Bringing On the Noise (and Elbows)
March 18, 2003, 7:30 p.m.
Pigface
My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult
Zeromancer
Bile
at B.B. King Blues Club & Grill
Everybody was talking about what a mismatch of artist and venue this seemed to be, but it gave me the chance to see the inside of a club I pass daily on my work walk. It's a nice, plush place, though it annoys me that they have bathroom attendants to stare you down into tipping. She handed me a paper towel, big deal. Perfumes? Can't wear 'em. Candies? Can't eat 'em. Oh, well. Under that stare, I put a dollar in the basket.
The crowd grew as the evening went on, with some folks skipping the opening acts and only coming in for Pigface. More space for me for a while. In a crowd that consisted of freaks, demi-freaks, and weirdly hippie looking folks, I fit into the middle crowd, since I'd come here straight from work in all black: a clinging turtleneck, black pants that have become low riders over the last month, black winter coat, and black walking shoes. I just put more eye makeup on. I ended up tying my coat around my waist anyway. Yes, I'm too poor for coat check. There were some pretty folks in the crowd, but they all smoked. *sigh*
I stood close enough to the stage to be able to watch Bile's lead singer work his mic pedals and see the veins in his forehead pulse and rise as he screamed. I also stood close enough to see that he had his hand fisted over his dick for 60% of the performance, and that's not even counting the song where the self-molestation is meant to be there. But then the frontman for Zeromancer spent a lot of time with his hand over his dick too, leading me to dub this tour the Touch 'Em If You Got 'Em Tour.
I pondered how good an idea it would be to stand so close to the stage, and pondered it harder when somebody mentioned that one of the frontmen sometimes jacked off into the crowd. I mean, I was close to the stage at a Genitorturers show once where the singer kept trying to hand me clothes pins she'd just taken off her onstage slaves' nipples and privates and I kept shaking my head No. That was the show where the guy next to me fainted as he watched her sew together one onstage slave's... never mind. He'd been fine through her sewing that one slave's lips together.
Back to last night. Bile wasn't bad, but after a while the punk/industrial/semi-metal droning becomes like a bludgeon. Just noise, noise, noise. Oh, and the projector clips shown behind the band were horror, violence, sex, and nude women. Original. Though I smirked at the bit of hentai in there. One of their guitarists looks like a Hell's Angel and is built like a refrigerator. Big, thick chest and gut. The "tribal" red makeup on his face sweated away halfway through.
I think the crowd had the most fun when the screens behind the band kept falling down. The screens fell and had to be put back up before the show started, and a pr chick working the crowd for the bands said, "[Bile's singer guy] is going to get hit with those." Apparently nobody bothered to fix them or tell him. But he smiled as he was repeatedly hit from behind, and you could feel the crowd anticipation as the screen fell towards its unsuspecting victim.... Thump! Nobody got hurt, and it was all good fun. Somebody finally fixed the screens from behind.
Zeromancer, from Norway, was pretty good. Kasha, you might like it that the frontman wore gauze bandages wrapped in places around his arms and hands. Guy was bare-chested, with a rail-thin cut physique (if they're flashing it, I look), and wearing low-slung leather. At least he didn't have a mohawk, as so many people this night did. Interesting stage moves: angular, aggressive, robot-mummy stuff, though it turns out that several people on the tour do that "pin your arm behind your back" move. No idea why. Live drumming (by a good drummer) makes such a great difference. I wondered if one of the guitarists, the freaky looking one who didn't have the mohawk, was the lead singer's brother, but I have no idea. I laughed when they launched into "Clone Your Lover," because I didn't expect them to play anything I knew. "Clone Your Lover" is a song on a sampler CD recently sent to me by a company that sells alternative music. The song is a guilty pleasure for me and sounds a lot like something from Dead or Alive. It lost something live this time. I liked their original material and the cover of "Send Me an Angel" they did. It annoyed me that they did the "demand the audience scream" thing at times, because I resent it when entertainers tell me to respond like a trained monkey.
Smart them, their stage crew set up the complicated drum kit on a carpet they bring with them that has colored tape marking what goes where. The band had hand signals to "talk" to their soundman, which impressed me.
While the stage crew cleared away Zeromancer's gear and set up My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult's, I passed the lengthy time by listening to what might have been 12 Rounds over the club sound system and getting a Schuldig and Farfarello story idealet. Maybe something will come of it.
My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult was a blast, with everybody around me agreeing that they're much more enjoyable live than on CD. Their frontman acted alternately crazy-stoned and as a rock star parody. Or maybe he was just stoned. The crowd had grown more, and what I guessed were the regulars screamed as he stripped down a bit over the course of the show. I pogoed and danced. Happy happy. No audience manipulation here, aside from the playful "strip, then put it back on" he sometimes did to play with the regulars. The band looked like they were too deep in their own fun to need the audience to scream at the points they demanded.
