Live review / photo gallery: Guilty Party and friends live at The Golden Bull

Oakland CA – 16 Jun 2023

Three bands each lose a member, but everyone gained a great night of memories

In a music scene as closely knit as the one in the San Fransisco Bay area, the departure of even a single musician can have have far-ranging effects. When Rosie and Colin made the decision to relocate to Seattle, multiple acts will feel the pinch. This was my first live gig in almost two years, and my first in my new home in California. But a solid lineup made for a great welcome for me, send-off for them and, although I was definitely an outsider to this group, I could fully appreciate the bittersweet sentiment (as well as the immediate sense of inclusion from everyone I met).

Regrettably, the first opener to start the night, Cadence Myles, was unable to play due to illness. This was the one bummer moment of the evening, and we hope she is on the mend!

With that small hiccup, the start time of the gig was pushed back a bit, and it was around 8:30pm when Jennie Cotterill took the stage for, from my understanding, her first official go at a solo electric performance. Now, I’m not sure if this is due to preference, expectation, or the way it has always been, but there people who poo poo on solo electric, thinking that it you’re doing it yourself you should be playing acoustic. I can wholeheartedly state that electric solo is pretty damn cool, and Jennie blasted through a series of songs, featuring some of Bad Cop / Bad Cops most beloved tracks including “The Mirage.” As it was still fairly early in the evening, the crowd was still rolling in, so many who hadn’t arrived yet missed a great performance full of heartfelt emotion, storytelling, and more.

Next came The Pieces, in what is billed as their one-and-only gig ever. The band includes the Seattle-bound Colin Maloney on guitar and vocals, with Alex of Guilty Party (also toyGuitar and more) on bass. You can start to see how this diagram of interconnectedness starts coming together.

From what I understand, The Pieces have been a kind of stop-and-start project from the get go, and the pending departure of Colin (and Rosie, mind you) was the impetus to get the band ready for public consumption for this single gig. Things were a bit subdued at the start, performance-wise, but they soon found their groove and it just kept getting better and better, to the point that songs was simply stacked by the end. They truck(ed?) in a kind of catchy pop punk, not really ramonescore but, if I had to really narrow it down, that’s a nice approximation. The final two songs of the set were a one-two punch that had quite a few members in the crowd calling for more.

I think I was one of the few people who came to the show knowing next to nothing about My Last Line other than the fact that they do, in fact, exist. They’re also one of the acts losing a member as Rosie Gonce of Guilty Party (also toyGuitar and more) is on her way up to Seattle with Colin. I can’t tell you what their song titles were, but I can confirm to you that they, indeed, rock. More of a melodic punk style with a bit more aggression. I felt the need to tell the bassist in multiple passings that those were some sweet bass lines. It became a running joke of the evening where I would extend my praise to completely unrelated things (the last was “I loved you in Jurassic Park!”).

It looks like My Last Line only has one previous release in the books, an EP from 2011, but their social media has info on a pending new EP, and it was confirmed for me that the search is on to replace the irreplaceable Rosie.

I also feel the need to express the appropriate headware choice for the lead vocalist, as the orange Thrasher cap received a nice boost by the overall blue of the stage lights.

The penultimate act of the evening was Pity Party, who I’ve been happily covering since my Punknews days and, don’t tell this to any of the other bands from the gig, but the one I was most excited to see. The sound engineer was earning their keep this night, and there were ongoing, but minor issues that they were constantly on top of. This came to a head during Pity Party’s set with recurring issues on the lead microphone. Despite these setbacks, Sarah Levy anchored the performance even when they couldn’t be heard. The Golden Bull has a fairly small stage, enough so that packing a four-member band looked kind of tight. But Pity Party owned the entirety of that stage and made it work. Not a knock on the other bands by any means, but clearly the highest energy performance of the evening.

Closing out the night was the band that, ostensibly, we were all there for. Guilty Party are playing their last live gig for a while as Rosie and Colin prepare for the move to Seattle. They came out aiming to please and accomplishing that goal. Angelo, being the only member who hadn’t taken the stage yet tonight, wasn’t as limbered up as Rosie and Alex (indeed, keeping Alex still at all would be quite an accomplishment). The crowd was loving it, the songs and performance were exceptional, and decorum lasted for about half of the set. But somewhere at about the halfway point the gig turned into a party. Stage and crowd banter was prevalent, multiple soft (and non-lethal) items were being thrown in Alex’s direction, and the atmosphere and reckless abandon and joyfulness was infecting everyone there.

With the end of their sets Guilty Party, My Last Line, and The Pieces all played their last live performances with their current lineups, at least for a while. Emotions were running high, but the mood was positive and smiles were all around. I would say to you that if you ever get the chance to see these bands, DO IT. But, really, only half are feasible for any time soon. The end of an era as the SF Bay area scene loses two important cogs to the rainy environs of the Pacific northwest.