Prepared and hyped for Atari Teenage Riot, I was ready to hear loud fast music. What a treat it was that the fun started long before ATR ever came on. Other girls have done this, face it, MANY other boys have done this too, but something just chimes right for Lolita Storm.
I can’t tell a single song title from Lolita Storm’s set. Indeed I can claim to know pretty much nothing about them at all. From my bad vantage point behind hordes of too tall men all I could see was a blonde girl and a brunette girl, singing, flailing, screaming at a sea of shell-shocked boys, and I could only see these girls as they caught vertical uplifts and some air. What I could hear was a divine speed beat of lovely female driven throb. So good for girls to do this. So good that these girls were banging out hardcore noise as well as anyone could. Made me remember fifteen years ago, X, Fetchin’ Bones and Cramps.
As entertaining as these girls were, the audience full of males made for fun visuals as well. My neighbor to the right stood with his mouth open in confusion or disbelief while his friend looked around jerkily, as if he were afraid to look at the stage. One boy chewed away at his fingernails for the entire set. Alternatively girls in the audience were moving, bouncing, smiling, screeming. Why was it that all these boys were so struck still? And at the end of the day, who cares really? I thought it was great fun-boys or girls, and that is after all, what we go to shows for anyway. Lolita Storm was a perfect rev-up energy choice to get any audience keyed up for ATR.
When Atari Teenage Riot appear, it’s to a crowd kept on tenterhooks with a DJ beat cocktail of splurging HipHop and the like, including an extended Drill’n’Bass Elvis cover to get the mood right. Down the front, the aluminium-shredder snares tear over the crowd, the bass booms up slowly, and the riot beats begin. Alec Empire and Hanin Elias are on top ranting form tonight, laying into the worshipping of the Union Jack and Britpop in the UK, but DJ Carl Crack is absent, having apparently attempted to exit through a plane door (while still in flight), and has been hospitalized with cannabis psychosis. Still, three’s enough to whip up and bait the crowd, and when “Revolution Action” kicks in it’s exactly like being pressed up against a wall of human flesh while being beaten about the ears with a barrage of screeching noise – ‘cos it’s what happening, and it’s euphoric fun.
Stage-diving doesn’t really get out of hand, and the security (there to protect the audience from ATR, Empire informs them) are surprisingly helpful to the crowd-surfers. Song crashes into gaps of noise and squalls of feedback, and angry storming on and off stage by the band as they demand a riot and some British-based DHR artists. Oh, and wiping out the Nazis, which really does seem like a good idea, despite ATR’s avowed non-violence – apparently – not to forget the “Death of A President DIY”. Despite the surges of flailing limbs and near-tramplings (thanks Alec for the hand back up!), it’s a huge rush being in such a frenzied but ultimately good-natured crowd – but what would the point be in (presumably) anti-Nazis mashing up each other after all?
So the huge amounts of sweat spread liberally around, the lasting bruises and the endangered species known as the crew of the merchandise stall afterwards, (not to forget the ringing ears), they’re all part of the event, but what’s best not forgotten is the message – Nazis are the enemy as much as capitalism, and witnessing ATR live rams that home ten times as much as on record.
–LN99 & Freq1C-
