The Metro, Chicago
11 November 1998
There I was, freezing my proverbials off outside the Metro club here in da windy city. My cigarette was burning ridiculously quickly as the icy north breezes fanned it and made me all annoyed… but say la vie (as the French c’est). I was waiting in line to see a line up which included – in order of appearance – Twilight Circus of Dub (i.e. Legendary Pink Dots’ percussion and bass man), The Edward Ka-Spel Psychedelic Orchestra (i.e. Pink Dots front man and synth driver) and The Legendary Pink Dots (no surprises there then).
The manic chappie Ryan Moore who makes up the TCOD whirled dervishly round the stage like… something or other… Oh, I know! A whirling dervish. He commanded us to “Relax” and played Theremin at us whilst deep bass noises emanated from the sound system. Then, wrapping feather boas round several members of the audience down front (including yours truly, the bearded foreigner) he hit us over the head with a large foam hammer whilst screaming “Relax dammit!” at the top of his voice. Around us the air was filled with loops of his voice insisting we “Relax” and strange percussive rhythms which wouldn’t have sounded too out of place in the stone circle at Glastonbury at about 3am Saturday.
Messrs. Ka-Spel and Silverman then took the stage to rapturous applause and a distinct jangling of silver jewelry. Not being too familiar with his solo stuff, I didn’t recognise any of the songs; but I bloody well intend to next time. Laws of acoustics were ignored as someone let slip the dogs of sonic mayhem – Ka-Spel’s vocal contortions as he screamed “The Flesh Parade” over and over and over were simultaneously intimidating and hypnotic. Striking his keyboard as though it had done him some grievous wrong, he combined with the sinister knob-twiddling of The Silverman to produce a soundscape which was truly unearthly. It suited the lyrics perfectly – it was like someone had taken the raw in-yer-facedness of Throbbing Gristle, added the disregard for convention of Faust, and thrown in basic stage-weirdness of Julian Cope, then wrapped it all up in Sean Hughes with a hangover.
Suddenly, whilst my ear-drums were still vibrating with Ka-Spel’s shrieks and the sonic assaults of a battery of synthesisers and all manner of electronic gadgetry, it all stopped… and a quiet song of lost love and hopelessness floated from the stage. Ka-Spel’s voice crackling with despair and a cynical refusal to accept that the world could ever treat him any better. It was a tour de force already and the main event hadn’t even begun – then it did.
Ka’Spel left the stage in a volley of feedback and disturbingly unidentifiable samples, and returned within minutes. This time he was accompanied by the full line-up of musical terrorists that is The Legendary Pink Dots – the flamboyantly be-hatted Nils van Hoernblower had a quite startling collection of horns to blow; a vast bass-sax that looked like you could happily move in and raise a family amidst its labyrinthine depths, and a group of progressively smaller wind instruments which gave the overall impression of being some form of bizarre musical equivalent of those Russian dolls that live within one another in an orgy of decreasing returns. The percussionist Moore was back, this time strapped safely into his bass guitar and never too far from the drum kit into which he leapt at various moments to fire a volley of unexpected noise across the auditorium. Guitarist Atwyn von Trippenhof, who stood mostly at the back and – to be honest – was all but obscured by my location, two feet from the two feet of Phil Silverman – so I can’t really say much about him.And, of course, Ka’Spel and Silverman… with not a how’s-yer-father to be heard, they launched into the Dots set, and Phuq me! What a set!
…Our one release is in the fiery furnace…
“Hellsville” was the first recognisable track, after a good ten minutes of discordant noodling on electronics and dark muttering from Ka’Spel. When you listen to the track on Crushed Velvet Apocalypse you often wonder just how much studio tweaking is going on between the microphone and your speaker – surely no human being could make their voice do that! But Ka’Spel does just that: it’s twisted, and it’s kind of worrying; but when he screams “Take us quickly… Take us naaaoooooowwww!” you end up wondering whether he actually is in league with some sort of demonic hellspawn from the n’th dimension – ‘cos it’s sure as Hell not natural to be making that noise with a set of human lungs.The song ended in an explosion of noise which went on and on and on and on whilst Edward roared at the audience and Nils stomped up and down making a god awful racket through two saxes simultaneously – it was orgasmic! – and on it went… and on… Through “Princess Coldheart,” with it’s final verse of “It’s touching… So touching,” elevated to a pinnacle of irony wrapped in sarcasm and dripping in cynicism. “Green Gang” was suitably sinister with “Baby-bones in powder piles, mile after mile,” ramming home the political agenda as though we needed reminding that there’s a whole lot of anti-fascist, anti-nazi stuff going on in Ka’Spel’s lyric sheet.
About half way through the set, we were greeted to an extended anti-meat eating discourse as Nils wandered round through the audience wearing a set of Orbital head-lights and crooning in a rather Lounge manner on an alto-sax. Phil was twiddling knobs and making strange 50’s sci-fi noises whilst Edward spoke about encountering a planet with people just like us -and upon closer inspection noticing that lots of these people were eating things that used to be alive. The soliloquy went on for a while and ended with a neat dig at a famous chain of fast-food restaurants. It went on, through “Madame Guillotine” and then a plaintive cry of “Imagine there’s no heaven” led us towards the final encore of “Andromeda Suite” which went on forever, an eternity that ended. Then we all shuffled out into the cold again where my cigarettes smoked themselves, but it didn’t annoy me this time. I’d just witnessed God on drugs, and Man does he rock!
–grufty jim–
