I was just watching the tail end of Entertainment tonight and they were plugging an upcoming television show about disastrous wedding events caught on surveillance film and or home video. One example was the bride dashing outside before the cake cutting ceremony and making out with the best man, stripping to the waist and almost getting caught by the groom. The really great one was not only frightening but gave me a wonderful idea—it showed a wedding party during which about a dozen guests sprayed that marvelous seventies party favor Silly String all over the happy new couple and little did they know how this strange material reacted to candle flame. The bride and groom burst into a quick and vibrant ball of flame that just disappeared instantly, hurting no one! Thank heaven for natural fibers, synthetics could have meant a honeymoon in a burn center and visits from Michael Jackson. Since no one was hurt I decided this was a green light to just go ahead and try it at home, as I hope many children deducted from this footage as well. With Halloween stuff hitting the stores, I’m certain shelves are well stocked with the flammable fun in a can so if you want to really liven up a party even more just remember what you saw on television. Also, Halloween is the only time you can readily find a few choice cosmetic items on the shelves of your favorite Walgreen’s like fake blood, blood colored nail polish (sometimes called black red) and glow in the dark nail polish as well, although there is a special product sold year round called Yellow Away that is used to remove yellow stains from over-painting your nails. It goes on clear and unnoticeable but once you’re near a fluorescent black light your nails glow like a gin and tonic! No holding your nails up to a light to charge or anything—one coat and you’re good to go. I wonder why. Oh yeah, one more little known pyrotechnic trick comes to mind that I thought I would share—powdered non-dairy creamer, like Coffeemate is delightfully flammable—blow a small handful at a candle and see for yourself. I’ve seen a wall of flame created with one jar and two tiki-style flaming patio lamps. While on this subject, I would like to ask you, my loyal readers, if any of you can breathe fire. I hope to enlist the aid of an experienced fire-breather who could teach me how to do this trick—I’ve promised myself to learn by the millennium so time is of the essence. Reach me by E-mail at Rockfag@aol.com. Experienced fire-breathers only.
On to other incendiary subjects, one of my very favorite bands whom I’ve written about numerous times, The Murder City Devils, breezed through town again at the tail end of what seemed to be a very long US tour, just before returning to their home base, Seattle. The last time I saw them was several months ago at the Café Dunord—where the band poured it on to a crowd that seemed too-cool-to-move except for a few of us down front. Our motion was noted and the rest of the crowd got a well-deserved scolding from vocalist Spencer Moody about how they were playing their asses off up there and “if you all don’t wanna move maybe you should be in the other room drinking or something.” Then the drummer actually lit his drum kit on fire with some flammable liquid in the perilously low ceiling-ed basement venue. It was a great show and I got to talk to a couple of the band members afterwards, telling them how we play their records frequently at a bar where I DJ, especially their song “Broken Glass,” during which we would sometimes actually break glass when it played. It is one of my all-time favorite songs ever; a tribute to Iggy with it’s creepy but smart farfisa organ and simple lyrics building to a screaming crescendo of “I like the sound of you rolling/ I like the sound of you rolling in the broken glass.” It is perfect, as was their second LP, Empty Bottles Broken Hearts, just a glorious rush of 12 songs all about rock and roll, being in a rock band, wanting to be a star, the domestic pitfalls of being a rocker, rock and roll retribution, a song about a dead rocker, an ode to the transience of the rock and roll life style, the love for an audience that a rocker has, and of course, a song about drinking as well as a song that provides a brief synopsis of one of my all time favorite movies, Night of the Hunter. It was definitely one of 98’s finest releases and to date still remains a favorite and in constant rotation when I deejay.
Well, I went to the bottom of the hill to catch the Murder City Devils’ return to SF after many months of touring and it seems that life on the road agrees with them. They all looked great. The show was an 18 and up, sold out affair with a multiple arrest taking place outside as we arrived. We managed to squeeze into a decent vantage point just as the band took the stage. They came on strong, loud and bristling with movement and energy, guitars slinging, bodies momentarily airborne, tattooed arms in blurry motion, just five musicians all playing at full tilt and the keyboard player, the only female in the band, adding her more subtle but essential and brilliant flourishes while looking nothing less than exquisite and cool, smoking a cigarette as if that stupid statewide ordinance never even existed. The audience erupted in that predictable spastic mosh-pit dynamic—you know, one idiot ape retardo begins to flail his arms about, catching chins, smacking faces and slamming his body into the now forming circular wall of needling little defensive fuckwads who push at anything or anyone who gets jostled their way by the one idiot ape retardo. Before you know it you’re caught in the middle of it and you’re thinking that somewhere between anarchy and gang rapes at Woodstock a great deal of meaning has been lost. At the risk of sounding like an elder fuddy-duddy, these kids just don’t get it.
