maarmie's musings

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Sweetmeat

I've been yawning all day, and I can't think of anything better to do on this rainy Florida afternoon than crawl under my desk and snooze the rest of the workday away. I probably wouldn't normally be this tired, although I've been staying up later than normal watching all the cable TV I can get my eyes on. Last night was special, though, and I stayed up well past my bedtime so I could rock out with Pigface at the Beta Bar, a small venue that attracts off-the-beaten-path groups for all-ages shows.

Pigface is one of my favorite bands. One of my former editors and some of my friends make fun of the band just because of its name. I try and get people to listen to the music before knocking it for its moniker alone, but it's hard to get some people to open their minds enough to let in something new.

I suppose Pigface, a revolving band that features singers and musicians from diverse existing bands, creates what is considered to be industrial music, but I feel that many of the group's songs transcend the "industrial" label.

Oddly enough, Pigface doesn't appear to have a very big following in Tallahassee. The group was supposed to play this time last year, but cancelled the show after only a handful of tickets were sold. I bought my ticket for this year's show on Saturday, two days beforehand, and held ticket number 8. I was worried the show would be cancelled again this year, but it wasn't, and now I have an official Pigface T-shirt.

The show was pretty cool, but about half the crowd left after Sheep on Drugs, the last of three opening bands, was through. The main act didn't play any of my favorite songs, but the group sounded and looked great.

The most irritating part of the evening involved this band member who thought he was cool with his head-to-toe tattoos and bald head with devil horns attached to it, a long goatee and a gold cape. During the show, he swallowed long metal crosses, passed condoms between his mouth and his nose (in his mouth, out his nose and in his nose, out his mouth), shot sparks in the air with a sander and a hatchet, hammered 8-inch long nails into his face, brandished a large whip and cracked it on stage for effect and ran around the audience with a fake chainsaw acting like he was cutting all our legs off while a stage hand chased around behind him shooting him with water from a super soaker.

The devil-man seemed nice, though, and I ended up just feeling sorry for him: He was evidently trying so hard to appear "evil," but he just came off as some hideous joke.

All in all, it was a good evening full of she-males (slightly and more-than-slightly feminine guys wearing makeup and fishnets - YUM!) and hot women dressed in fetish gear. I'll take that any night of the week.

Another good note: The two assholes who were really drunk and started this awful, mean-spirited mosh pit were thrown out on their asses. The bouncers from Beta Bar grabbed the two worst offenders. The first was forcefully made to push the front door open with his face on his way out; the second was dragged out the door backward and kicking and screaming. I hope those jerks learned their lesson about civility. I know it's just a Pigface show, but manners, my friends, are what makes this world go 'round.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is my first visit here, but I will be back soon, because I really like the way you are writing, it is so simple and honest