Archive for May, 2009

I became a fan of The Prodigy when I first heard a song of theirs in the video game Wipeout XL but I never had a chance to see them live until last week when they rolled through town to play at the Congress.

The doors were supposed to open at 7pm but I was tipped off that The Prodigy wouldn’t be going on until 11:30pm so I opted not to have to hang around the club for four hours which meant I also missed the opening act, Tiga, so I can’t tell you anything about  it. When I did arrive there was a steady stream of people entering the club so I think the word got out pretty quick about the late start time. When I got into the theater I noticed that the place was pretty full of fans eager for the band to start playing.

About 20 minutes after I unpacked my camera gear the DJ stopped playing, the lights dimmed and The Prodigy started filing out on stage. Their setup consisted of the main muscial guy behind a rig of laptops and various equipment, a live drummer, a live guitar player and the two singers. There was also tons of strobes and flashing colored lights that never let up, which made the task of photographing the band rather challenging but certainly was fitting ambiance for the style of music the band plays.

They opened with a song from the new album, Invaders Must Die and the crowd instantly started dancing. Both singers were running and dancing all over the stage and barely stood still. In fact those two guys must burn about 5000 calories each per show considering they never stopped moving, jumping up and down, and dancing the entire time while the band played. From there they went straight into “Their Law” which is one of my favorite songs of theirs. The crowd were dancing even more than during the first song and from there it was a mix of newer songs plus some of the crowd favorites like “Breathe”, “Poison (my personal favorite)”, “Firestarter” and near the end of their set they played “Smack my Bitch Up” which resulted in nearly everyone in the crowd dancing to.

The band came out for an encore which consisted of a few songs including “Diesel Power” which has such powerful bass I thought plaster was going to start falling from the ceiling. Everywhere I looked people were dancing in place, or with each other. Looking around it was a pretty diverse audience too, not your typical show crowd which I found pretty fascinating. After close to 90 minutes the show was over, people were drenched in sweat and The Prodigy put on one hell of a show.

It was an old school punk weekend last week as I went to two shows in two nights. Saturday night I went over to Reggie’s to see two more old(er) Chicago punk rock bands: The Effigies and Life Sentence. Originally The Freeze were supposed to headline this show but sadly they canceled their tour which means I have no idea if I’ll ever get to see them play. It also made the sting of choosing this show over seeing Wolves in the Throne Room play the same night hurt a little more. Ah well, the curiosity of seeing Eric B’s new version of Life Sentence was enough to warrant the choice in shows this evening.

M.O.T.O.

M.O.T.O.

M.O.T.O.

This show started really early and due to being sidetracked by skating, I completely missed the first band and arrived in the middle of the M.O.T.O.’s set.  I’ve seen them play quite a few times so I knew exactly what to expect which is short and catchy garagey punk songs. They really have a knack for writing catchy songs and are always enjoyable to see play live. I felt bad for them since when I arrived they were playing to a pretty empty club. I’m guessing the nice weather and early start time kept the people away.

Life Sentence

Life Sentence

Life Sentence

Next up was Life Sentence. I caught a glimpse of Eric B as he said hello to me as I was walking in the club and I have to say that he looks like he lived every story you heard about him. Had it not been for seeing a fairly recent photo of him on myspace I wouldn’t have recognized him at all.  He looks like he had a lot of hard years on the street and he was even sporting a black eye.  On stage with him was a collection of musicians who as far as I know hadn’t done time in Life Sentence at all in the old days pre or post lawsuit.

Life Sentence

Life Sentence

Life Sentence

The crowd had only increased in size a little bit since I arrived which I found odd. I thought for sure the curiosity factor of seeing Life Sentence would have brought a whole bunch of people out to the club.  The band tried to stall as much as possible before starting their set but then they had no choice but to go on. Eric immediately demanded that everyone come up in front and made some other small talk and then the band finally started playing. I didn’t recognize the song they opened with but it sounded a lot better than I feared. A couple songs later and I recognized my favorite Life Sentence song, “Problems”. In between songs Eric was constantly telling the crowd to dance, move, have fun and that it really didn’t matter because they already had their money. He also was constantly using the term, “nigga please” which I wasn’t much of a fan of.

