Well, it's getting to be that time of year again. What time of year might that be, you ask? That would be the time of the year where I'm procrastinating on finishing my year-end Best of Albums list and wasting time working on another less difficult but equally pointless and moronic list in its stead.
This year I've seen upwards of 70 concerts, and while NYC crowds are generally the "too cool for school" type, I still managed to come across a fairly representative cross-section of overbearing dickheads along the way. Last year I put up a similar list and due to popular demand and overwhelming requests (okay, one person), I've decided to reprise the idea this year. So, to paraphrase John Cougar Mellencamp, sink your teeth into my misfortune.
The Ten Biggest Assholes I Encountered at Concerts in 2007
10.) "'No Bones' biggest fan. Ever" at Dinosaur Jr., June 7th, Irving Plaza -- Now, more often than not, there are two things that really get my balls in a vice when I'm at shows: 1.) fat, sweaty dudes who continually elbow me during a crowded show in order to improve their position in the crowd, and 2.) cockgobblers who repeatedly yell the same unlikely song request over and over and over throughout an entire set. With these criteria in mind, you could say that this guy had it all. As if the constant elbowing wasn't enough to really push my buttons, his apparent life-or-death need to hear the song "No Bones" only augmented my misery. Now, most "song requesters" usually wait until the band has actually completed the song they're playing before starting up with the shouting; not this guy, who screamed "NO BONES! C'MON, MAN, PLAY NO BONES!" while the band was still in the middle of playing other songs. Over and over and over again. I had never seen that before. To be sure, it's not that I don't enjoy the song "No Bones." "No Bones" is a fine song. But fortunately due to the world of internet geekery, a simple search at the Dinosaur Jr. fansite freesofree.net allows me to check how often the band has actually played the song "No Bones" in 2007 And you guessed it, the answer is zero times. I'd like to think this guy actually got on the band's nerves enough to cause that, although I guess that's unlikely.
9.) "Not-clever innuendo guy" at Nicole Atkins, October 10th at Southpaw -- Another pet peeve of mine is "sex euphemism guy." There was an article about this on the Onion a few years ago, so I'm not being original here, but let me explain with a hypothetical situation. Your friend from work, who's a girl, goes away for a two-week vacation, and asks you to water her plants while she's gone. One day, noticing her absence, your douchey coworker inquires as to her whereabouts. You reply, "oh, she's in Puerto Rico with her boyfriend. She asked me to water her plants while she's gone." Said douchey coworker replies: "Huh huh huh. I'd like to water her plants." Steam shoots out your ears and your life expectancy drops by 2 1/2 years. So it goes.
(Side note: Before I walked out on my pointless, ungratifying job last May, my semi-literate, knuckle-dragging boss let fly a ripe one, when referring to the secretary: "I'd like to rearrange her files." This poorly-thought out comment resulted in the first time I'd ever used the phrase "get the fuck out of my office," and to my boss no less.)
Anyway, I was watching Nicole Atkins' set opening up for the Raveonettes a couple months ago and the douchey, popped-collar dickheads next to me spat out the following:
Douche #1 "Hey, what's the name of this song?"
Douche #2 "I think it's called Wrecking Ball."
Douche #1 "Huh huh huh. I'd like to wreck her ball."
Douches #1 and #2 "Huh huh huh huh.
8.) "He Who Cracked First," opening act for Damo Suzuki (can't remember the guy's name), October 28th at the Knitting Factory -- I don't remember the name of this opening act, it was a guy who looked to be in his 60s wearing a lime green turtleneck, and in a nutshell his set consisted of basically repeating two chords on a reverbed violin over and over and over. Bronnnnnnnnnnnnng. Brannnnnnnnnnng.
Bronnnnnnnnng. Brannnnnnnnng. For 45 minutes. Of course, this nearly drove me to the point of madness, and I had no choice other than to sit down on the floor, close my eyes, and begin rocking back and forth like a retarded person. When in Rome, right? What followed I really can't describe, but let's just say that this situation put me the closest I've ever been to achieving a meditative state, except instead of visualizing my "happy place," visions of eternal hellfire and brimstone flooded my mind. Pretty f'd up, no? After about a half hour of this, something broke through my defense mechanism-induced trance: a well dressed man, also appearing to be in his 60s, screaming "STOP IT! STOP IT! YOU'RE TERRIBLE! GET OFF THE STAGE!" from a few feet behind me, and to the left. For some reason, although I agreed wholeheartedly with the guy, this terrified me even further.
