south county VS UnderOath

Jon Vandenburg is a funny little guy. he sent me this:

in the early 2000s (i cant seem to remember when) i was playing in a band fronted by a man who could convince you to play chicken with semis on your bike if it would benefit him or his cause of the day in some way. actually it didnt even have to benefit anything if he was able to get nachos from albertacos out of it. eventually, he convinced a catholic church to allow him to use their dining hall/old church next door to their multi-million dollar new church which overlooked the ocean and had a fabulous pipe organ. anyway, this dining hall ended up being a perfect venue for shows as far as catholic churches go and the church even supplied staff at the shows to run a snack bar and manage the door. i cant remember every band that got sucked/tricked into playing there, but to name a few...stand and fight/impact, bleeding through, hello goodbye, 12 gauge rage, matoe, antenora, and im forgetting tons of others and most of them are probably friends bands but im not sorry, i just forgot. im pretty sure the mistake boycotted playing there though aria asked every other week (and if they didnt they are softies). but, enough of all that, this story involves the time that Underoath in all of their dark christian glory was booked and played at the church. the show soldout to the point that kids were sneaking in through vents from the top floor and breaking sliding glass windows. im not sure how word got out, but apparently underoath had made some ridiuclous request to the effect that they would play for a $4,000 guarantee. Needless to say needles say more i mean needless to say, kids in attendance at the show heard about it and immediately started heckling the band once they were on stage. i remember seeing a hand written poster/ sign that said 'jesus only requested a last meal, prepare to be crucified'. about two songs into their set somebody stage dove, head walked to the front of the stage and punched the singer in the face. they stopped the song half way through as austin, rouse, and i hurled handfulls of pennies toward the band (always aim for the eyes). the singer started to preach about god and violence but was constantly interrupted by kids asking about god and money thus denouncing the catholic church or any church for that matter. they tried to play a few more songs to please the herd of 14 year old girls who were clearly upset that they weren't able to enjoy the show but the girls were silenced as 12 year old blaine threw a milkshake at them. the p.a. was then broken as the band tried to explain how hard it was to be on tour...you should have seen their tour bus/chartered yacht on wheels. that ended up being the last show at st. edwards church...until Blank convinced them again to let him use the top floor of their school located on the other side of the parking lot (which ended up being a pretty sweet venue for the one show that was had there).