I am not a person you would normally spot at a rock show of the heavier variety. Ask me to name a few Rob Zombie songs and I will fare alright (provided White Zombie counts, as that is about the extent of my knowledge.) Ask me to name just one Slayer song and I'm out of the game. I hadn't even heard of Exodus before today, aside a nagging feeling that I may have spotted the band name once or twice splayed across the front of a black t-shirt in that dripping, blood red font so often seen at Hot Topic and Spencers.
Still, you only live once (at least as far as I'm concerned...) so, I figure, why the hell not? If nothing else, as I see it, you can't really make an educated, informed judgement on anything if you haven't seen it.
As my own, personal little joke, I decide to not dress for the show but, rather, to dress for myself. That is to say, pretty goddamned out of place at a Rob Zombie/Slayer/Exodus show. It works a little too well, and I end up feeling like the nerdy girl your mom made you invite to the party for the greater part of the evening.
Enjoying pre-show food and drinks across the street at the Pyramid Alehouse, it is easy to spot fellow concertgoers (most of them are clad in oversized chainlink jewelry and sunglasses, at nearly 6 0'clock at night). Proclamations of 'hell on earth' abound. I spot quite a few men in their late forties, their short hair and adidas seeming oddly out of place when contrasted with their tattoos and dimebag Darrell, slayer and zombie t-shirts. Ah, the ravages of time and the working class on the diehard, aging rockers.
Upon entering all my visual and auditory senses are assaulted, and I can’t help but smile and snicker to myself when, while ordering an extremely overpriced beer, I hear the lead singer open the second song in the set with "this song goes out to all the troops serving overseeeeeeas!" I wonder to myself how long the sing battled with himself over whether he should choose to draw out the vowels in 'troops' or 'seas', and which would have the greatest impact on his audience.
Just before Exodus begin to play their last song the singer divides the audience into right and left sides and, pointing at one side of the audience, shouts "you guys over here! You guys are gonna try to kill these guys over here!" as he points to the opposite side. I proceed to bury my face in my husbands shoulder, collapsing in a fit of helpless giggles. When I finally look up, I am mystified to find that no one else is laughing. Surely that was meant to be funny?
But when Rob Zombie takes the stage, the change in the air is palpable. The shooting flames and epilepsy-inducing montage capture the essence of the appeal of this kind of show. When infrared clips of japanime movies begin playing, I realize why bands like White Zombie and Slayer hold such widespread appeal. Here is somewhere that we can throw social politeness and taboo out the window, and embrace our inner id. If we are laying it all out, we are here to eat, fuck and die. Eating is rarely interesting (I say rarely because some cultures consider monkey brains a delicacy, and however morbid, you can't deny the fascination inherent there..) so fucking and violence are the main attractions tonight. As I finish typing this sentence, Rob Zombie is shouting to the ladies to "hold onto their pussies" as Bela Legosi's eyes pierce me from behind him, driving his point home. The crowd screams madly once again.
It becomes apparent to me just what this loud, raucous music is about. It's about believing in something, and railing against the status quo, embracing a subculture that understands you in a world that doesn't.
There is a feeling of a 1920's carnival ringmaster coaxing excitement from the crowd, working the audience into a screaming frenzy the way only an experienced showman can. Somehow the usual, cursory nodding of my head to the rhythm just doesn't feel like it will get me by in this crowd. I opt for an air of slight indifference. I may not be able to unleash a stream of excited, abandoned shouting, but I've perfected the art of bored and above it all. Hey, we all have our social defenses. Mine just happen to be kinda snobby.
On a complete sidenote from the events of the evening, I find myself quite taken aback in the restroom when a middle-aged woman, who is smiling and vigorously washing her hands when I enter, spontaneously asks me how I am doing. Let me rephrase that. A middle aged woman, who is smiling and vigorously washing her hands when I enter, spontaneously asks me how I am doing as the door to the stall is about one nanosecond away from clicking shut. I peek my head back around the side with the kind of nervous, oh-this-is so awkward laugh that can only be found in these types of situations.
"Good. How are you?" I respond, smiling too brightly, and beginning to close the door once more. Apparently I am wrong, and this is not the end of the interaction.
She continues, "Ohhhhh...I'm good. But I'll be better once I get some refreshing beer in me!"
I give another one of those awkward laughs, finally closing the door as I do to politely signal the end of the conversation. I hear the bathroom door swing open and she lets out one last "have a good night!", which I refuse to respond to as I am now getting to the actual point of this trip to the restroom. Like all awkward social meetings, the encounter leaves me wondering if she was the weird one, or if my being taken aback is just a result of the dark, passive aggressive, rainy city I've called home since before I could speak. If there is one area Seattle is well-schooled in, it's coffee and surliness. Perhaps it's a product of our ratio of rainy days spent in solitude to days spent relaxing in the sun with friends. Perhaps this is why there are so many people in attendance tonight. Maybe they are here because they need this, a sense of camaraderie in a world where no one ever really fits in.
Then again, maybe we are all just here to drink way too much beer, embarrass ourselves a few times, and bond over moments of stupidity/spilling of secrets/drunken skinned knees with one another. Because there are 8,760 hours in our calendar year, and we spend an average of 2,088 of those hours working, 2,920 hours sleeping and that leaves 3,752 hours for eating, drinking and finding ways to distract ourselves from the fact that we spend over half our lives working and sleeping. It's a wonder we don't spend more time screaming loudly, with or without shouts of incitement from the night's entertainer. And that is something I can always get on board with.
In the spirit of a dialogue, which is what I really, really want from this blog, what do you to do get it all out and shake off the shackles of responsibility?
No comments:
Post a Comment