I really should be asleep, but I have lots of words in my head and I just can't slow the motor down enough to drift off. I wrote up a half-assed review of the Danzig show earlier today but I ended up losing the last part of it by accidentally clicking the back-button on my mouse (I know, a completely useless feature, but I haven't yet gotten around to reprogramming my extra buttons).
So, we'll start off with that and I guess I'll rewrite my thoughts into it:
After almost fourteen years, I finally saw Danzig last night. It was a pretty solid show, despite some technical difficulties which marred the sound and threw the band's timing off a bit. After his last couple of albums (specifically 6:66 Satans Child and 777 ILuceferi) I actually wasn't expecting to enjoy the show for anything other than a slight nostalgic kick; however, the addition of Tommy Victor (of Prong) on guitar and Johnny Kelly (of Type O Negative) on drums actually made the songs from those albums sound pretty damn good, at least, they were played well-enough that they had some guts and soul that were clearly not present in the studio recordings (of which, neither played on).
The show-stealer last night was the much-rumored guest appearance by Doyle midway though the show for a special Misfits set that Glenn (appropriately) dedicated to the fans in attendance. Tommy Victor casually stepped backstage as Glenn made the dedication and called Doyle out. Now, I believe it is necessary to take a brief interlude:
Doyle is big. Really big. Really fucking big. I mean, Jerry Only and Glenn Danzig are big, but Doyle makes them look almost normal-sized. Also, Doyle is chiseled like a fucking sculpture. Y'know how when you see someone famous, someone you are used to seeing in photos and on TV, in person, they always seem "smaller?"
Not Doyle. He somehow seems bigger.
End interlude.
So, Doyle comes stomping out from behind the stage punching his guitar and staggering about like Boris Karloff in his Frankenstein's Monster make-up, he's looking fierce and completely intimidating (and at this point, the crowd has gone completely batshit insane). Doyle faces the audience with a grim look on his face...
and blows the biggest fucking bubble with his gum that I have ever seen in my life.
Fucking hilarious.
Then they played a short Misfits set and it was pretty righteous. It seems I've heard everybody BUT Danzig sing those songs, but I'll tell you this, Danzig fucking OWNED them. The set list (to the best of my memory):
20 Eyes
Skulls
Mommy Can I Go Out and Kill Tonight?
Earth AD
Hatebreeders
Die Die My Darling
We Are 138
I think "Skulls" was easily, easily the coolest peformance of the night and probably the single best Misfits song I've seen performed live. "Earth AD" and "Die Die My Darling" were very close seconds. The band was very much in metal mode and Danzig and Doyle's punk days are long behind them, so it seemed obvious that the heavier, thrashier Misfits material would sound better.
It certainly didn't feel like a Misfits reunion. It was cool and all, but I just couldn't escape that "MTV Heavy Metal" feel the whole night had. I know Danzig makes a big deal in his press about how he's "real" and all that, but he's a fucking rock star if there ever was one and I was surrounded (mostly) by an audience of non-punk rockers who didn't slam dance so much as loafed around like big, drunken, muscle-y fucks (or, conversely did the lame-ass nu-hardcore look-at-me-punching-the-air dance). The opening acts were standard, generic metal bands, the venue was a lame-ass dance club, the area in front of the stage was a railed-off dance floor...
nothing felt right, y'know?
Last night, as we were falling asleep, whitesamurai and i had the cutest little punk-rock-moment. We were facing away from each other, lying on our sides just trying to wind down and she said that she was worried that while I was in the pit I was gonna get my nose broken (keep in mind, she was in the balcony, looking down on the pit, which always makes it seem much worse than it actually is). Now, I'm uncertain as to whether her concern was for my well-being or for the continued un-smooshed existance of my nose as she has (strangely enough) a nose fetish (which does work out good, because i have a large Italian nose). I think I told her that I had been in a great-many slam pits in my day and have always escaped unscathed. The threat is always there in the craziness of course, but if you are just as crazy, just as lost in the chaos, you'll always (barring a freak accident) be just fine.
Which leads me to the lack of danger present in the slam pit. It was an MTV pit. Not like when Pants and I saw The Adicts, that was sheer fucking craziness or when we saw Stiff Little Fingers, both of those shows had the distinct vibe that the audience was incredibly passionate about the band and came to them on their own terms. Now, I'm sure most of the kids in that audience last night have been waiting years and years for Glenn to sing those songs again, but deep down, they weren't the kind of kids that lived the music and the experiences, they were the kind of kids who didn't think that spending 30 bucks to see a band was FUCKING lame.