Zeromancer and Thrill Kill Kult also had screen shows, but theirs featured more surreal footage. I think my favorite was the 60s beach party footage playing at point behind the Thrill Kill Kult.
Pigface started their set with a wan version of "Sweetmeat." Lo's(?) voice wasn't there, though she tried to make up for it with sexy moves in her corset and overflowing breasts. I like that song, but not here. Then the screens came down to reveal the small army that is Pigface. Nice how each member has a very different look, emphasizing that they're from different bands. The Hate Dept. guy wore a suit, vest, and tie. The frontman from Bile was one of the guitarists, while the female singer from Thrill Kill Kult came back for a few songs. Over the course of the show, eight different people sang lead. Martin introduced the members of the band and where each is from at one point, but I couldn't understand a word he said.
Sadly and surprisingly, I enjoyed Thrill Kill Kult's set more than Pigface's, the band I'd actually come for. Pigface went for only volume and aggression, turning several songs I like into noise and shouting fests, which I see as sub-industrial. For example, "Mind Your Own Business" turned into two of the women shouting over the music, losing all of the song's loping slinkiness. "Dive Bomber," which is a noise fest anyway, worked pretty well. "Closer to Heaven" benefited from me not being able to make out any of the singing/shouting. I really don't like that song. They played "Suck" with about seven people shouting the chorus. It worked well since everybody in the audience knew it and shouted along on the chorus, and I don't like "Suck" so I didn't care. Some people were thrilled when En Esch did a song, but again that was a "bleh" thing for me in the original too. Songs in growled German? Been there, bought the sticker.
They did that "we want to hear you scream" crap. Martin also fell flying off (or was knocked off, since the band went a little wild during that song) his chair behind the drums by either accident or design. What came next made it seem more like design, as the band said that he'd hurt his arm and they had to stop playing. Once the crowd protested enough, Martin quipped with the crowd, introduced all the bands of the evening and demanded audience reaction to them, then went back to the drum kit. It's hard to say if he actually hurt himself, but the rest seems fabricated. It annoyed me.
Worse, they incited a mosh pit, which is the most egregious audience manipulation as far as I'm concerned. Like you have to cajole those assholes into becoming a danger to everyone around them. They do that on their own just fine. (Two idiots tried to start a pit at the Concrete Blonde show I attended in Seattle. I mean, really.) It's rough being a small woman at the front and suddenly getting rammed from behind by a testosterone- and adrenaline-fueled thug. I was once caught in a situation where the doctors told me that I would have been paralyzed or killed if I hadn't retained consciousness and kicked and punched my way out from under a writhing pile of knocked around people at a NIN show, so I hate moshers. Last night, I took an elbow to the back of the neck and had my arm hit a few times, but I started applying my elbow to anybody flying into me. Hell hath no fury like a skinny person's elbow. After that, they backed off a bit, then some guys who didn't want to mosh and would rather watch the band became a buffering layer between the idiot flying circle jerk and those of us who wanted to see the show. The girl in front of me has no idea that I watched her back last night. The moshing never touched her.
Good things about the performance? It was interesting to have some concrete idea of the horde of people in this band. While one did the kittenish sexpot routine, most of the female singers were sexy in a take-charge way instead and looked like they enjoyed the aggression of the show. They could kick your ass. They all had day-Glo hair too, one of them doing something with hers that reminded me of Danse from Jem. There were other good things, but the badness and audience manipulation annoyed me enough that they don't spring to mind.
I think somebody tried to pick me up afterward. Seemed like a nice guy, but the way that he answered half of my sentences with "Fair enough" started to grate. He told me that Pigface usually has four-hour shows--the benefit of having a lineup that rotates among 15 or more people, so no one person has to be on all the time, I guess--but B.B. King Blues Bar & Grill told them they had to stop at 12 a.m. I didn't tell him how relieved I was they didn't, since I was wiped, but he was disappointed that he didn't get another two or three hours. He came in after the opening bands finished, so he hadn't been standing for six hours like I had been. I established my cred with him when I told him how happy I'd been to hear Killing Joke-style guitars in "Insect/Suspect." When I told him that I was tired, not quite well, and had a long commute home ahead of me, he offered to let me crash at his place. Heh. Sure.
I begged off, faced a gauntlet of freaks offering me flyers as I left (it was like being a celebrity facing the paparazzi), and rode the train home. I finally unlocked my front door at 1:45 a.m. Not too bad, but I'm a bit of a zombie today. I'm so glad I'm temporarily off the supplements, because otherwise I would have been forced to call in dead today.
