Terror

Bob Dylan is on the cover of the latest Rolling Stone. His beautiful blue eyes knocking you dead. His beautiful oldness striking you. I started the day by going to a magazine stand. The Dylan interview in the RS was kind of long, so I only browsed through it. In one part he says its a shame how young people disconnect themselves from the world listening to their i-pods or hooked on other electronic devices. I hate it when old people nag about the young and generalize that way. Specially someone like Dylan who, much more than others, helped to bring about this pop world in which we live in. So fuck off. Anyway, this was yesterday.

At night I went to a show in Neumos. The kills were playing with the horrors and the magic wands. I only heard this last band from outside the venue. In front of two gigantic tour buses that were parked on the street. Sipping on a cup of organic peppermint tea which was quite good, quite soothing. I went inside at around 10:30. The place was almost full but nobody except me maybe, was there for the Horrors. The truth was, and I would soon find out, that the headliners have a very diverse group of people in Seattle who follow them.

The Horrors are 5 guys from London. They just put out their second album. Its called Primary Colours. Their first album, Strange House, is very up tempo with wild vocals that are meant to shock you. Their second album is more slow paced, it has a lot of electronic textures and the vocals are slower, more refined. So on this tour the horrors have the difficult task of blending bits and pieces of one album with bits and pieces of the other. I thought they did a good job. On friday night it came out very natural. They started out with the older songs and blended in the new ones, in a faster, less polished manner than can be appreciated on the actual album. The sound system last night didn´t help them at all. It was all distorted and shitty for a while. Then something happened on their closing number, the 8 minute single from Primary Coulours "Sea within a Sea", and the 8 minutes turned into 12 or so. An ugly sounding improvised jam. I was sad that this great song couldn't really be appreciated but even with these sort of adversities, The Horrors tried to take out the energy from a crowd that numbly awaited its american rock and blues heroes. They played as underdogs and they lost in the end. But it didn´t seem to phase them at all, and it was this attitude that really caught my eye. Their lack of faith in triumph, their lack of interest on putting on a great show and making everyone real happy. Their simple experience. Like they´ve been in bad places and a bad night in Seattle wasn't more than needing to stretch a pair of tired legs.

Farris Rotter, the lead singer of the Horrors walked around on stage, a tall guy, always humped over with a crossover hairdo between mop top and plain old punk. He moved in akward spasms, taking off and putting on a leather jacket that was one or two sizes small for him. He seemed to know his voice wasn´t being heard so he would yell and screatch in complete darkness and then chop up the vacant air in front of him with his arms or make menacing cat like claw & paws with his hands. He jumped into the crowd and then walked around some more, he couldnt find himself anywhere but was doing something about it. Doing something about being in the wrong place is probably the best thing you can do in life. The funny looking bassist of the Horrors, Tom Cowan, was another story. He grooved every song with hips, shoulders and neck, moving like a centipede, looking at the crowd dead on. He would switch instruments with keyboard player Spider Webb for the newer songs. Joshua Third, the guitarrist, who is a pretty ugly and has an ugly hairdo seemed for some reason like the nicest, most easy going, open minded person in the entire building. They ended their set and just left. The night was still and young.

And then, after a twenty minutes of people dismantling equipments on stage and setting shit up, the kills came on.

The Kills are a power rock and blues duo. A man and a girl. An older man and a younger girl. A British man and an American girl. Two guitars. Two voices and a drum machine full of effects. Their music isn´t particulary special in any way. Its good. It´s different. Just not special. On stage last night they were kicking ass, according to everyone there. I couldn´t beleive it. Their act consisted of all the old rock and blues show repertoire. Hotel, thats the guys pseudonym, used his guitar as an extension of his phallus, nothing less, nothing more. He stroked it, he pounded it with his fist and he laid it out for all to see while yelling stuff like "Yeah! Come on! I´ve missed you, Seattle!" Surprisingly or maybe not so, most of the men in the audience were enthralled by this behavior. He was wearing a bandana on his neck, real tight jeans and a tight shirt. He had big gym muscles and an Elvis style hairdo. I never expected him to be so macho. VV, that´s the girl, plays this really sexy rock chick act. She's hot. She's cool. Her thin black hair all over her face and neck as she breathes into the microphone as she strokes the mike stand. Like she´s out of control, born for the stage and yet somehow overshadowed by her male counterpart. I could not understand. I like girls who take control of their band. And prior to seeing this show I imagined the kills to be a part man, part girl band, like the White Stripes, but then I see VV getting a guitar neck put to her cheek by Hotel, the dominating male. I couldn't believe it. The kills come out with so much energy. The crowd was loving it. At the very beginning and at the end of each song it was like we were in the KeyArena and not in Neumos. I couldn´t believe it. The kills made rock n roll seem like such an easy thing and therefore I didn't know what I was doing there.

So I left Seattle with them. Squeezed out of the front rows, stepping on people's feet and getting evil looks. I put my head down and found my way to the main corridor which leads you out of Neumos. The bouncer was there talking to someone and then stumbling down from the second floor came a very tall and skinny figure, hunched over, hair all over his face. "Hey man" I said. "You guys are much better than this" Signaling to the air, the music of the kills playing on the other side. "No we're not" he said "but thanks". Then he mumbled something which I didn't understand. I was going to say something else, like that Im not from Seattle but from Ecuador, in South America but he put his hand on my shoulder and carried on. Better that way, I guess. I really don't think I'm from there anyway.