Memories from shows

[Namahs]

Bit of a countertopic for the "missed shows".

All kinds of gig memories are welcomed.

I fondly remember first time seeing Motörhead live. Went there with my dad who also wanted to see them.
December 2007. Los Bastardos Finlandeses and Hanoi Rocks openend for them. LBF was decent rocknroll. Hanoi Rocks could have skipped this gig in my opinnion but when it was the last changeover and all the Motörhead gear is there, intro starts playing and then you see the man, the myth, the absolute legend walking on the stage with that Rickenbacker. "Good evening! We're Motörhead! We play rock 'n' fucking roll!" and then start playing Doctor Rock.
I was 15 at the time and I almost lost it there. Got chills just remembering that.

Tons of weird stuff in the memory bank. Got bit at a show. I was working as a backliner for a band whose singer got drunk and pissed off. I took his booze from the stage and handed him water. He got so pisses that he chucked the bottle 3/4 ways down in one sip and the threw the damn bottle in my face haha! Got to watch Candlemass side of the stage at Party San Open Air 2017 high as hell. Metal show with congaline of 350 people and what not. The list could go on for days.

Let's hear yours.

[adult human]

Deaf Forever All Dayer, Leeds (2007/8?): Traveling to London to get a train ticket for Leeds in order to attend an all dayer. Being sent back the way I came via Birmingham because there was a train on the track adding another 2 hrs to the journey. Finally getting to Leeds and paying for a room to sleep in that night having never visited the city before. Catching a domestic train to the location of the all dayer after an entire morning traveling to be there. Ordering a pint upon arrival and triumphantly asking where the gig was to be told it was cancelled. Turns out Smell & Quim (first band on) smashed a pig's head with a sledgehammer and got the whole thing pulled. The promoters somehow got it moved to another venue in the end with a much reduced line up. A formative adventure.

[Namahs]

Deaf Forever All Dayer, Leeds (2007/8?): Traveling to London to get a train ticket for Leeds in order to attend an all dayer. Being sent back the way I came via Birmingham because there was a train on the track adding another 2 hrs to the journey. Finally getting to Leeds and paying for a room to sleep in that night having never visited the city before. Catching a domestic train to the location of the all dayer after an entire morning traveling to be there. Ordering a pint upon arrival and triumphantly asking where the gig was to be told it was cancelled. Turns out Smell & Quim (first band on) smashed a pig's head with a sledgehammer and got the whole thing pulled. The promoters somehow got it moved to another venue in the end with a much reduced line up. A formative adventure.

Damn haha! I think Fuck-Ushima (grind/sludge/noise) got once banned during a soundcheck. Bar owner started tossing icecubes at them yelling "shut the fuck up and get the hell outta here!" and they were the only local band that evening.

[Chris]

Deaf Forever All Dayer, Leeds (2007/8?): Traveling to London to get a train ticket for Leeds in order to attend an all dayer. Being sent back the way I came via Birmingham because there was a train on the track adding another 2 hrs to the journey. Finally getting to Leeds and paying for a room to sleep in that night having never visited the city before. Catching a domestic train to the location of the all dayer after an entire morning traveling to be there. Ordering a pint upon arrival and triumphantly asking where the gig was to be told it was cancelled. Turns out Smell & Quim (first band on) smashed a pig's head with a sledgehammer and got the whole thing pulled. The promoters somehow got it moved to another venue in the end with a much reduced line up. A formative adventure.

Brilliant. I've got fond memories of the crowd taking several steps back when S&Q played Hospital Fest. They played in the middle, so the smell of raw fish that they tossed into the audience was somewhat pungent by the close of the evening. It wasn't a great set, but it was amusing to see the faces of those who were unfamiliar with them once the fish guts started flying.

Skin Crime also played that evening, and closed the set with a sample from Victimology 2 as a nod to Keith Brewer's passing. That was a pretty heavy and memorable moment.

[Ineffable Slime]

I was bombed out of my mind on acid at that hospital fest + having a gallbladder attack and it felt pretty appropriate; just like either, puking, tripping, or zoning out to harsh. That Skin Crime set hit me like a sack of bricks - I especially liked when the elevated subway blasted by the window mid-set and just shook the whole place - the silence during that Victomology sample was palpable. S&Q set ruled, and man it bugged me out to hear that Simon Morris was missing and then finding out what had happened the next day. Very grim vibe overall.

The '18 fest was a totally different vibe, much more of a party. Linekraft blowing the roof off the place playing thee most intense PE set I've ever seen; Merzbow causing people in the audience to collapse from sheer sensory overload; the dude in Autoerotichrist slicing his forehead and just pouring blood all over the place, trying to keep it out of his eyes with a balled up t-shirt; taking tequila shots poured by Dom off the Hospital Prod logo ice luge....much more pleasant time lol.

