GRUMPY'S HEAVY METAL PARKING LOT

I haven't been to a show in a while, so I was excited to hear that Grumpy's was having an outdoor show, and on Dr. S's birthday weekend to boot. I don't like paying $20 for a 6-band show normally, since there's usually only one band you know is good and they don't play for very long, but this one had Helmet, Burning Brides AND the Melvins--two good bands and one all-time favorite.

All three bands play very hard, very tight, but somehow also very catchy without seeming "pop" at all. So even though The Melvins and the Burning Brides didn't play many songs from the albums I have, I didn't have any trouble getting into it. I recognized most of the Helmet songs, they even did "Just Another Victim". They seemed better than when I saw them last, possibly because they followed Jesus Lizard back in the day, a fate worse than death for most bands (I think that was the time David Yow exposed himself, but I'm not sure; he definitely kept pretending to forget their name--"Thanks to Omelet for letting us open up"; "Next up, it's Hamlet!")

Even though they didn't play the super-slow songs I love from Bullhead and Ozma, the Melvins are still one of the best live bands ever, and Dale Crover is definitely the best drummer of all time. It's like the drumbeat replaces my heartbeat. Their new bassist with the beard, braids and muumuu was good, too. I first saw them around '87 or '88, someone on the entertainment committee at Macalester liked them and invited them to play in front of the student union on a bright spring day. Most students walked away nonplussed, but I fell in love with their sound.

I hope this becomes an annual event, we need more outdoor shows for us old folks that can't stay up till 1 AM anymore.

----------------
Now playing: Groove Radio
via FoxyTunes

Comments

JethSeux said…

I think what you fell in love with my dear, was Buzzo's fro, which though cool, was nowhere near as beautiful as yours! Still, I could see it in your eyes that if you were from a Borneo based headhunting tribe, you would have jumped up, scalped him, and taken that fro for your very own. I am happy you are not, for both mine, and Buzzo's sake, and I have perfect confidence that my sweetie will still be rockin out at 80 years old, even if it is at 3 in the afternoon instead of 3 in the morning.

4:49 PM

MY BUBBLE

This is real heavy metal, by the way . So, this guy whose name I swear I'd never heard but appeared to have gone to my high school tried to friend me on Facebook. His main interests were the band Stryper and Republicanism, so I didn't add him. I mean, really, Stryper ? I thought teens in the 80s only listened to them because they liked metal and their parents forbade any other band as a direct path to the worship of Satan. When you leave home, you throw away their records and listen to real metal. But then I read this article that said we are all getting trapped in a bubble of like-minded people who parrot our ideas back to us, due to social networks and rss feeds and apps only giving us the people/opinions/stories we want to hear. And I thought--maybe I was wrong. Or maybe I'm OK, because I do have a lot of weird interests that make it pretty hard to find people who are on the same page with everything. I have social network connections with people around roleplaying game...

TOP TEN LIPSYNCH FOR YOUR LIFE SONGS FOR A DRAG KING EQUIVALENT OF RUPAUL'S DRAG RACE

The Advocate has suggested that the greatest (i.e. only good) reality show ever, Rupaul's Drag Race , have a drag king contestant. That's fine, but it would be much more entertaining to have a whole drag king competition. One of the best parts of Drag Race is seeing all the different types of queens compete: beauty queens, funny queens, conceptual queens, androgynous queens, scary queens, singing and dancing queens. I want to see punk kings, gangsta rap kings, cock-rocking metal kings, panty-dropping R & B kings, country kings, baggy-pants burlesque comic kings, and of course, Elvis. I picked out some songs that make me think of different aspects of masculinity: swaggering men, heartbroken men, lustful men, romantic men, philosophical men, and suicidally depressed men (interesting fact: I can think of dozens of songs by men about suicide, but only one female one: "Gloomy Sunday". What's up with that?) "That's Life" - Frank Sinatra...

TOP MUSIC GENRES FOR YOUR CYBERPUNK GAME

So I guess cyberpunk is hot again. I don't play those newfangled video games, but all this fanfare made me remember my old Cyberpunk 2020 days, when I was Jael Furoshiki, Japanese/Jewish survivor of of a destroyed South China Sea pirate pack trying to make a living in the Minneapolis Red Zone as a bodyguard/food delivery technician (yes, both a pirate and an ninja). Later she got ported to Interface Zero , which got rid of some of the anachronisms and C2020's crazy-high fatality rate (there used to be a page dedicated to players' favorite deceased characters, sadly now lost to even the Wayback Machine). Anyway, one time I made up musical genres my character would listen to--can't find my old character sheets, but this gives you the idea... TOP MUSIC GENRES FOR YOUR CYBERPUNK GAME: Cambo-Punk Robo-Funk Post-post-post-post-post Punk Really New Wave Black Klezmetal Danish RaiZulu Techno-Jive Country & Western & Gabber Lo-NRG Goan Garage Garage...

Odd Obsession

Search This Blog