It’s not uncommon to find oneself at an appallingly small punk show every now and then. Hell Ventura county, and the city of Ventura in particular, are basically famous in their affinity for punk music. This is the very same place that Vans Warped Tour made famous for pop-punkers around the world. But even still, not everyone can break through here, and it was never more apparent than it was on the evening of April 25th when Show Me the Body took the stage in front of no more than 50 people.

One of the first things you notice at an underpopulated venue is just how loud the music actually is. Clearly this factor is exacerbated by Show Me the Body being the band in question, but with the stone floors and wood walls unprotected by a sea of bodies, they ricocheted the sound around the room with a startling ferocity. And with the venue being so small, the distance between any given person and a speaker was unlikely to exceed 20 feet.

As performers, Show Me the Body proved themselves worthy of a much larger crowd. They tore through their setlist, rarely speaking a word in between songs as they played every non spoken-word track from their latest record Dog Whistle and capped it off with “K-9” and “Body War” providing a brisk end to an already brisk performance.

As far as crowds go, outside of the general lack of one, the kids there were fittingly energetic, but the size of the crowd made for a single, insurmountable flaw, the mosh pit construction. Mosh pits are great, some people hate them for understandable reasons, but really the best advice to impart to a mosh hater is “shut up and stay out of the pit.” There is only one situation in which a mosh pit is not great, in a small crowd.

Logically one could draw the conclusion that bigger crowd = more dangerous pit, and while that isn’t untrue the inverse is often true. Mosh-pits are meant to be a sea of sweaty people bumping into each other in an area that is only slightly less densely populated than your average one bedroom apartment in Los Angeles. When a venue is one-third full, the mosh devolves into a gangly sea of elbows and knees, practically target locked at the jaw or temple of unsuspecting concert goers. This was one of those. A swinging limb mosh is basically asking for people to get hurt, and while no one seemed to get it too bad at this show, it certainly made the prospect of getting in the pit significantly less appealing.

In short, this show was a bit of a letdown. Was it the venue’s fault? Not really. The bands fault? Nah. The crowd, the space, the sound team, any of the usual suspects? Nope. In the end the only thing that let down Show Me the Body was Ventura. Punk shows don’t have to be big, some of the coolest concerts in the world take place in the backyards of random houses, but they do have to be full. And when you show up to a bar with 50 people in it, and the capacity is closer to 200, the night can only go so well.

Setlist

Camp Orchestra

It’s Not For Love

Badge Grabber

Drought

Forks and Knives

Now I Know

Madonna Rocket

Arcanum

USA Lullaby

K-9

Body War