I saw Yellow Tears years ago and the set was such a good mix of absurdist piss humor, noise, and uhh carnival music. They threw a bucket of (probably not real) piss onto a dude in the front row. Lots of creative ways to pantomime pissing/piss gargling/piss drinking/piss waterboarding. I was cracking up the whole time, A+!

Also non-noise, but seeing Kriegshog at the Broken Neck in ATX in '11. People were losing their mind during the soundcheck; I ended up braiding legs with my bud, face planting, then getting a dude in a studded vests back pressed into mine so hard I had a full like, grid of negative spike bruises across my entire back. Worth it tho, sick ass show.

[33033]

Blue Sabbath Black Cheer at Victoria's Noise Fest, just immediately crushing and awesome prescence.
The Rita at the same show, just sitting quietly with his set up, then stabbing a wooden block with a contact mic on it over and over. Everyone losing their shit.
Fauna playing at a bar, playing waaay over time and had the lights turned on at 1am. They freaked out claiming that the venue owner was ruining the spirit of the band or something.
Wolves In The Throne Room in Calgary, the guitarist being so drunk he kept dropping his pick. Chatted with him after the show and he was insistent that we all come to Seattle to see them with Boris.
Goatsblood in a basement in Victoria, BC. Masa Anzai threw a cinder block at Matt Wood while playing drums and the set devolved into chaos. They got through three songs maybe.
Lewd Acts drummer whipping a cymbal out into the crowd and busting open someone's head.
A guy I know straight up leaving the venue when he saw that Gary Holt was filling in for Jeff Hanneman.

[adult human]

Simon Morris

R.I.P. to the big man. Still often wish he was around to get his take on all manner of shit.

I've got a few nice memories of him at shows. First time I ever saw Ceramic Hobs was at one of the now legendary (to UK people anyway) Crater Lake fests where a sensational alcoholism was prone to overcome most in attendance. Hobs headlined this edition and the place just went nuts in the way that often happens when you stick a rock band at the end of 8hrs of harsh noise and heavy drinking. Scrawny noise geeks moshing and getting feral, a shirtless Simon bellowing into the mic and looking fucking exhausted throughout, people grabbing at him and swinging off his neck like he was an actual rock star. I remember they covered Sabbath 'Paranoid' and it was insane. I lovingly recall how he spoke of the...incivility of that evening in future days, mostly because for a guy who wanted so often to be a maverick rock star he actually kind of hated it when maverick, rock starish things happened to him.

A good example of this was when he was due to play with a trio (?) called Tluthe which was a short lived industrial/PE/Spoken wordish thing. The whole night he was chewing my ear off telling me how disinterested he was with music because he was 'a writer now' and how he was going to quit hobs and never to Tluthe again etc etc. Any way, after he played their (good) set he could be loudly heard spending the rest of the evening telling his band mates "THAT WAS GREAT! I'M REALLY UP FOR PURSUING THIS PROJECT AS A FULL TIME PRIORITY!". It was funny and he laughed at himself about that shit later.

Finally, and this was only tangentially related to a live gig, he showed up in Brighton at some lousy show my friend was DJing at and I had no idea he was even in town. I gave him a bit hearty greeting when he walked in but for whatever reason he was a bit cagey and antisocial - needing to adjust to the room perhaps. As is often the way, my friend later put on the BBC Grandstand theme and I turned to see Simon furiously pacing up and down, pointing and clenching his fist in time to the music with a very serious look on his face. After that he was nice as pie and we spent a good couple of days together drinking.

Sorry for the slightly indulgent post, I just miss the daft cunt.

[Ineffable Slime]

nah man THANK YOU for sharing, that kind of insight around those who have left us is always appreciated. RIP!

[D345]

I read an interview of Dave Phillips today ( https://www.musiquemachine.com/articles ... php?id=537 ) and it reminded me of Romun Huuto 3, which was one of the first noise gigs I attended and the first time I played noise live. It was all very exciting! My set went surprisingly well, although I had no fucking clue what I was doing. Still on the same road.



https://www.davephillips.ch/live/dp-20160826-joensuu
0+Queen played instead of Lauri Hyvärinen. All good sets, sadly there was like 10 people in the audience, but we didn't care. The set by Dave Phillips is still maybe the best noise set I have seen. Felt like someone was choking you and trying to kill you and at the same time calmly explaining to you how you are the fucking worst human being. Video action indeed.

I cherish the memory of me talking to Dave for the first time and feeling just absurd. There I was talking to the guy from Fear of God, he was like a real famous rockstar to me, hah. He still is! Really he is very polite and down to earth gentleman, we had good conversations. (Probably at some point maybe, memories are a bit blurry from the later hours...) While I was talking to Dave for the first time outside the venue, a guy in a pink rabbit costume on a skateboard went past us. Maximum absurdity.