Yeah, it was cool to see Glenn and Doyle together, but any day of the week, I'd rather pay twelve bucks to watch a band like The Adicts tear an entire room full of punks apart just by playing the opening notes of "Ode to Joy."
Punk is for the crazy and the passionate, the desperate and the hopeless. Punk is not a commodity. You can call a commodity punk, but people like me, people who live it and breathe it with every bit of heart, soul and passion they can muster with ALWAYS know the difference.
Glenn taunted the crowd a lot during the Misfits set, insinuating that they weren't as wild as the crowds back in the day. It was probably true, he was playing to the wrong type of people. He was playing to the audience he began cultivating when he stepped away from Samhain, which is all well and good, I love the shit out of the Danzig albums, he just shouldn't have been surprised that the kind of people who could drop thirty bucks on a show weren't the kind of people that would tear the venue apart while screaming the words to "20 Eyes."
Also, a security guard made me take the saftey-pins off of my vest because they were "like razors." (Seriously, how fucking dangerous can something with "safety" in its name be?)
Yeah, I knew what I was in for and I'm totally not complaining. I had a great time. I still love all of Danzig's music despite his uneveness over the years and the many-varied rumors of his asshole-itude, but deep down my heart wasn't in the show and I know it was only a night of nostalgia for an era I wasn't old enough to participate in.
***
I haven't been around much lately because I've been burning myself out and frustrating myself on various projects, etc. Anyone who keeps up with this blog can grasp the picture pretty fast. I took a huge break today to kind of power-down from it and take a serious look at this year.
The promotion at my day-job is working out well. The paychecks are enough for me to support myself and start digging myself out of debt. I'm not gonna get rich, but for the first time I'm gonna have enough money coming in to start building an autonomous life, wherein I don't have to make desperation moves to ensure I get to continue eating and living indoors.
I have a small website to put together for my Mom, but after that, I'm just slowing down and focusing on beating the shit out of my day job and spending all of my downtime chilling out and studying visual storytelling at my own pace.
It's time to start picking my battles. It's time to focus all of this energy, passion, creativity and discipline not into selling ideas I could care less about (and, from time to time, am even actively opposed to); but into generating ideas and thoughts that will help me to step into the social conversation and start making some noise.
D.I.Y. or DIE mothafucka!
***
PS I miss the shit out of thefullnelson and gasmaskboy.
***
PPS I like how almost everyone who commented to my last journal answered my rhetorical question... seriously, who would actually answer with mediocre?
So, we'll start off with that and I guess I'll rewrite my thoughts into it:
After almost fourteen years, I finally saw Danzig last night. It was a pretty solid show, despite some technical difficulties which marred the sound and threw the band's timing off a bit. After his last couple of albums (specifically 6:66 Satans Child and 777 ILuceferi) I actually wasn't expecting to enjoy the show for anything other than a slight nostalgic kick; however, the addition of Tommy Victor (of Prong) on guitar and Johnny Kelly (of Type O Negative) on drums actually made the songs from those albums sound pretty damn good, at least, they were played well-enough that they had some guts and soul that were clearly not present in the studio recordings (of which, neither played on).
The show-stealer last night was the much-rumored guest appearance by Doyle midway though the show for a special Misfits set that Glenn (appropriately) dedicated to the fans in attendance. Tommy Victor casually stepped backstage as Glenn made the dedication and called Doyle out. Now, I believe it is necessary to take a brief interlude:
Doyle is big. Really big. Really fucking big. I mean, Jerry Only and Glenn Danzig are big, but Doyle makes them look almost normal-sized. Also, Doyle is chiseled like a fucking sculpture. Y'know how when you see someone famous, someone you are used to seeing in photos and on TV, in person, they always seem "smaller?"
Not Doyle. He somehow seems bigger.
End interlude.
So, Doyle comes stomping out from behind the stage punching his guitar and staggering about like Boris Karloff in his Frankenstein's Monster make-up, he's looking fierce and completely intimidating (and at this point, the crowd has gone completely batshit insane). Doyle faces the audience with a grim look on his face...
and blows the biggest fucking bubble with his gum that I have ever seen in my life.
Fucking hilarious.
Then they played a short Misfits set and it was pretty righteous. It seems I've heard everybody BUT Danzig sing those songs, but I'll tell you this, Danzig fucking OWNED them. The set list (to the best of my memory):
20 Eyes
Skulls
Mommy Can I Go Out and Kill Tonight?
