Monday, October 29, 2012

The Jesus Lizard at The Paradise


It was like 1992 all over again at the Paradise, with David Yow and his merry band of deviants plotting to overthrow the city of Boston and its surrounding areas with their totally unique and unrivaled take on rock music. Seriously, I don't think there has ever been or ever will be a band who sound anything like the Jesus Lizard, except maybe, MAYBE, the Birthday Party, and they were a bunch of no-good junkies from AUSTRALIA, of all places, so it's not the same at all, really.

The Lizard sounded and looked exactly as they did the last time I saw them, sometime in the early 90's. I swear, Yow was wearing the exact same pair of ripped jeans and dirty boots that he wore back in the heady days of Bill Clinton. You know the guy who sells you insurance, drives a mini-van and drops off his dry cleaning every Friday? The Jesus Lizard basically look like that guy, except they go home and carefully polish boxes of bullets and keep lists of everyone who has ever cut them off in traffic for future reference. In other words, they look like nice guys but they will definitely fuck you right the fuck up, and for good reason, you fuck. Duane Dennison looked like he was late for bowling night, which just made everything that much cooler and more sinister. David Wm. Sims still has the best bass sound in the business - it sounds like the bass itself is dragging its knuckles on the stage, looking for the guy who spilled its drink. And Mac, well, Mac ended the set proper with a goddamn DRUM SOLO, which by the way totally ruled and had everyone in attendance mesmerized.

The songs? Look, you got "Mouthbreather", "Boilermaker", "Then Comes Dudley", "Monkey Trick", all the hits you know and love, played with malice, joy and precision. As soon as the music started, Yow launched himself into the crowd, bargling and gorpling into the mic while the masses felt his nutsack and passed him around like the cheap hooker he was in a previous life.

Of course, what would a Jesus Lizard show be without a little nudity? Again, Yow delivered, not with his balls, but with his ass, pulling his jeans down below the waist and his shirt up above his head for the final number, and singing the final song like that, working the crowd into a frenzy so that the show ended with someone throwing one of their fucking SNEAKERS onstage, along with a few beers. Such is life in the scum-rock trenches.

Yeah, the Jesus Lizard have no peers. They stand alone atop their own mountain, waving their own freak flag. Thank Jeebus they decided to do one more victory lap for us lowlifes. It was like they never left. Fucking astonishing.

No comments:

Post a Comment