if you're a really serious music fan, you can likely point to a handful of acts over the course of your life that have acted as epiphanies for you, that have really made you see the world differently. my list begins when i was pretty young and runs through a number of successful alternative rock bands [REM (89-91), nirvana (91-93), the smashing pumpkins (93-95), nine inch nails (94-96)] before absolutely plateauing with skinny puppy, over about 96-99. the next thing that slapped me upside the head was gybe's moya in early '99. but, skinny puppy were the band as i was going through the portal of mid adolescence and entering into adulthood. before puppy, music was formative; after puppy, it was more of a process of identification. it's very much the pivot point between when i was figuring out who i was and when i was pretty sure i knew who i was. as such, there's quite a lot of this band in the core of my being - both musically speaking and ideologically speaking.
while i would have been too young to see them anywhere anyways, the reality is that skinny puppy did not exist during this period. they have toured sporadically since 2000, but i had yet to have an opportunity to see them until now. so, this show was sort of a big deal for me.
they had a guitarist and a drummer with them and consequently focused the setlist around this. this meant that the material was largely from records like rabies and the process, which feature more prominent guitar work than some of the other records. while this is only one facet of a band that has several facets, one can only facilitate so many facets at one time. i'd have loved to sit there for six hours as they ran through everything they ever did, and maybe the odd tear garden & download tune, but that's not reasonable. the truth is that focusing on the drums/guitar aspect is maximizing their appeal as a live rock band, and that's perfectly understandable. it would have maybe been nice to see something like the center bullet, circustance or jackhammer mixed up in there somewhere, but i had a great time nonetheless.
here is an actual complete show:
it's less that the show was over earlier than i expected and more that it started earlier than i expected. it was doors at 7:00, and the band was on some time around 9:00. they actually played for close to two hours. but, the bar closed down and started pushing people out around 11:00, which left me stuck outside in pontiac for five and a half hours. if they had come on at 11:00 and finished around 1:00, as i was expecting, and then left the bar open until at least 2:30, maybe pushing 3:00, i would have only really needed to procrastinate for about an hour.
as it is, i hung around outside for a bit, went to a gay bar for a few hours and then just hung out with some random kids sitting around smoking in the parking lot. i was starting to freeze over by the time the bus finally showed up, and ready to collapse when i finally got back to canada at about 7:00 am.
attending this concert was a last minute decision that i played over in my mind repeatedly. did i really want to go? was it worth the walk? customs? should i stay in and work instead?
i decided to go because i wasn't going to get any meaningful mixing done that night anyways and i felt it should be in the list of shows i've seen. i also decided that i had an obligation to stop by at the christopher bissonnette release party in windsor because release parties for kranky artists don't happen in windsor every day. so, the plan was to stop at the release show for a few minutes, see what it was about and probably catch the 9:30 bus across to detroit. i was expecting to miss the opening act, and maybe some of the second set.
when i got to the release show, i noticed something i hadn't seen before: this bar sells absinthe. i'll acknowledge that my understanding of absinthe was somewhat vague. well, it's not necessary working knowledge on a day-to-day basis, right? i'd heard it was a hallucinogen. i hadn't really looked it up, because i hadn't really been in the opportunity to need to know about it. but, i figure i'm standing in the bar, i should try it...
i asked the bartender what, in hindsight, seem like ridiculous questions.
"i've never done absinthe before, but i've done plenty of mushrooms..."
"....will i be ok to go through customs on the stuff?"
i decide that i'll take a "strong" shot and see how i feel. by the time i'm done, it's clear to me that the release party is just a dj set (which is not my thing....), so i'm out to the noise show.
i must have missed the bus by three minutes; i'm stuck waiting for the 10:00 bus. but, i'm thinking i still have plenty of time to get there, because they'll be on third.
as i'm waiting, i can feel the burn of the vodka, but i'm not feeling any hallucinogenic effects. i do start to feel some waves as i'm walking up gratiot, but they're gone by the time i get to trinosophes....
...where the band is halfway through their set. they played second. fuckers...
i did catch about twenty minutes of what i'm guessing was probably a 30-40 minute set, and the above shot of noise is a decent representation of it. i mean, it's exactly what one would expect, whether they are familiar with vampire belt or merely with corsano and/or nace. it's just raw, unsculpted, jagged sound.
some people were complaining after the show. "that was fucking terrible", one person said. i had to agree, actually. but, see, that's the point. i guess there's a sort of least upper bound on noise, where you don't get more offensive with increasing intensity. this was achieved some time in the 90s; it really hasn't evolved much since. however extreme extreme music gets in the upcoming decades, what the collection of mostly east coast bands that sound similar to vampire belt did then, do now and will do in the future will never lose it's edge in the realm of irritating the uninitiated. it's just past the limit. some people claim it's the most pure form of contemporary punk; i think that this idea is absolute fucking bollocks, but the sentiment has something to it in the sense that it's a "fuck you" that will never lose it's sting. so, you go to the show expecting to enjoy a half hour of absolutely incoherent nonsense. at the same time, you expect that almost nobody else in the audience will enjoy it.
here's a full set, if you dare:
i stayed a few minutes into the next act, mostly because my stomach was hurting from the absinthe, but left fairly briefly in order to go get another shot. understand that i'm still operating under the idea that this is a hallucinogen. i'm feeling like i didn't get enough to get to a peak and need to take another shot before i can come to any conclusions on the value of the drug. the act was mixing horns with theremins; you've heard this before, and you weren't excited when you did.
i didn't even get a vodka buzz off of the second shot. it was just entirely unfelt.
it wasn't until i woke up in the morning that i realized i was operating on bad information. it turns out that absinthe has a chemical called thujone in it that can cause muscle spasms at high doses but is not hallucinogenic. that is, absinthe does not have hallucinogenic properties. it's really just very potent alcohol.
