Premier Rock Forum

I havent seen an awful lot of bands but I bet some of you have seen some odd shit.

There's a local band called Dada Muttenwah. Thats my own spelling, I dont know how they write it. To look at them when they come onstage you'd think it was middle aged pub rock. And to some extent it is. But the lead singer is an old man with a long grey beard. For some songs he pulls out a box of hats and puts one on everyones head in the front row, then one on each of the band, then swaps them round every 10 seconds (I heard he sometimes sets them alight but I havent seen him do that). For some songs he erects a stepladder in the middle of the stage and climbs halfway up it to sing. And for some songs he puts a pair of tights on his head that are filled with balloons (he's at least 60, I keep imagining him saying to his wife "where are your tights love, I've got a gig tonight"). They have a young guitarist who I met once and he told me at their last gig he'd used one of those infra red guitar lead things and in mid solo a someone picked him up, carried him out the front door, around the building, and in through the backdoor, him soloing the whole way.

I'm not saying any of this is good or bad, just unusual.

The Locust were pretty odd too. God knows what possesses them to dress like b-movie aliens, they must sweat their knackers off.

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.

Also, when I was 11, my mom took me and a neighbor kid to see KISS. I was excited for some cheesy fun and was in no way prepared for the sweaty, shirtless heathens who opened the show. I may or may not have known what sex was at that point, but I knew that what they were doing was dirty and wrong. It was AC/DC touring 'Powerage,' with Bon Scott still out front. Pretty much everything I've seen since then has paled in comparison.

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 have seen sun city girls many times, all different, all enjoyable in one way or another. two occasions spring to mind:

1. a buzz has built up, the way buzzes sometimes randomly built up in mid-90s seattle, and the sun city girls show at the off ramp is absolutely packed. probably sold out, maybe 400-500 people.

the opening bands play, then a thin white scrim is put up. it is lit from behind, so that what is behind it can be seen only dimly.

maybe half an hour goes by. then a kind of chattering noise, like someone mumbling nonsense into a microphone, is audible over the p.a. then someone else starts mumbling. then someone else starts mumbling.

through the scrim, hunched-over figures are barely visible, half-crawling around the stage, mumbling into microphones. that went on for *quite a while* before i left. the crowd was too confused to be angry, but maybe they got angry eventually.

2. the rocket (a seattle weekly paper, now dead) has a listing for a sun city girls show. this show is downtown, in this indian restaurant, in the building where john coltrane's _live in seattle_ album was recorded.

_live in seattle_ is late-period trane with his quintet of the time, featuring pharoah sanders. the listing states that the sun city girls will be playing _live in seattle_ in its entirety. 'wtf?', my friends and i think. 'how are those bitches going to...?'

it's too weird to pass up, so we go down to the indian restaurant. we eat some slightly subpar indian food, noting the small p.a. in the front window. eventually, the sun city girls guys come in. i think they order food as well. there are maybe two other people in the restaurant, besides the owner, who just stands there grinning beatifically for some reason.

at some point, a recording starts to play over the p.a. i realize after about 30secs that it is the recording by john coltrane and his late-period quintet called _live in seattle_.

it was very, very funny.

Big Stick, opening for My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult back in... umm.. I dunno, I was probably stoned that year.

The guitarist was wearing the Flintstones' Grand Poobah hat, tusks and all. The 'singer' such that she was, just slapped at some bongos and rasped about "come on baby, do me" while gyrating obscenely. They were super, super bad.

The first Red Krayola show I saw was pretty way out there. The band was a bunch of Chicago all-stars (Mr. Grubbs, Mr. O'Roarke, um...a few more?) and Hurley on drums. I had only heard Mayo's "Corky's Debt.." to that point and was expecting something TOTALLY different. I am still not really sure what to make of that show.

marilyn manson, well before anyone on earth (including myself) knew who in the hell they were. the show consisted of the five band members coming out on stage absolutely as stoned as i have ever seen human beings who were not dead or close to it, playing random nonsense while trying to start fights with the few people in attendance, and one by one passing out.

the worst part was that the drummer was the first one to hit the floor, so the show lost all semblance of music of any sort and just became noise. It was really, really painful.

GG Allin & The Murder Junkies.

way back, I think it was 96-97.
my first ever trip to visit my cousin, who lived in New York. She was into some pretty weird shit that even I really didn't know what to make of. anyhow. she took me to see Aphex Twin at some really fucking awful venue, who's name escapes me at the present moment. it was strange and it was loud as fuck. I had no ear plugs, for whatever reason, and was in serious pain after the show.

-jeremy

I saw Bobby Conn one year on New Years' Eve at the Fireside Bowl.

The show didn't exactly end as much as it devolved until Bobby was standing near the lanes with his face against the wall crying, with mascara running down his face.

I know theres a degree of shitck to it all but it was a pleasurable, weird experience to have an anti-climatic, un-happy ending to a New Years' Eve show.

good weird or bad weird?