Orthrelm in 2002

* mid ’00s live videos of The Locust and Some Girls unearthed (watch)

* watch The Blood Brothers at the last-ever Locust House show in ’02 + Some Girls in SF (previously unseen videos)

* watch never-before-seen footage of Head Wound City’s (Blood Brothers, Locust, YYYs, etc) first-ever show