Defend the Ghetto (Houston, TX)

Defend the Ghetto live at the Axiom, Houston, TX 2003

The Summer of 2003 completely changed my musical tastes, or rather evolved it into what it is today. I was crashing on my buddy Aaron's foam couch in between semesters at Texas State University. His place was in the heart of Houston's museum district and plenty close to cheap Mexican food, a handful of dive bars and live music venues. We were always close to broke, but we had a bootleg copy of Sleep's Jerusalem and we didn't need much else. Jerusalem was the first heavy record that I truly loved. I listened to it almost every day of that Summer and to this day I still play it almost every week.

At that time Houston had a handful of heavy bands playing regularly, but Defend the Ghetto was the band that I couldn't get enough of. I got lucky, their first show was actually in the living room of the house I was staying in. It was beyond heavy. I was hooked.

DTG played a show in late 2003 (December?) at the Axiom. I happened to have a Sony dictation-type-recorder that had once belonged to my grandfather. I brought it to the show and recorded the set. It had a tiny condenser mic built into the unit and it did a decent job of capturing DTG's set on tape. I never made a copy of the tape, but I listened to it frequently--my car had a tape deck and this is one of the few tapes that rode with me, in my glove box, at all times. I would frequently play it for like-minded friends who were into the heavy shit.

Anyway, I currently have a bit too much time on my hands and thought I would spend a bit of it on getting this tape into the hands of people who might care.

I broke the recording into three chunks. The first is a bit of amusing crowd chatter follow by a clean cut of the one track that I know the title of. The remaining songs flow into each other and comprise the last mp3.

Download and enjoy.

-Justin

P.S. Whoa. I didn't know this existed: Video of Defend the Ghetto performing Hammer of the Gods at Silky's in Houston, TX. Check it!