agnostic horton suicidal misfits

so, saturday was a bit different…

…and it started at a museum, but more about that later.

i have a friend who had never seen the reverend horton heat, but had always wanted to. he was jealous that i had seen him several times, for free, due to a previous job i’d had working concerts for star tickets. he asked me if, the next time i knew they were coming through, i would let him know, so i did. they came out as third in this lineup…

…and he said, “fuck yeah, we’re doing this thing!”, so i made arrangements to take my one saturday off a year (only kidding, i rarely take one even annually…this is probably my seventh in fifteen years) and away we went!

agnostic front – the godfather’s of new york hard core. they’ve been together since 1981. their lead guitarist, vinnie stigma, looks like what i think of when you say the phrase “new york city hard core” to me. he’s sixty-eight years old, and i am now a fan and want to be him when i grow up. no bullshit.

reverend horton heat – texas psychobilly at it’s finest. i’ve never NOT enjoyed watching these two (and whoever’s on drums). every song sounds like it should be the music in a rob zombie film trailer, and i mean that in the best of ways.

suicidal tendencies – this was one of the two i was really looking forward to, and i have to say, i was a bit disappointed. i barely recognized most of the tracks, and while the energy was good, the vocalist just seemed…well…kinda, “off”. before the show started some guys around us were having a conversation i only half caught, but it was about how “it makes a really big difference in how he sings and performs whether he’s on or off his meds…if he’s ‘on’, it’s the best you coulda wanted in high school…but if he’s ‘off’, it pretty much sucks”. i assumed they were talking about glenn danzig, the lead vocalist of the misfits, and considering mike (st vocalist) has never drank or done drugs, it seems like if there was some pharma at play it’d be somewhere online, but i couldn’t find anything. so this teaches us two things…

1. doing a google search for the words “mike suicidal tendencies medication” doesn’t yield much about the vocalist, but does give you a myriad of self help options should you need them.

2. everybody can have a bad night. even jordan missed some shots. their crash and burn moment was “institutionalized”, but maybe he just really needed a pepsi? i was bummed they never played “possessed to skate” but only because the video has been on 120 minutes again so i have had it in my brainus lately.

and finally…

the original misfits – this hit on all cylinders, although i had my doubts at first as glenn seemed really winded after the first couple of songs, but then he apparently caught his second wind and it was ON. every hit. every anthem. i’d seen them in a previous incarnation in the early aughts and they were good, but not great. this was great. their songs always (in my head) screamed for an arena sing along, but as skater kids in the eighties (their logo was the first mural i ever did on a ramp in san marcos) we never coulda seen that almost forty years later they’d be this big (or back together after all the feuds and court cases) yet here we were. a great night. a return to my skater roots. i couldn’t have asked for more.