Pigface
My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult
Zeromancer
Bile
at B.B. King Blues Club & Grill
Everybody was talking about what a mismatch of artist and venue this seemed to be, but it gave me the chance to see the inside of a club I pass daily on my work walk. It's a nice, plush place, though it annoys me that they have bathroom attendants to stare you down into tipping. She handed me a paper towel, big deal. Perfumes? Can't wear 'em. Candies? Can't eat 'em. Oh, well. Under that stare, I put a dollar in the basket.
The crowd grew as the evening went on, with some folks skipping the opening acts and only coming in for Pigface. More space for me for a while. In a crowd that consisted of freaks, demi-freaks, and weirdly hippie looking folks, I fit into the middle crowd, since I'd come here straight from work in all black: a clinging turtleneck, black pants that have become low riders over the last month, black winter coat, and black walking shoes. I just put more eye makeup on. I ended up tying my coat around my waist anyway. Yes, I'm too poor for coat check. There were some pretty folks in the crowd, but they all smoked. *sigh*
I stood close enough to the stage to be able to watch Bile's lead singer work his mic pedals and see the veins in his forehead pulse and rise as he screamed. I also stood close enough to see that he had his hand fisted over his dick for 60% of the performance, and that's not even counting the song where the self-molestation is meant to be there. But then the frontman for Zeromancer spent a lot of time with his hand over his dick too, leading me to dub this tour the Touch 'Em If You Got 'Em Tour.
I pondered how good an idea it would be to stand so close to the stage, and pondered it harder when somebody mentioned that one of the frontmen sometimes jacked off into the crowd. I mean, I was close to the stage at a Genitorturers show once where the singer kept trying to hand me clothes pins she'd just taken off her onstage slaves' nipples and privates and I kept shaking my head No. That was the show where the guy next to me fainted as he watched her sew together one onstage slave's... never mind. He'd been fine through her sewing that one slave's lips together.
Back to last night. Bile wasn't bad, but after a while the punk/industrial/semi-metal droning becomes like a bludgeon. Just noise, noise, noise. Oh, and the projector clips shown behind the band were horror, violence, sex, and nude women. Original. Though I smirked at the bit of hentai in there. One of their guitarists looks like a Hell's Angel and is built like a refrigerator. Big, thick chest and gut. The "tribal" red makeup on his face sweated away halfway through.
I think the crowd had the most fun when the screens behind the band kept falling down. The screens fell and had to be put back up before the show started, and a pr chick working the crowd for the bands said, "[Bile's singer guy] is going to get hit with those." Apparently nobody bothered to fix them or tell him. But he smiled as he was repeatedly hit from behind, and you could feel the crowd anticipation as the screen fell towards its unsuspecting victim.... Thump! Nobody got hurt, and it was all good fun. Somebody finally fixed the screens from behind.
Zeromancer, from Norway, was pretty good. Kasha, you might like it that the frontman wore gauze bandages wrapped in places around his arms and hands. Guy was bare-chested, with a rail-thin cut physique (if they're flashing it, I look), and wearing low-slung leather. At least he didn't have a mohawk, as so many people this night did. Interesting stage moves: angular, aggressive, robot-mummy stuff, though it turns out that several people on the tour do that "pin your arm behind your back" move. No idea why. Live drumming (by a good drummer) makes such a great difference. I wondered if one of the guitarists, the freaky looking one who didn't have the mohawk, was the lead singer's brother, but I have no idea. I laughed when they launched into "Clone Your Lover," because I didn't expect them to play anything I knew. "Clone Your Lover" is a song on a sampler CD recently sent to me by a company that sells alternative music. The song is a guilty pleasure for me and sounds a lot like something from Dead or Alive. It lost something live this time. I liked their original material and the cover of "Send Me an Angel" they did. It annoyed me that they did the "demand the audience scream" thing at times, because I resent it when entertainers tell me to respond like a trained monkey.
Smart them, their stage crew set up the complicated drum kit on a carpet they bring with them that has colored tape marking what goes where. The band had hand signals to "talk" to their soundman, which impressed me.
While the stage crew cleared away Zeromancer's gear and set up My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult's, I passed the lengthy time by listening to what might have been 12 Rounds over the club sound system and getting a Schuldig and Farfarello story idealet. Maybe something will come of it.
My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult was a blast, with everybody around me agreeing that they're much more enjoyable live than on CD. Their frontman acted alternately crazy-stoned and as a rock star parody. Or maybe he was just stoned. The crowd had grown more, and what I guessed were the regulars screamed as he stripped down a bit over the course of the show. I pogoed and danced. Happy happy. No audience manipulation here, aside from the playful "strip, then put it back on" he sometimes did to play with the regulars. The band looked like they were too deep in their own fun to need the audience to scream at the points they demanded.