Earth AD
Hatebreeders
Die Die My Darling
We Are 138
I think "Skulls" was easily, easily the coolest peformance of the night and probably the single best Misfits song I've seen performed live. "Earth AD" and "Die Die My Darling" were very close seconds. The band was very much in metal mode and Danzig and Doyle's punk days are long behind them, so it seemed obvious that the heavier, thrashier Misfits material would sound better.
It certainly didn't feel like a Misfits reunion. It was cool and all, but I just couldn't escape that "MTV Heavy Metal" feel the whole night had. I know Danzig makes a big deal in his press about how he's "real" and all that, but he's a fucking rock star if there ever was one and I was surrounded (mostly) by an audience of non-punk rockers who didn't slam dance so much as loafed around like big, drunken, muscle-y fucks (or, conversely did the lame-ass nu-hardcore look-at-me-punching-the-air dance). The opening acts were standard, generic metal bands, the venue was a lame-ass dance club, the area in front of the stage was a railed-off dance floor...
nothing felt right, y'know?
Last night, as we were falling asleep, whitesamurai and i had the cutest little punk-rock-moment. We were facing away from each other, lying on our sides just trying to wind down and she said that she was worried that while I was in the pit I was gonna get my nose broken (keep in mind, she was in the balcony, looking down on the pit, which always makes it seem much worse than it actually is). Now, I'm uncertain as to whether her concern was for my well-being or for the continued un-smooshed existance of my nose as she has (strangely enough) a nose fetish (which does work out good, because i have a large Italian nose). I think I told her that I had been in a great-many slam pits in my day and have always escaped unscathed. The threat is always there in the craziness of course, but if you are just as crazy, just as lost in the chaos, you'll always (barring a freak accident) be just fine.
Which leads me to the lack of danger present in the slam pit. It was an MTV pit. Not like when Pants and I saw The Adicts, that was sheer fucking craziness or when we saw Stiff Little Fingers, both of those shows had the distinct vibe that the audience was incredibly passionate about the band and came to them on their own terms. Now, I'm sure most of the kids in that audience last night have been waiting years and years for Glenn to sing those songs again, but deep down, they weren't the kind of kids that lived the music and the experiences, they were the kind of kids who didn't think that spending 30 bucks to see a band was FUCKING lame.
Yeah, it was cool to see Glenn and Doyle together, but any day of the week, I'd rather pay twelve bucks to watch a band like The Adicts tear an entire room full of punks apart just by playing the opening notes of "Ode to Joy."
Punk is for the crazy and the passionate, the desperate and the hopeless. Punk is not a commodity. You can call a commodity punk, but people like me, people who live it and breathe it with every bit of heart, soul and passion they can muster with ALWAYS know the difference.
Glenn taunted the crowd a lot during the Misfits set, insinuating that they weren't as wild as the crowds back in the day. It was probably true, he was playing to the wrong type of people. He was playing to the audience he began cultivating when he stepped away from Samhain, which is all well and good, I love the shit out of the Danzig albums, he just shouldn't have been surprised that the kind of people who could drop thirty bucks on a show weren't the kind of people that would tear the venue apart while screaming the words to "20 Eyes."
Also, a security guard made me take the saftey-pins off of my vest because they were "like razors." (Seriously, how fucking dangerous can something with "safety" in its name be?)
Yeah, I knew what I was in for and I'm totally not complaining. I had a great time. I still love all of Danzig's music despite his uneveness over the years and the many-varied rumors of his asshole-itude, but deep down my heart wasn't in the show and I know it was only a night of nostalgia for an era I wasn't old enough to participate in.
***
I haven't been around much lately because I've been burning myself out and frustrating myself on various projects, etc. Anyone who keeps up with this blog can grasp the picture pretty fast. I took a huge break today to kind of power-down from it and take a serious look at this year.
The promotion at my day-job is working out well. The paychecks are enough for me to support myself and start digging myself out of debt. I'm not gonna get rich, but for the first time I'm gonna have enough money coming in to start building an autonomous life, wherein I don't have to make desperation moves to ensure I get to continue eating and living indoors.
I have a small website to put together for my Mom, but after that, I'm just slowing down and focusing on beating the shit out of my day job and spending all of my downtime chilling out and studying visual storytelling at my own pace.
It's time to start picking my battles. It's time to focus all of this energy, passion, creativity and discipline not into selling ideas I could care less about (and, from time to time, am even actively opposed to); but into generating ideas and thoughts that will help me to step into the social conversation and start making some noise.
D.I.Y. or DIE mothafucka!
***
PS I miss the shit out of thefullnelson and gasmaskboy.
***
PPS I like how almost everyone who commented to my last journal answered my rhetorical question... seriously, who would actually answer with mediocre?
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that's not nice