Contributed by Townswoman Carly.
Perusing through the Rock Town Hall Glossary, and coming across the amusing and very apt definition and description for practitioners of Holstering, I was reminded of live shows that I’ve seen, or rather musicians that I’ve witnessed, on the fantastic Road to Rock Recovery during a show.
Instances of Great Rock Recovery that I’ve personally witnessed include the stellar Plimsouls performance at The North Star Bar in Philly in 2006, where in great rock n’ roll fashion, during the song “Million Miles Away”, Peter Case strummed his guitar so hard that the strap on his guitar came unfastened and he had to hold it to his thigh throughout the rest of the song until he could get the strap onto his guitar again – he was rocking that hard – forget the strap! Play that song! Had this happened in Valley Girl too before they got the right cut?
Another example was when Radiohead were touring for The Bends and played in Detroit, Michigan. Jonny Greenwood’s guitar amp blew out the electricity for the rest of the instruments on stage during one of their songs and everything else but the microphones near the front of the stage went blank, in the middle of all of this, Thom Yorke looked out into a screaming throng of 1000 fans for a blank moment, back to his drummer waiting for him to launch into his next epiphany – shrugged his shoulders, made a few very British remarks and grabbed his acoustic instead. And with one blue-ish spotlight on him alone sang the wailing electric guitar parts along with the lyrics to the song until Jonny Greenwood and the rest of the crew could figure that electricity thing out. Now that’s my ticket’s worth, thank you very much – forget the extras.
During Daisy Chainsaw’s wild performance of “Pink Flower”, (on tour with Walt Mink for “Miss Happiness” in 1992), lead singer Katie Jane Garside began the song by dropping a few beats on us. The beats that Crazy Katie dropped on us were the unfortunate sounds of Katie konking what looked to be a metal tea pot to her head while rocking out on the microphone. The only things that I could certainly ascertain, were that
- a) She really had gone off the deep end
- b) She was looking more and more like Sinead O’Connor with her head shaved like that – were those crazy dreads in the video just a wig?
Flickering through my mind were thoughts like, “I hope that poor girl recovers – she’s going to put herself in the hospital doing things like that.” and, “Wow, great dress!”
Maybe you’ve been in a band, been in the middle of drumming through the woopety jug-like sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators’ “You’re Gonna Miss Me” and had one of your drumsticks click out of your hand and roll halfway down the pavement and onto a busy main street because you were playing so exuberantly with your back out of an open garage door in a punk rock bar and then made that split second decision: “Do I run down the pavement to get that stick, or do I continue to play with one hand? a hand and a stick? Both hands and no sticks?!” And maybe the crowd roared in applause because this was your first show and because you were playing the 13th Floor Elevators and because it was you who had to run down for that stick and not them, thanking the Rock Gods that it hadn’t actually rolled into traffic; if only, TO FINISH THAT SONG. Okay, so that was me, and now I make bloody sure that I always have more than two sticks within reach, but the Rock Recovery went pretty well at that moment, I thought.
Maybe you’ve witnessed someone else on the Road to Rock Recovery as well? I want to hear about it!
I’ve got a good one of these. I went to see the Meat Puppets on the day that D. Boon of Minutemen died (both SST bands.) Midway thru the show Curt dedicated a song to him and launched into a blistering version of Split Myself In Two. He’s screaming so hard (and possilby added by some nasal additive..) his nose starts gushing blood. He leans into the mic to deliver the title line, blood spills on the mic and delivers a highly audible shock right to his mouth. He’s thrown back on the ground. Players stop. His brother heads towards him. Audience gasps. Curt gets up, wipes his nose on his shirt, looks up and says “I know that was you D. and fuck you.” and they picked up where they left off. His mic was fried though so he had to share with Chris until the next song.
Once at a Pere Ubu show David Thomas stopped the band a good minute into a song to scold himself onstage for not giving the song his all. He apologized to both the band and the audience, gulped down a glass of whatever amber-colored whiskey or brandy he had partked on a nearby stool, and counted the song off again, wherein he did, indeed, give it his all.
I can’t remember if I’ve ever done anything heroic onstage to salvage a performance in midstream. Damn!
New York Dolls, Camden, last year: About midway through their set, during “Punishing World”, all of the onstage power went out. The drummer kept the beat going, and Johansen got the crowd to chant “Punishing World” over and over again. One by one, the other members of the Dolls picked up sets of drumsticks and started hitting various parts of the drum kit. After about 2 minutes of this, the power came back. The drummer kept playing, the rest of the band put down their drumsticks and picked up their instruments, and, after a four-count, they finished the song. Easily the best power outage I’ve ever seen.
The original vuh-deo for “You Shook Me All Night Long” was filmed (with one camera, in one take) backstage somewhere, under fluorescent lights in, like, a stairwell or something. Anyhow, these are certainly minor heroics, but AC/DC blasts through the song from one end to the other, and ol’ Malcolm busts the low E string in the process. He just grabs the fucker, yanks it so hard it drops three feet below the neck of his guitar, and goes on banging his way until the song finishes. I saw this video in the early days of MTV, and was mesmerized — it was some of the first “real” rock and roll I ever witnessed. I so hoped it would show up on the, uh, “Family Jewels” DVD set, but it’s not. I’ve only ever seen it the one time, back in like 1982 or something. Maybe it’s on Youtube.
(Mind you, if I ever found it, I’m certain it wouldn’t be as cool as I remember it. Sigh.)
Wow – great adds everyone! I’m really glad that I wrote that – thanks for sharing the very cool stories, completely awesome! I had one more: my friend Jon who is in a band from Ottawa called Rhume and runs his own record label (Kelp Records) is a crazy drummer. A few summers ago they came to visit and played at a local place called The Press Club in Windsor, ON. It must have been the end of the set because Jon is Rhume’s lead singer, but somehow during his furious playing of the drums, his sticks got cracked on the rim of a drum, and he gets a partial cracked drumstick lodged into his forehead. As we all continued to stare, (like, is this for real) Jon continued to play. And at the end of the set after he came over, we talked to him and he was like, ‘I know, it was unreal. I just pulled it out. It didn’t really hurt because I didn’t really notice. Isn’t that nuts?’ I think we all intoned: ‘Groooossss….’ But it was so surreal seeing it hanging there while he played!
I saw Joe Jackson, circa 1990, playing a warm up show (before recording Laughter and Lust) at Toad’s Place in New Haven, CT. Around the middle of the show Joe was playing the maracas during a cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Oh Well” and he was cracking them together so hard he broke them both open. Dust and beads flew everywhere, but Joe kept slapping the remnants of those maracas together in time to the tune.