Ten Years After The Grand Slam
Catching up with Live Without a decade after their iconic Denny’s show. Plus, Wacko frontman Zaine on their 2019 Grand Slam.
Note: This article was originally commissioned as a post for a Medium publication. Feel free to comment and/or share it there if you prefer!
On the outskirts of a Houston suburb there sits a strip of chain restaurants, mom and pop stores, laundromats, and a gun store. You know the setup. You probably have one in your own hometown.
And, like there often is, there’s a Denny’s.
One morning in 2013, an old-timer sits nursing a lukewarm cup of black coffee. The peace and quiet broken only by a passing car on the highway. The remains of a plate of pancakes, eggs, and bacon sits in front of him.
He remembers when his appetite was big enough to finish the whole thing. He heard this place is closing down soon. He’ll miss it when it does.
A few days later, in the same spot, the silence is broken by the squeal of an amplifier and a chugging electric guitar riff. Then a young man utters a phrase that will generate millions of views and make him immortal:
“What’s up, what the fuck is up, Denny’s?”
Back in time to May 18th, 2013
Live Without, a Houston-based metal band, credit their iconic show at Denny’s to being in the right place at the right time. Eating breakfast there, they overheard the owners talking about closing down the location.
The band— Kris, Aaron, Matt, and Zain — discovered that the owners would have the lease to the building for a while after the business itself was closing. They asked if they could use the space to throw a small show, charge a $1 entry fee, and let the owners keep the profits.
The owners agreed, which gave the band just 24 hours to bring in some supporting artists, borrow a PA, and promote the show to anyone who would listen. The rest, at least in a certain corner of the internet, is history.
The show went ahead without a hitch, and the band raised around $100; enough to buy them a couple of Grand Slams each. A video of the show was recorded by Matt’s wife, Courtney, and uploaded to the band’s YouTube channel…where it didn’t do much.
And that’s the way it might have stayed if @blackwidowtx hadn't called out the show five years later in a Tweet that’s been liked almost 100,000 times.
At this point, the history of the show itself is pretty well-documented. I owe a debt of gratitude to wavywebsurf’s YouTube video on the subject, which features a recent interview with the band:
But it didn’t answer all of the questions I had:
Did the Denny’s Grand Slam meme help Live Without’s music career?
What has the band been doing since the show? Are they still together?
What’s life like after being a meme?
I decided to dig a little deeper.
Life after memedom
This isn’t the first time I’ve spent time with someone who went viral. In 2022, I sat down for dinner with Sammy “Flea Market Montgomery” Stephens more than a decade after his local commercial racked up 12 million views.
What I found was a kind-hearted man in his sixties unable to see, or perhaps unwilling to accept, that his 15 minutes of fame were over. That any road back to the limelight would be a hard one to walk.
I get a different vibe from Live Without.
In their wavywebsurf interview, vocalist Kris expresses frustration that most viewers mishear one of his lyrics as a request for a circle pit. One, coincidentally, from a song disparaging poser “internet hardcore kids.”
Later in the video, guitarist Matt jokes in a similar tone that “the internet won’t let us forget it [the Denny’s Grand Slam meme].”
It’s worth pointing out that the band never pressed for any of this to happen; their show wasn’t a carefully co-ordinated display for TikTok, but a random act of music that happened to find the perfect audience online.
For four years before the video went viral, it existed as an inside joke between the band and their extended friend group around Houston. Now it’s between the band and considerably more people than that.
Somewhere in the region of four million of them. Right place, right time.
Ten years later, the band is still making music together. Something that’s far from the norm in the metal and hardcore scene. Mannequin, their 2020 EP, has a sound that’s more mature but no less frantic or full of rage than the Dennyscore of their early days.
It’s had tens of thousands of plays on Spotify, where the band has over 6,000 monthly listeners. A decade after Denny’s, Live Without are still making a name for themselves and people are still listening.
It’s clear to me that the band wants to make it big on their own merits, not just because of the Denny’s Grand Slam. Maybe even, though I doubt they’d give up the memories they made that night in 2013, in spite of it.
Lightning strikes twice…or maybe every weekend
As unique as the idea of hosting a concert in a fast food joint might sound, the idea wasn’t without precedent. In 2008, metal band Byleth nearly tore the roof of a Wendy’s in Omaha, Nebraska. Four years later, Portland-based hardcore band EXPIRE played a set at a Burgerville restaurant.
Live Without cites both of these bands as inspiration, tapping into why the Grand Slam resonated (and still resonates) with people online. Zain, the band’s drummer, made this point during an interview:
“We’re not trying to say ‘we’re the greatest fucking band ever, you need to watch our band, this is all about us’…The thing people like about this is the DIY aspect of throwing your own show wherever the fuck you want to do it.”
In 2019, California crustpunks Wacko triggered an LAPD tactical alert — complete with tear gas and rubber bullets — and plenty of clutched pearls when they played a show “wherever the fuck they wanted to do it.”
The location? Where else but Denny’s.
Their set was held in an active Denny’s rather than one due to close — people eating are visible in the background of the video — and lasted just twenty minutes before the cops showed up. Green Day donated $2,000 to cover a bill for damages received by the show’s 17 year old promoter, the band’s then label called them arena-rock-super-sellouts anyway.