Zeromancer and Thrill Kill Kult also had screen shows, but theirs featured more surreal footage. I think my favorite was the 60s beach party footage playing at point behind the Thrill Kill Kult.
Pigface started their set with a wan version of "Sweetmeat." Lo's(?) voice wasn't there, though she tried to make up for it with sexy moves in her corset and overflowing breasts. I like that song, but not here. Then the screens came down to reveal the small army that is Pigface. Nice how each member has a very different look, emphasizing that they're from different bands. The Hate Dept. guy wore a suit, vest, and tie. The frontman from Bile was one of the guitarists, while the female singer from Thrill Kill Kult came back for a few songs. Over the course of the show, eight different people sang lead. Martin introduced the members of the band and where each is from at one point, but I couldn't understand a word he said.
Sadly and surprisingly, I enjoyed Thrill Kill Kult's set more than Pigface's, the band I'd actually come for. Pigface went for only volume and aggression, turning several songs I like into noise and shouting fests, which I see as sub-industrial. For example, "Mind Your Own Business" turned into two of the women shouting over the music, losing all of the song's loping slinkiness. "Dive Bomber," which is a noise fest anyway, worked pretty well. "Closer to Heaven" benefited from me not being able to make out any of the singing/shouting. I really don't like that song. They played "Suck" with about seven people shouting the chorus. It worked well since everybody in the audience knew it and shouted along on the chorus, and I don't like "Suck" so I didn't care. Some people were thrilled when En Esch did a song, but again that was a "bleh" thing for me in the original too. Songs in growled German? Been there, bought the sticker.
They did that "we want to hear you scream" crap. Martin also fell flying off (or was knocked off, since the band went a little wild during that song) his chair behind the drums by either accident or design. What came next made it seem more like design, as the band said that he'd hurt his arm and they had to stop playing. Once the crowd protested enough, Martin quipped with the crowd, introduced all the bands of the evening and demanded audience reaction to them, then went back to the drum kit. It's hard to say if he actually hurt himself, but the rest seems fabricated. It annoyed me.
Worse, they incited a mosh pit, which is the most egregious audience manipulation as far as I'm concerned. Like you have to cajole those assholes into becoming a danger to everyone around them. They do that on their own just fine. (Two idiots tried to start a pit at the Concrete Blonde show I attended in Seattle. I mean, really.) It's rough being a small woman at the front and suddenly getting rammed from behind by a testosterone- and adrenaline-fueled thug. I was once caught in a situation where the doctors told me that I would have been paralyzed or killed if I hadn't retained consciousness and kicked and punched my way out from under a writhing pile of knocked around people at a NIN show, so I hate moshers. Last night, I took an elbow to the back of the neck and had my arm hit a few times, but I started applying my elbow to anybody flying into me. Hell hath no fury like a skinny person's elbow. After that, they backed off a bit, then some guys who didn't want to mosh and would rather watch the band became a buffering layer between the idiot flying circle jerk and those of us who wanted to see the show. The girl in front of me has no idea that I watched her back last night. The moshing never touched her.
Good things about the performance? It was interesting to have some concrete idea of the horde of people in this band. While one did the kittenish sexpot routine, most of the female singers were sexy in a take-charge way instead and looked like they enjoyed the aggression of the show. They could kick your ass. They all had day-Glo hair too, one of them doing something with hers that reminded me of Danse from Jem. There were other good things, but the badness and audience manipulation annoyed me enough that they don't spring to mind.
I think somebody tried to pick me up afterward. Seemed like a nice guy, but the way that he answered half of my sentences with "Fair enough" started to grate. He told me that Pigface usually has four-hour shows--the benefit of having a lineup that rotates among 15 or more people, so no one person has to be on all the time, I guess--but B.B. King Blues Bar & Grill told them they had to stop at 12 a.m. I didn't tell him how relieved I was they didn't, since I was wiped, but he was disappointed that he didn't get another two or three hours. He came in after the opening bands finished, so he hadn't been standing for six hours like I had been. I established my cred with him when I told him how happy I'd been to hear Killing Joke-style guitars in "Insect/Suspect." When I told him that I was tired, not quite well, and had a long commute home ahead of me, he offered to let me crash at his place. Heh. Sure.
I begged off, faced a gauntlet of freaks offering me flyers as I left (it was like being a celebrity facing the paparazzi), and rode the train home. I finally unlocked my front door at 1:45 a.m. Not too bad, but I'm a bit of a zombie today. I'm so glad I'm temporarily off the supplements, because otherwise I would have been forced to call in dead today.