There might have been a time, say the late 1990s, when seeing a person emerge from the side of the stage at an Ink & Dagger show with a squirt gun filled with fake blood would have been exciting, something, perhaps, toward which I would have run, give me the crimson, the sweat, tomorrow’s hoarse voice.
However, on Friday night at Milkys in Los Angeles, as I stood near the front of stage left wearing a thirty-five-dollar blue Brixton tee with a pocket over the left breast, hybrid khaki Vans shorts, and Rainbow sandals, I saw the person spray the audience and instinctively darted toward the back of the room. Every second at every show I attend these days appears to be filmed, so somewhere out there is videographic evidence of me nervously scurrying from the faux sangre as if it contained an infectious disease. And I don’t care. I really like that shirt.
That teenager who would have welcomed the fake blood is the guy who stage-dived twice during the Philadelphia band’s 1998 performance at The Showcase Theatre in Corona. The group was playing then-new songs from its album The Fine Art Of Original Sin (which, in case you were wondering, still is amazing), and I couldn’t contain my crouching position.
My friends’ band The Icarus Line opened that evening, which allowed me to kneel on the side of the stage during Ink & Dagger’s set. I wish I could remember which song magnetically forced me to stand, rush toward the front of the stage, and leap. “I’m really doing this,” I told myself as my feet went airborne.
I didn’t break my neck or lose a shoe, so I returned to where I knelt and jumped again a few songs later. I can’t remember the tune that inspired my encore performance, but I distinctly remember a mix of confidence and teenage testosterone causing my spring to be much more athletic than my initial attempt.
Would I remember stage diving twice at an Ink & Dagger show if this sort of behavior had been something I did regularly? Probably not, which is why the memory is special. I saw plenty of bands that I loved, bands that moved me (literally and figuratively), bands that changed my life, but only Ink & Dagger made me want to jump into a crowd of strangers and hope for the best.
Needless to say, I was — and am — a fan.
That guy, the teenage me, didn’t see Ink & Dagger when the group played two shows in Los Angeles sixteen years ago. Lead singer Sean McCabe died in 2000 at the infamous rock ‘n’ roll age of 27, and I had pretty much stopped going to shows that weren’t in Long Beach and/or did not involve Rocket from the Crypt. Still, the reunion announcement triggered memories of seeing the group at Koo’s Café in Santa Ana, twice at the Showcase Theatre, once at the Che Café, once at Bollocks in East Long Angeles, and once at the Whisky a Go Go. I’ve been fortunate enough to see hundreds if not thousands of bands. Almost none of them match the Almighty Ink & Dagger.
I had no regrets about not seeing Ink & Dagger in 2010 with Thursday singer Geoff Rickly filling in for McCabe, nor was I planning to attend the 2026 show, but a few days before Friday’s performance, three friends told me they were going. I told them I was in.
A flyer said the doors opened at ten p.m. At forty-six years old, I stay up late, but I don’t stay out late. There’s a difference.
Because I am, as the kids say, in the know, I texted a friend who plays in Le Shok, a Long Beach quintet that was opening for Ink & Dagger. My friends and I saw the group more times than I can remember, and I still have my first press of the So What seven-inch the members gave me as I watched them stuff inserts and picks into the record jacket in the backhouse they rented on 4th Street.
“This place is haunted,” one of them said. I drive past this home often and still wonder about the spirits who live in the abode and the ghost of a nineteen-year-old me making new friends, finding his way in the world, learning that I could not park my car on the street and drive to Costa Mesa to see Rocket from the Crypt at the Virgin Megastore without returning to a parking ticket. They don’t give parking tickets in the suburbs.
One friend texted me Friday afternoon to say he wasn’t going. I was slightly jealous. It’s not that I didn’t want to go, but I didn’t want to go, you know? Driving to Los Angeles, searching for parking, Le Shok playing at eleven p.m., Ink & Dagger playing at midnight. “I have a birthday party to attend tomorrow morning,” I kept thinking. “Morning,” in this instance, was two p.m.
My two friends and I arrived in three vehicles, each parking near one another on Alhambra Avenue. We would have driven together in 1998 because we lived approximately three miles apart. A lot of things can change in twenty-eight years. Residences are one of those things, but the bond I feel with these people is not. I love them like brothers, and if the reasons why I agreed to see Ink & Dagger in 2026 was a pie chart, spending time with these friends — and everyone else I knew I’d see at the venue, including Le Shok — would have engulfed enough of the pizza that my two-year-old nephew could have finished the remaining slice.
McCabe was a unique performer whose voice and stage presence heavily influenced his group’s sound and aesthetic. Another way of putting it — although we might dream of singing in our favorite bands when we are younger, I didn’t envy Rickly because no one can replace Sean McCabe. The bar is high, but Rickly did a good job. At times he was the singer in Ink & Dagger, and at other times he was a maestro acting as the conduit who passed the microphone to audience members who were as excited to be there as he was.
I don’t know if I’ll see Ink & Dagger again, but Friday was fun. Maybe if they play earlier.
I got sick a few days after the show. Perhaps someone in the crowd gave me a head cold or perhaps it was one of the children at the birthday party. Either way, sore throats come and go, but memories don’t.