Wacko echoes Live Without’s passion for the DIY punk aesthetic, taking it even further. In an episode of SUPcast, Michael — one of the band member’s fathers, then 72 year old and a bona fide legend — told interviewer Neil:
“It’s a threat because it’s in a public place, it’s in a place that they know. They know crazy bullshit is happening, but it’s in its own place; it’s contained, it’s in a club that’s set up for it. It’s in the dark, it doesn’t invade middle America. But this? DENNY’S?! They’re doing this at Denny’s?!”
The irony being that, as much as Denny’s is middle America’s place, it belongs to these kids too. The comments sections of both Grand Slam videos are littered with folks fondly remembering sobering up with black coffee and comfort food at Denny’s after punk and hardcore shows, surrounded by friends they’ve probably long since lost touch with.
Why Denny’s? Because America’s diner is always open.
From Wacko to NÜ GØDD
After weeks of trying to line up our schedules, I spend almost two hours on the phone with Wacko’s Zaine. He’s so forthcoming and generous with his time — between his day job working with special needs kids and a relentless touring schedule I’m surprised he has any of it left — that it feels like catching up with an old friend.
“You know, they [Denny’s] never replaced those broken lights?” he laughs. “They just took the money. If you go down there, they’re still all bent out of shape. But the manager lady was a sweetheart, even though she called the cops. Sometimes I think about going down there with flowers for her.”
After going through several different lineups —guitarist Gartex was gone by 2020, bassist Luc had to leave the band at the beginning of this year, and Wacko’s fourth drummer in as many years quit after falling prey to an identity theft scam— Zaine is the only original member of the band left.
He just got back from touring with his new five piece, NÜ GØDD:
“Actually,” he corrects himself, “it’s kind of a six piece. We always have our merch girl with us, who reads people’s futures with a Magic 8 Ball and collects audience confessions in our Book of Deep Dark Secrets. That book kinda scares me, I’ll be looking around like ‘some of y’all are crazy!’”
Despite his fanatical passion, Zaine almost sounds surprised when he tells me that NÜ GØDD’s latest tour was profitable, even after broken down vans and an emergency that required a pricy plane ticket.
He jokes that “we used to play this game called ‘let’s get the cops called on us,’ but that hasn’t happened in so long!” I suggest that, if he keeps playing traditional venues, he might have to get used to that.
I also ask him what happened with the momentum of the Denny’s show, given that it took place just three months before the pandemic began:
“We had so many people that wanted to work with us, and manage us, and record with us. Eric Andre messaged us that we were his favourite band! We were going to play his birthday party* and everything, but then Covid hit and that was that.”
* From what I can see, NÜ GØDD weren’t invited to Andre’s 40th.
Except that wasn’t quite that.
Zaine still embodies that DIY aesthetic — he recently recorded an album and put together a new band to tour with it in the space of just three months. Wacko may be gone, but its beating heart lives on.
Final Thoughts
So why does the Denny’s Grand Slam meme resonate so strongly with people? Because it was crazy. But it wasn’t so wild that it couldn’t have happened in your hometown. An urban legend that exists on tape.
There’s something powerful about the idea that these countercultures are bubbling away just below the surface, and that sometimes they come up for air. Or maybe some pancakes. And, in 2023, the Grand Slam’s spirit lives on.
Silly Goose just went viral on Instagram for playing nu metal in a Subway while a bemused customer orders a footlong. On TikTok, Slow Joy just brought their brand of Southwest emo to the aisles of a local market:
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In their SUPcast, Wacko’s Zaine says to Neil P:
“That’s what we’ve told every single news station — it’s funny you guys want to interview us, because the ironic thing is that this shit happens every fucking weekend. And there’s a whole community of people who are doing this shit and you guys have no idea.”
“[Playing at Denny’s] was great, and special,” he adds. “But that shit can happen anywhere.” It can and, for Wacko, it did: the band played shows in a San Diego sewer, a 24 Hour Fitness parking lot, and to a crowd of 500 teens under a highway bridge near a Costco.
“Ask us to play a show,” Zaine told me, “and we’ll play it, whether it’s in a stadium or behind a dumpster.” Any promoters reading this, hit him up.
The Denny’s on Highway 6 closed not long after the original Grand Slam, just as it was scheduled to do. The old-timer found somewhere else to get his pancakes and coffee. For a few years, the peace and quiet there was unbroken again — nothing was up, Denny’s.
Now something else sits in the restaurant’s place: a Pollo Campero, another chain restaurant. Middle America can breathe a sigh of relief. But bands like Live Without, then Wacko, now NÜ GØDD, are here to remind them that they shouldn’t get too comfortable.
One last thing I wanted to share. The old Yelp listing for the Denny’s that Live Without played at, PERMANENTLY CLOSED, boasts a list of Amenities:
Offers Takeout
Accepts Credit Cards
No Reservations
My favourite of the bunch?
Moderate Noise
This was wonderful!!! Glad to see you back here. I got clear images shifting from past to present like a documentary. I especially liked the phrase “random act of music” which seems a mundane thing but is radical. It’s a 90s movie fable of a band battle to save a business. Charming, wishful, and endearing.