Saturday, November 20, 2010

Live Review: Grinderman at the 9:30 Club, 11-16-10

My apologies about the lack of posts the past few days. God damn real job keeps getting in the way of my flourishing, unpaid life as a blogger. Damn you, all consuming need to make money and live high on the hog! Oh well. i do have a LOT of toys, so what can you do?

Anyway. Grinderman. This past week at the 9:30.

Grinderman is loud,raw and raucous. The music is glorious and fierce and angry and sexy all at once. For a bunch of guys in their 50s, to say they've got more energy than men half their age is to give far too much credit to the younger generation.

Up until recently, Nick Cave had a prominent place on my "get to know his music" list, but i couldn't seem to find an entry point album that did it for me. Well, the debut album took care of that, and the show cemented my new love. Looking like the late night act at Satan's seedier nightclub, the men rocked hard for a good hour and a half. Leaning slightly more heavily on Grinderman II, Grinderman was well represented nonetheless. Following a teasingly tense version of "No Pussy Blues," Cave explained "That song's not about not getting pussy. It's about not having pussy." If that wasn't the highlight line of the night, i don't know what was. The band, particularly Warren Ellis, seemed posessed for the duration of the evening, creating some sort of distorted, future blues that bespoke the follies of growing old and yearning for youth, not wanting to be forgotten and wanting to get laid. Following a nearly half hour encore, the band closed with their eponymous single, closing the night on the same crazed, serpentine note they'd enforced all the night long.

If given the opportunity, go see these old men show what Jack White aspires to and what the world would have been happy with had Bonham lived and Zep took the music to its natural next level. Just leave your young women at home.

No comments: