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We went out to a show last night. KMFDM-with-Pig, 16 Volt, and Kidneythieves at the DNA Lounge. meriko managed to cut out of work early, so we were able to go out to the pub for a bite to eat, come home, take a quick nap, and get presentable for an outing -- leaving the house while it was still light out! The staff at the DNA was in a good mood despite smuggling attempts and the occasional smart-ass heckling hippie ("The DNA Lounge has a ZERO TOLERANCE drug policy? Bwah hah hah!" "Why's he gotta be like that? I don't go slapping the dicks out of that guy's mouth when _he's_ working...").
Once in, it wasn't long before we ran into Rachel and Jesse and Juan, who meriko and I had first met at jD & Karen's Little Shed of Horrors party a while back. They were here for KMFDM. We were here partly for KMFDM but probably a bit more for Kidneythieves. I only knew of 16 Volt vaguely from their touring-with-Diatribe days.
Kidneythieves took the stage first. Their stuff is on the conventional-electro-rock end of the "industrial" tag, but with solid songwriting and intriguing imagery. When the first went on, I wasn't entirely sure it was them, simply because singer Free Dominguez looked a lot more normal than I was expecting. Their distinctive sound cleared it up for me pretty quickly even though all but one song of their set was from their new album, which we don't have yet. I had been hoping to hear "Taxicab Messiah", "Pretty" and more off Trickster, but only got to hear the first of those ("my god loved the whores and babies/my god never noticed a sin/my god grew and killed the daisies/my god threw the towel in/my god is weird/my god is scared/my god paints a pretty picture of fear") in their short set. They sounded pretty good. meriko observed that Free seems to have taken some stage-prowling lessons from Curve's Toni Halliday. (Actually, you can draw a lot of parallels between the two bands, now that I think about it.) Alas, they'd run out of copies of the new album earlier in the tour, but Free signed a promotional card for us. During the set, meriko pointed a guy in the corner of the balcony above the stage sporting a mohawk and aviator mirrorshades. I said "that might very well be Sascha KMFDM." (It was.)
Somewhere in here I ran into Jen. Jen's someone I met ages and ages ago. I met her when she was in a really bad lifespace. I helped her out a bit and then we went our separate ways. I've only seen her a couple of times since then. Her life is strange but it's good and happy for the most part, which I'm glad to see.
Next up was 16 Volt. Despite the fact that they toured with Diatribe a lot back in the day, I'd somehow never seen them. Like Diatribe, they're straightforward guitar-oriented industrial. I didn't think they were quite as good as Diatribe -- can't nail down why exactly. Still, they had some fans up front who seemed to be having a good time, so it's all good. meriko wound up getting a 16 Volt shirt just for the anime-girl-with-a-gun artwork.
KMFDM was the headline act. I really haven't been paying attention to their stuff for a while -- after Naive it all seemed to sound more or less the same to me, some sort of sloganeering industrial disco, and I could never be bothered to keep up. After the band's dissolution a few years back, Sascha K, Tim Skold, and Lucia Cifarelli released an album as MDFMK that I thought was pretty brilliant by comparison, much fresher, free of a lot of the trappings of the old band. Alas, MDFMK seems to have been a one-off. The MDFMK core rejoined old cohort Raymond "Pig" Watts, and reformed KMFDM. Long-time KMFDMers En Esch and Gunter Schulz apparently were invited, but declined to rejoin. You following all this? There's gonna be a quiz...
Anyway, Sascha, Lucia, and Watts traded off the singing duties for the half-set that we stuck around for. We found ourselves strangely bored -- maybe cuz we hadn't heard the new album, maybe cuz KMFDM just isn't very exciting any more. Me, I would have stuck it out if there had been a bald pervert in fishnets fronting the band -- it just isn't really the same without En Esch (but from a quick listen, it doesn't sound like Esch & Schulz's new project, Slick Idiot, is any good either). So, we left early, grabbing a couple of tee-shirts on the way out. Not a bad night out, considering how out of practice we are.
What stage presence? The one time I saw Curve play (at karma-sucking hellhole Slims, which could have had something to do with it), Toni stood immobile, looking fat and bored. I can't say I was surprised, because after the sycophantically fetishistic (/ creepy / stalkery) way people talked about Toni on the old Curve mailing list I just knew she couldn't be all that (oGd band axiom #3: the more slavish the fanbase, the more disappointing the reality). Occasionally, just to break things up, she pouted in place. The only member of the band who looked like he was having fun was Dean, who smiled and banged his head a lot during the loud parts (which, uh, was pretty much the whole show. Dean's a happy guy).
Posted by: forrest on June 7, 2002 01:38 AMOkay, granted, married life and a hiatus from rocking out has slowed Toni down a little, but the image I have of her in my head is from seeing her at Slim's in support of Cuckoo, years before the show you saw, and I'm here to tell you she was easily more than 82% of "all that". If you need proof that I'm not a fetishistic fanboy, I could make fun of her teeth.
I'm not sure what meriko's excuse is, though, cuz I thought she only saw Curve the once.
Posted by: russell on June 7, 2002 09:22 AM
