Las Vegas Weekly

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What’s better than watching middle-aged punk dudes live the dream? When that dream includes Santa outfits, baseball bats and bar fights. Saturday night’s Bunkhouse show ended abruptly when what looked like friendly moshing morphed into multiple fistfights. Locals Guilty By Association headlined, with each member decked out as ol’ Saint Nick, but by 2 a.m., the punk band’s holiday cheer could do little to calm the drunken punks near the stage. Hoping to pull off a few more songs, GBA called it a night when the bartender took matters into her own hands, yielding a baseball bat to break up a fight on the floor. Still dressed as Father Christmas, singer Mike Janoff looked more like Billy Bob Thorton in Bad Santa, yelling at instigators to take the brawl outside. Despite the holiday havoc, lead guitarist Bobby Bloss says fights are common at GBA shows. “I [would] like to say no, but it happens,” Bloss says. “Apparently we invite it. I don’t know why.” Fliers advertised the show as a CD-release party, but Janoff announced early on that the band wasn’t actually unveiling a new record. “I don’t know where they got that information,” Janoff says. “We’re just a bunch of drunk Santas.”