But the Murder City Devils played a great set, a set that showed they had been doing plenty of the one thing that is best for any band–playing live shows regularly to strange new audiences night after night on tour. Nothing makes a band more competent and versatile. The end of this tour found the group not fatigued or battered by the road but rather in top form, charged with new levels of showmanship and spectacle, cruising with ease at full throttle and looking like they were having fun. They roared through an exhilarated ardent collection of songs, half old favorites and half all new material and it was short, sweet, sexy and tough, no need for a superfluous encore. As we filed out the door, the one idiot Mr. Mosh from earlier was caught between myself and my friend Jerry and with my lips nearly touching the back of his neck I said, “retardo!” He responded with an appropriate look.
The following night The Murder City Devils were slated to play at the popular Rock and Roll club Sixteen, just around the corner from the Hole in The Wall where I was spinning that night. Since the band is a definite staff favorite it seemed only natural for me to put on a very long disc and duck out of the booth for their set. While planning my departure someone approached the booth and asked me where the Hole in The Wall was. I looked up and said, “You’re in it,” and realized it was their guitarist Dann Galucci. I just happened to be playing a selection from Empty Bottles Broken Hearts at the time. He had remembered talking with me at the Café DuNord show and had been meaning to stop by for some time. We talked about the previous nights’ set and what new bands he liked and how I was definitely jumping ship to catch their set next door. He told us what time they were going on and said, “You’ll be up front, right?”
When the time came I slapped on an Iggy Pop’s greatest hits disc and Pete the manager and I dashed over to sixteen, where the courteous door staff happily let us in and we headed through the jungle of tube tops and rock and roll hair to the back of the club where the band was set up to play in one corner of the dance floor. The club was crowded but the space was far more comfortable and civilized than the previous nights venue. The band members started to take their places and Dann told the crowd this was the final show of their tour and basically they were set for having a good time and suggested that we dance and do the same. Then they opened with “Broken Glass.” It was just a little bit of heaven, one of those great rocking moments where a certain reckless abandon takes over and you know you are going to be in pain the next day but it just doesn’t matter, nothing matters but the music and where it takes you. I spied the set list and noted that all the songs on it were basically old favorites and I thought to myself, “I’m not leaving till this is over, if the long-player ends they’ll cover for me!”
The band just continued reeling through their set, one punchy great after another, like “Dancehall Music,” a great cut that clocks in at about a minute and a half, bemoaning the lack of venues for kids to hear live music in every town usa, and
“Dear Hearts” and “Cradle to the Grave” and more. Long about the third or fourth cut Dann the guitarist suddenly walked into the crowd while playing, right into me and kissed me open-mouthed right in front of everyone. Needless to say, I was impressed and I’m moving to Seattle tomorrow! Kidding, but I must say, if I’ve ever had a sort of crush on a rocker over the years, that memory has been eradicated by just this one moment. I was walking on air and feeling like a silly teen. What can I say, that guitar-slinging tattooed rocker is dreamy! Then a few songs later, vocalist Spencer said to the crowd, “You know when I’m out someplace and I hear our music being played it always makes me feel really uncomfortable for some reason, but earlier tonight we were at a bar just around the corner and they were playing our music and it felt great.” What could be better? We were thrilled. Then the drummer capped the night off by covering his drum kit with alcohol and lighting it on fire. Pyrotechnics—how fucking perfect. The last note resounded and I tore out of there and back to the dj booth and slapped something on. Dann stopped back in to say thanks and goodbye—they were leaving right away because as he told us, “Most of us have to work tomorrow.”
“You have to work?” I asked incredulously.
“Yeah, I bartend.”
I love rock and roll.
Finally, there’s an event coming up that I wanted to preview because it stands to be a unique and stunning show for the days leading up to Halloween. Taking place at the Café Dunord on October 26, 27, 29 and 30 at 7pm is The Grimm Guignol—Three Cautionary Tales. This marks the return of Omewenne to theatrical production of any sort since her two very well received and critically lauded productions of Nico: My Empty Pages, a biographical stage play written by and starring Omewenne as Nico, which placed her firmly as a grand new talent in the local theater scene. This time around, working with art director Terrance Graven of the Butoh Troup Collapsing Silence, Omewenne has researched, written and adapted to stage versions of The Brothers Grimm collected Household Tales—which were like little horror stories before they were prettied up by Perrault and Disney, stories far more savage than the standard children’s material they became. Omewenne researched even further back in the history of the stories digging up some goodies like father daughter rape, fetishized mutilation and child-flesh lust, etc.
Grim Guignol gets its title from a style of theater developed when the French were guillotining the bourgeoisie called the Grande Guignol, which translates literally as big show. Influences are also drawn from Antonin Artauds Theatre of Cruelty. Omewenne hopes these three monstrosities will bring in the savage side of the beginning of the dark dark holiday season. A couple of these stories will be recognizable from childhood, another brutal time period for many. I can’t wait. There will be no reservations, first come first serve only, admission is $15. Have you priced stage blood lately? This is the first of several similar projects planned by Omewenne and Graven–their production company, Unattended Children aimed at bringing theater back to the basement–the underground–vive la revolution!