On April 7th I
attended a High On Fire show at Club Congress here in Tucson, with
Godhunter and Saviours opening. I'm racking my brain for the last
time I went to a metal show in the last, say, six or so years, and
I'm drawing a blank unless I count the last time I saw High On Fire,
and that was back in 2007. Although I love the genre, for one reason
or another I've never really attended that many metal shows, which
owes as much to the fact that I'm cheap as it does to opportunity.
In my home town of
Mount Vernon, between about '88 to '91, there used to be a band
called Cranial Decomposition whose sound was equal parts metal and
punk, and I'm pretty sure they have the distinction of being the
first metal band I ever saw live. I was sixteen, drunk on whiskey
I'd chugged in the bushes outside Hillcrest Lodge with a couple of
friends, and probably stoned as well. As that show also had my first
mosh pit, I put out the best effort I could by running around in
circles like a fool until one of the buddies of a band member's older
brother, a leather-jacketed guy in his twenties and at least twice my
size, slammed into me going the opposite way, knocking me clean off
my feet and sending me in an arc into the welcoming arms of some
people on the periphery of the pit, who then shoved me off of them
like a sack of potatoes they hated.
I'm in my early
forties now and the evening of April 7th reminded me of something I
knew unconsciously going in but realize with complete clarity now—I'm
getting a little old for live metal. Oh, I can watch it, there's no
personal harm in that, but I sure as hell can't get in there and
mosh. No fucking way. I didn't try—I wasn't about
to try—but I saw enough to confirm I'd made the wisest choice.
Things started off
calmly with the first two bands, both of which were loud and
energetic. The audience stood and watched, bobbed their heads to the
beat, drank their respective beverages in peaceful contemplation.
Well, I thought, this sure is a sedate crowd. The last time I'd seen
High On Fire a small but insistent portion of the crowd had been
insane. One guy did spinning karate kicks, and a
couple of other guys I'm pretty sure went outside to do meth, because
they left the club crazy and came back a few minutes later crazy as
fuck. Karate guy got shoved to the ground by a big frat dude
mid-spin kick, people were ejected from the club (Plush, now The
Flycatcher, which no longer books very interesting shows), I'm almost
positive blood was shed.
But these folks
were chill. I assumed, based on the evidence around me, that the
tenor of this show was going to be different.
Then High On Fire
took the stage. They played their first fast song of the set. A
little guy standing behind me took off his t-shirt, tied it around
his head and face like he was planning to carry out an anarchist
black mask direct action, and ran full tilt into the part of the
crowd nearest the stage, swinging his arms, shoving, jumping like an
overcaffeinated chimpanzee. A few minutes passed and more people
joined in, until before long there was what appeared, for all intents
and purposes, to be a brawl happening in the middle of the club
floor. To the right of the stage was an emergency exit with one of
those push handles that runs the width of the door; more than once
people were pushed into it, sending them out of the club and onto the
sidewalk. An older guy a few feet from me (who am I kidding? He was
probably exactly my age) sneered when somebody knocked into him and
made him spill his beer on himself. Crowd surfers who wound up on
stage got picked up by roadies of intimidating strength and placed
back into the fray. I kept my hands up and prepared to repel any
errant moshers who might come my way.
Like an idiot, I
forgot to bring earplugs with me. I'd thought of it and then
promptly dismissed the thought from my mind. A High On Fire album is
like a power drill the size of an elephant boring a hole into the
middle of your forehead. Live, that drill grows into a whale. Lead
guitarist Matt Pike's sound is as muddy and sludgy as anything I've
ever heard (no surprise from a former member of ΓΌber-sludge
metal band Sleep) and comes at you like a hail of cinderblocks.
After the show I heard nothing but a high dentist drill whine in both
of my ears and the very muffled sounds of the street. When I walked
by people I strained to hear bits of conversation and caught nothing
but what sounded like a radio station broadcasting from fifty miles
away.
The other annoying
thing is I walked right past Matt Pike on the sidewalk outside of
Club Congress and didn't say hi. Chalk it up to being mostly deaf
and not wanting to make an ass of myself. It was just one of many
times I've been within feet of someone whose work I admire and didn't
say anything. When Built To Spill played at Dry River here in town,
I was five feet from Doug Martsch and, as with Mr. Pike, didn't say a
damn thing. Because I'm sure to run into him again. At the Gastown
Pub in Vancouver back in '95 where the Melvins were playing with
Godhead Silo I could have reached out and touched Buzz Osbourne while
he was playing pool, but thought better of it. I've always wanted to
tell that guy how much his music has meant to me; it actually would
mean more to say it now than it would have then. At least I got to
interview Dale (and the bassist they were recording with at the time,
who came off as a dick) for the 'zine a friend and I were doing. I
attended two days of a John Woo film festival at the Seattle Art
Museum in, I think, '94, and while other people got in line to have
him sign their stuff I hung back and wimped out. Much less
importantly, I saw actor Mandy Patinkin (you might remember him as
Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride, or the bald
alien detective Sam Francisco in Alien Nation) at the
Tucson International Airport as I was coming off a flight. I've
never wanted to meet him, but still...celebrity sighting. Oh, and
when Elmore Leonard spoke at the University of Arizona Festival of
Books, he stuck around to sign books and, as with John Woo, I didn't
make the effort. He's dead now, so I know for a fact that was my one
shot to meet him. One of these days I'll get over my sheepishness
and just say “Hey, I love your work” to somebody I think deserves
to hear it, even if they turn out to be an entitled douche who hears
that all the time.
So, if you're Matt
Pike, and you happen to read this—Love your work.
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