Without a doubt 'Dr and the Crippens' in the Zap club in Brighton, circa 1989. Hardcore (rather good) music combined with the lead singer exploding cabbages on stage.

Brett Eugene Ralph wrote:Hands down, it's gotta be the Sun City Girls, opening for J.F.A. circa 1984. I had no idea what I was seeing or hearing. They blew my mind.

I second the Sun City Girls. I saw them open for Shudder To Think at the Lounge Ax back in the early '90s. That was a strange and very good show.

I once saw Lubricated Goat at the Metro and the band members had their hair all teased up and hairsprayed into these huge mop tops like Robert Smith or Paul Westerberg or Sideshow Bob. In the middle of the show they took out lighters and started setting their hair on fire. I remember this girl next to me said, "These guys are junkies. This is just normal for them. Junkies like to do weird things."

The Butthole Surfers were always fun, what with the strange backdrop projections and Gibby setting his hands on fire with lighter fluid. The flaming crash cymbals were also fun.

I saw Flipper open for Soundgarden at The Vic. They had strippers onstage and between songs they acted like complete idiots. Towards the end of their set they got into a huge argument right there onstage. Their drummer stalked off in a huff and some other guy filled in for him on the last 2 songs.

But I'd have to say that as far as a stage show goes, The Genitorturers, Crust (the one from Texas in the late '80s) and GWAR pretty much have a 3-way tie for the prize.

1. the drummer from brutal truth live in tokyo with his side project "peacemaker".
his show consisted of playing some harsh industrial noise on a laptop with improvised banging on a drum (some japanese dude i assume was in a suppposrt band) while he was dressed in undies with a broken leg and some shit 80s styled glasses.
he walked (hobbled) to every member of the crowd, and whispered
"peace is the answer... all else will follow", and in a strange "i've just joined a cult" way it made sense.

2. the singer of the cosmic psychos did a solo performance that consisted of gutting rabbits on stage.
seriously, he lives on a farm and had killed some rabbits that day and decided to show people what he does most days with no real expanation.
just sitting down with a bucket for the guts and casually skinning rabbits.

im sure there has to be some photos of that show.

A friend of mine used to play bass in a band called the Latchkey Kids. They were a pretty improbable noise band, and what made Ken's bass playing all the more striking was the fact he only has one hand. He'd fret with his good left hand, and bang away at the strings with his stump. I saw that puzzle the living hell out of a bunch of kids at a house show once. That's way up there on my list.

Nearly every time I saw the Crucifucks, Doc Dart would do something strange and unsettling on stage, from beating the hell out of his bass player to cutting a hole in his face (during the third song, so he bled for a good half hour on stage) to knocking back a few cups of Tabasco sauce and then vomiting it back up in a massive red geyser.

But the most pointlessly strange band I saw was the nameless avant-garde act I saw open for MX-80 Sound once at a tiny bar in 1980. It consisted of two guys with electric guitars, each accompanied by cassette decks plugged into amps. At one point, one of them got lost and insisted on rewinding his tape and starting the "song" over again. Thank the fates MX-80 were pretty amazing that night.

Come to think of it, that Residents show called The King and Eye, where they did a musical of Elvis' life story, that was pretty weird. Good show though.

The Boredoms were rather weird as well. Cheer-Accident often does weird things, but now I'm so used to it that it just seems normal.

The details are a little fuzzy but in central Maine I saw Sam Black Chruch from Boston (my favorite band, at the time) play in a club that looked like a converted barn. A band I was in and some other local band opened. I'm pretty sure they called themselves Slaves to the Hardware. It was two older-looking, bearded, craggy metalhead dudes playing guitars that sounded like banging on pipes and sheet metal tearing along to a drum machine. It was kind of like Big Black slowed down, but distorted almost to the point of being pure noise. The weird thing was I think they were just trying to rock out in a fairly conventional way, and they ended up with something strange. One of them said at one point, "We're Slaves to the Hahd-ware."

I once was Trumans Water playing in Edinburgh and they were pretty strange.

Only after they'd been on stage for 30 minutes did it dawn on anyone that they were not soundchecking and tuning up, but were in fact 30 minutes into the first song. And I use the term 'song' in the very very loosest sense.

I saw some hack band from Austin come through Madison once...they played forever...songs about abortions with weird instruments.

They also had a puppet show going on at the same time.

And they were fucking gross women who appeared to have been dressed by Britney Spears as we now know her.

I hate fucking hack ass bands. What the fucking fuck.

Needless to say, their set dragged on forever...severely pissing off my friends' bands.

I'd say Caroliner Rainbow but that would be too obvious.

They weren't overtly weird, or even especially shocking, but the porno/ski mask/druggie joke metal of Dick Delicious and the Tasty Testicles was interesting for a good thirty seconds or so. Their frontman, Jay, has had some of the most bizarre adventures, so I guess that qualifies them as weird.

http://www.dickdelicious.com/