Life Sentence

Life Sentence

Life Sentence

Musically the band were pretty good and it was obvious they practiced a bit before this show as they did a good job performing the songs. I couldn’t help but feel while watching Eric that I was watching the punk rock version of “The Wrestler” and it made me a little sad. Eric was very much like the punk rock Randy “The Ram” who was up on that stage playing these old songs after living a hard life because that’s all he has. I was looking at him trying to picture the guy I saw in that same position 22 years ago when I last saw them play and every once in awhile I caught a glimpse of him but overall the experience left me with a strange uneasy feeling.

The Effigies set up their equipment and then some strange young fellow got up on stage and sat down and attempted to entertain the crowd with some really bad “comedy” and equally bad songs. At least I think he was trying to be funny but it failed miserably and I was surprised no one in the crowd actually left during this aural assault. During his second attempt at a “song” Paul from The Effigies tapped him on the shoulder and had him stop and leave the stage as the band picked up their equipment to finally start playing.

The Effigies

The Effigies

The Effigies

The Effigies

The Effigies finally started playing and I forget what song they started with, but whichever one it was sounded as good as always and made for a strong start. The band played their usual set of older material and stuff from their last album, but this time they mixed in a couple of new songs too! The new songs sounded excellent and leaves me hopeful that they’ll record another record sometime before the end of the decade. The crowd in attendance seemed to be enjoying themselves, especially Eric from Life Sentence who was front and center the entire time singing along to the old songs and enjoying the new ones too. The band played a strong set that ended with “Body Bag” and then came out for a couple song encore as well.

I found it funny that I hadn’t been to the Metro in years and then all of a sudden I find myself going there twice in as many weeks. This time I made the trek over there to see two of Chicago’s finest punk bands: Pegboy and The Bollweevils (the latter being my motivation to attend). It was a good old fashioned punk rock show at a venue that used to play host to some of the best shows this city had ever seen “back in the day”.

Anxiety High

Anxiety High

Anxiety High

There was a steady stream of people constantly filing in the club when I arrived which was shortly before the first band, Anxiety High took the stage. They played some punchy melodic punk rock that Chicago has been famous for. Their songs were fairly catchy and for not having been a band for very long they had some pretty solid material.

After a pretty fast set change everyone’s favorite Rock and Roll bartender, Angelena came onstage to introduce two burlesque dancers who would be entertaining the crowd. They did their thing one at a time to a surprisingly apathetic crowd. I felt bad for the ladies because the crowd didn’t really pop for them at all, the people I could hear talking behind me actually seemed rather annoyed by the whole thing. Weird.

The Bollweevils

The Bollweevils

The Bollweevils

The Bollweevils

As soon as the ladies finished their business, The Bollweevils took the stage. This would be the highlight of the night for me because they were the reason I wanted to come to this show. After their last two performances I was really excited to see them again. They didn’t let me down and in fact this may have been the best of their shows since they re-formed. The band played some new material along with many of the hits and the new stuff is every it as good as anything they’ve done in the past. I find it pretty amazing how it feels like they never stopped playing and they just picked right up where they left off. I really hope they find the time to record the new songs sometime soon because a new Bollweevils record would have a happy home in the Vault.

Pegboy

Pegboy

Pegboy

The already large crowd seemed to inflate to an even larger size as Pegboy were setting up their equipment. The last time I saw them play was at the Touch and Go Records anniversary festival and they really weren’t very good that day. In fact in recent history I’ve seen more bad Pegboy shows than good ones. They always seemed to be sloppy and Larry would get too drunk and run out of breath. I was hoping that after taking a few years hiatus from seeing them play that this time I’d get a “good” Pegboy show.

Pegboy

Pegboy

Pegboy

When I saw them bring out a bottle of some hard liquor and set it on the drum riser, I thought my fears would be realized. I also however noticed a video crew preparing to film the show so I thought maybe there was hope. Fortunately there was validity to that hope as Larry was not already plastered when the band came out on stage. He started talking about all the shows he saw at Metro back in the old punk days and a couple of minutes later the band started playing and Larry was standing on the barricade leaning into the crowd so they can sing along.

