Jesus Lizard Head Over The Edge

The Lizard let 'em have it.

Addicted To Noise East Coast correspondent Kembrew McLeod reports: In the tradition of naming all of their album titles using four letter words, last Tuesday's (Jan. 22) performance by The Jesus Lizard conjured up a few more four letter words throughout the show. Whatever those words were will be left up to the reader's imagination.

This particular show at Pearl Street in Northampton, MA was the first time I had seen the band in over six years, even though I have had many opportunities to see them since then. You see, the first time I saw The Jesus Lizard was when they opened for Sonic Youth on the Goo tour. That performance was an awe-inspiring show, and I have been afraid to see them again for fear of a performance that didn't live up to that first one. That nigh, six years ago, Steve Albini was behind the mixing board and the sound was awesome. The bass penetrated my heart and shook my chest. The music was so powerful it seemed like any moment I would be knocked off my feet and pinned to the back wall. And David Yow was blasted out of his mind leaning, spitting, and sweating on the audience. During the set some frat guys with baseball caps who most likely came to the show because Sonic Youth's "Kool Thing" was getting a lot of air play on MTV were heckling the band and calling David Yow a faggot. The next thing I knew Yow had pulled out his dick and urinated all over the guys.

Now that's a lot to live up to and while the Northampton, MA show wasn't the stuff of legends it was a rock solid performance that did nothing to damage future memories of the band. Even though all of their albums are crisply recorded and perfectly capture the heavy-as-shit rhythm section of bassist David Sims and (recently departed) drummer Mac McNeilly, you really need to see them live to get the full experience. Beginning with Liar's "Puss" (also their contribution to the Touch & Go Nirvana split single), the band was merely warming up for things to come. Yow acted like a spring that gradually got tighter and tighter, finally flying off into the air in random directions. Spitting every other minute Yow would alternately lean into the people in the front, stumble across the stage, or leap into the audience dragging the mic into the crowd nearly (but unintentionally) strangling a couple people in the process.

This was the David Yow I remembered from the aforementioned show. This was the man who helped twist my childhood imagination when I stumbled across the back cover of his old band's (Scratch Acid) record which read "Mary had a little drug problem." It had such an effect on me I can still remember standing there at the record store chuckling twelve years later. "This next song," he said after "Fly on the Wall" from 1994's Down, "is for all those out there who have either killed or fucked a cop." Soon after the band launched into "Mouth Breather," another song that showed off the muscle of their pile driver rhythm section. Muscle is a telling word to use, because it highlights the unapologetically masculine bent of this band. Even though Yow may make me uncomfortable sometimes, it is refreshing to see The Jesus Lizard in action not because they are being fueled by testosterone, but pure honesty. There is nothing fabricated about this band.

Another interesting part of The Jesus Lizard package is the not-so-latent homoeroticism in the relationship between Yow and the (mostly male) audience. A few times during the night, for instance during "More Beautiful Than Barbie," he bent over inviting the audience to simulate sodomy on him, and a couple guys obliged him. Later, at the end of the show, Yow responded to a guy who was screaming throughout the night "I want to suck your nipples!" The shirtless ringleader shot back, "You can suck my nipples, but I'd really like you to suck my dick," as he unzipped his fly and let it hang out.

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