Shop our Big Takeover store for back issues, t-shirts & CDs
Follow The Big Takeover
Nostalgia…it’s a dangerous mud pit to wallow in. ‘Ah, the old days….they were SO much better.’ How many times have you heard that? How many times have you said that? Probably depends on your age, but it’s certainly a number larger than zero. Nothing is new, nothing is good, I wanna turn the clock back and relive my youth, when things were (thought to be) so much better. Classic rock radio is predicated on such an axiom. Have you ever seen a band which can match the piss and vinegar of their youth, when the adrenaline levels of both performers and audience were at a level which was clearly over the physiological safety level? Welcome to 2009, the year when THE JESUS LIZARD roared back to live in 3D, like the fearsome dinosaurs resurrected in Jurassic Park. I figured that this tour was in part constructed to coincide with the reissue of their untouchable legacy as released by Touch and Go, and their tour shirts pretty much confirmed this; aside from the classic ‘mouse on a rocket wielding an axe’ design from the Mouth Breather 7”, the other two designs boasted a rocking chair, or three bags of money (truth be told, I went with the rocking chair shirt).
I’ll start to describe the proceedings by coming right out and proclaiming The Jesus Lizard as the finest live act in the history of music. Yeah, my sample size is suspect; I never saw PINK FLOYD at the UFO club, or BLACK FLAG pummeling their way through songs and audience alike, or THE WHO demolishing gear as they played away in raw fury. But I saw Yow and company in the early ’90s enough times to make up my mind: at TT’s on the Goat tour, then at the Paradise and finally at the Channel. And they were so insanely good and brought a true air of menace and general ‘I’m gonna fuck you up and you can do nothing about it, and you’ll downright enjoy it’ aura that has never been matched, aside from perhaps the first BUTTHOLE SURFERS show I saw. These were the kinds of shows that had one side of your brain warily eyeing the emergency exit location while the other side demanded to get closer to the maelstrom. The kind of shows I miss. Well clear the decks. The band is back.
The closing set they did on the opening night at ATP/NY in September was about as good as I could have hoped for, but when playing for a sold-out room filled with people specifically there to see them, it’s a whole ‘nother beast. It took DAVID YOW roughly eight seconds from when the band got on stage until he was leaping into the air and onto the crowd as “Puss” lurched the band into full assault mode. “Get me something to stop the bleeding, cuz I’m fittin to blow”; there was the game plan right there, laid out in the opening verse of the first song.
The set list was incredible, all the primal nuggets of depravity and fear and anger and frustration from their Touch and Go years; the only Capitol-era songs were “Thumper,” “Blue Shot,” and “Thumbscrews,” the first three songs from Shot. Otherwise, it was the slash and burn style of DUANE DENISON, alternating between spidery riffs (“Monkey Trick”) and slashing/churning chords (“Mouth Breather”), oftentimes both in the same song (“Then Comes Dudley”). Denison’s got such a unique style of grace and power, fusing intricate runs with power chords that would put Angus Young to shame, and the diseased slide work on “Nub” showcased yet another technique. The rhythm section is likewise a world-beater; DAVID WM SIMS has been Yow’s bass player since the SCRATCH ACID days and the rumbling, precise bass runs are staggering. He plays his Fender like he’s trying to wrestle a python, whipping the neck back and forth like he’s trying to decapitate it. MAC MCNEILLY holds it all together like no other; while JIM KIMBALL Is a fine drummer in his own right, I’m sure I’m not the only one who noticed a big change in the band after Mac left. This is one band that has studs at every position, and they work so well as a unit. Calling the Jesus Lizard a compelling band is like calling a Rolex just another watch.
Which brings me to Yow. How can it be that in the wake of the ten year absence of this band, there’s really yet to be a front man as captivating, ferocious, unnerving and entertaining? Sure there’s Matt Korvette of PISSED JEANS and Eugene from OXBOW as current torch bearers, and I’m not sure that the world needs another GG Allin. Actually, scratch that…I am sure we don’t need another GG. But those bands can’t hold a 5W bulb to the music of the Jesus Lizard, and Yow’s the propellant that gets it all going. He spent probably as much time in/on the crowd as on stage, and never missed a note while singing propped up by the hands of strangers. Highlights? Truly, there were no lulls. How can there be when you’ve got the mutated hybrid of “Chrome” coming at you, or the manic “Bloody Mary,” or the insistent throbbing of “Gladiator”?
Yow’s fairly notorious for making his private parts public, but there was no tight n shiny tonight (the song or the maneuver). The closest he got was to drop his pants extremely low (and lower in the back) and drape his soaked shirt around his head like a cowl during the last song of the night, with ‘Blockbuster’ ending the second encore. “Do you think you’d like that, well do ya motherfucker?” Yes, Mr. Yow…thanks for asking. We did. I bet the view counts of Jesus Lizard clips on youtube has hit an all-time high over the last few weeks as people seek to relive the experience, or ruefully check out what they missed.
more photos of The Jesus Lizard
Animal Hospital (not Animal Planet, as Yow referred to him) as the opener seemed a touch out of place, and certainly wasn’t booked in the same vein as those multi-bill AmRep bills in the ’90s. However, what Kevin Micka does is very interesting, sonically, and I’d heard that he was hand-picked by Sims to open some of the shows. Part experimentation and part rigid discipline, he gradually builds a multi-layered weave of textures and melodies, incorporating guitar, drums, homemade percussion, voice and electronics. Of the three pieces he did, the first and especially the last resonated with me, evoking the early days of Krautrock. If you generally like the sort of bands that record for Kranky, you would certainly enjoy this.