Pegboy

Pegboy

Pegboy

The band sounded really tight and energetic. John Haggerty has such a unique and power guitar sound that it really knows no equal and it was spot-on this evening. I don’t know the bass players name but he was moving all over the place and full of energy too. Larry was quite coherent and it was the best singing I’ve heard him do in a decade. The certainly chose the right show to film. The crowd wasted no time starting a huge mosh pit and there were crowd surfers all over the place. I got kicked in the head by one who got tossed over the railing into the barricade up front but luckily I didn’t get clipped that hard so I was able to shake it off.

The band played about an hour and during one point Darryl from the Bollweevils came out and they did a couple of Bad Brains covers. Normally I’d be against such things but he actually sang those songs far better than H.R. did two years ago when the Bad Brains headlined Riot Fest! After that the band did a couple songs for an encore and then it was time to go.

It was a fun evening in an old school punk rock kind of way at the Metro this evening. I was really glad I drove down in the rain to go to the show and I hope to catch the bands again sometime in the near future.

More photos after the jump…

The Bollweevils

The Bollweevils

The Bollweevils

The Bollweevils

The Bollweevils

Pegboy

Pegboy

Pegboy

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Electronic music heavyweights The Prodigy have returned with new material and are also on tour! They’ve just released a new video for the single, “Warrior’s Dance” from their new album, Invaders Must Die, which you can watch right here:

The band is also currently on tour of the United States and they are coming to Chicago this weekend!

I’ll be shooting it so check back here for the results and review next week if you are unable to attend.

Metal Machine Music:  Nine Inch Nails and the Industrial Uprising – DVD
Sexy Intellectual/MVD Visual

My love for industrial music in the late 1980s/early 1990s led me to discover Nine Inch Nails when they released their first single. A few years later NIN played at Lollapalooza and exploded, thus becoming a household name and one of the biggest bands around at the time. What many NIN fans probably don’t know however is the story of the industrial music scene and how it gave birth to NIN and that is what this DVD attempts to rectify.

The documentary starts out by touching briefly on how the early punk rock movement changed the face of music at the time in the 1970s.  It quickly jumps to how “industrial” music was started and does a good job telling that history and giving a lot of details about bands such as Throbbing Gristle (Genesis P Orridge was interviewed as part of this film) and Einsturzende Neubauten. As it travels down the lineage of the industrial music scene it talks a fair amount about Skinny Puppy and Ministry, the two bands who were perhaps the biggest influence on one Trent Reznor and led to him leaving his previous bands and starting Nine Inch Nails.

At this point they begin the extremely thorough and detailed history of Nine Inch Nails. They cover every aspect of the band forming, recording, signing record contracts, releasing records, etc. It is told in order and I found the stories about Trent and the process of how each record was recorded totally fascinating. As this is one of those “unauthorized biographies” there is no participation in this documentary by Trent himself so the story is told by former band mates, friends, and music industry people. There are live clips recorded throughout the years as well as some older interview footage of the band from various points in their career. The story is so well told that direct participation from Reznor himself isn’t something that you notice as missing.

The Documentary is quite long, clocking in at two hours and 15 minutes but it didn’t feel that long because the story was very interesting and a long time fan of NIN, I was very interested in learning a lot of history about the band that I wasn’t aware of. Bonus material consists of interview footage of Gennis P. Orridge telling the story about how Industrial music got its name.

Fans of NIN interested in the history of the band and the genre of music that birthed it would be advised to pick this up as it’s a fascinating story and a good way to kill a couple of hours on a rainy day.

Related links:

Order the DVD from amazon.com

Sexy Intellectual

MVD Visual

Attention NOFX fans and collectors of Mystic Records, as you may know the NOFX – Maximumrocknroll LP has come out on a variety of colors, but what you don’t know is now there is a purple vinyl version of it.

This pressing won’t be released to the general public until late summer however I was given a small batch of them as an exclusive to sell in the Punk Vault shop. This is the only place you can aquire this purple vinyl edition so completists may wan to act fast before they are gone.