7.) "Karen O" at Deerhunter, April 26th at Mercury Lounge -- The first time I saw Deerhunter this year, I went into the show having heard that their live shows were transcendent but I was obviously eager to see for myself how they'd pull off the complex textural weirdness of Cryptograms. I got there early and positioned myself at the very front of the stage, centered, so as to get the best overall view. Before Deerhunter came on, I noticed that a tiny Asian girl was behind me with her equally diminutive boyfriend, and I felt sorry for them having to stand behind my gargantuan, stage-eclipsing oaf of a self. About midway through the set, I suddenly noticed streams of beer being shot at the stage from directly behind me, much of which was splattering all over my right shoulder and ear. Needless to say, I felt less sorry for the tiny Asian girl, thinking "what a cunt." Shortly, however, I noticed someone trying to elbow her way in front of me... long story short, it wasn't the tiny Asian girl at all but Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, so, soaking wet and somewhat stunned, I let her pass. Again, I've experienced any number of tactics at the hands of people who are trying to get in front of me at shows, but I have to say this was pretty clever.
6.) "BJ" at Z-Trip, October 19th at Studio B -- 9 of my friends attended this show. Now, to set the scene, my pathetic attempts at "organizing" the evening had left me a nervous wreck; my dealer was late with the ecstacy, meaning I was standing outside pacing up and down Second Ave for nearly an hour while my friends were inside enjoying a delicious meal. Then, we realized nobody knew how to get to Studio B by train from downtown Manhattan. Then, the cabbie drops us off at Meserole St. in Brooklyn instead of Meserole Ave (the two are 2 miles apart), which... yeah.
When we finally got to Greenpoint, a couple of my friends began screaming at each other, which, of course, solved nothing. Then, when we finally got to the show, I noticed that literally everyone in front of the line had brought TicketNow printouts, of which I had none. While I thought that I had ordered will call tickets, my head was pretty much spinning, and I began worrying that we weren't going to be able to get in. Immediately upon entering the venue, I threw down a pill of what turned out to be the dopiest ecstacy ever, which combined with the evening's cumulative stress (and, presumably, the fact that I hadn't rolled in over 3 years) had me retreating into an anti-social shell with absolutely no desire to listen to the music. I sat outside chainsmoking for the remainder of the show, sweating profusely, with my eyes closed. Don't believe me? Here's a picture. [edit: picture removed. Anonymity is ideal]
Anyway, periodically, I'd hear my friends come outside to smoke a butt or two; eventually I heard my buddy, who we'll call "BJ," and who is the proud owner of a cock ring, come outside, and from what I could tell, he was eagerly showing said bejeweled appendage to anyone and everyone that was assembled outside Studio B whether they liked it or not. He walked up to me and I headed him off by threatening to rip the thing out if he showed it to me. I don't know, maybe I was a bit out of line on that one.
5.) "Grabby Gus" at Slayer, February 15th at Hammestein Ballroom -- as I've mentioned before on this blog, Slayer fans are a saucy bunch. Having been to tons of metal/punk shows throughout the years, and due to my confusing predilection for standing waaaaaay up front, I come into the concertgoing experience basically expecting to get kicked in the back of the head countless times by crowdsurfers. Only, at Slayer shows, the crowdsurfers are not of the "just happy to be here/if only mommie could see me now/WHEEEEEE" type that you see at, say, a Weezer show, but more of the "violently trying to bring harm to everyone over whom I pass" type. Let me introduce you to "Grabby Gus," or, as my first draft of this list referred to him, "Guy Who Nearly Ripped My Scalp And Ear Off While Somehow Simultaneously Kicking The Fuck Out Of Me With Steel Toe Combat Boots."
4.) "Security guy" at Social Distortion, July 25th at Mulcahy's -- Yes, I know that I'm bending the rules a bit here since everyone else so far has been a crowd member, but this guy fucked my shit up so bad that I simply have to include him. Of course, I was crammed against the stage barrier as usual, so fundamentally I have only myself to blame for the following. Early in the set, a crowdsurfer was passing over me violently kicking and screaming. Security guy reaches out trying to grab his foot, but misses, instead grabbing a handful of my hair and yanking it out. Pretty painful. He actually apologized, which in my experience is a first for security guys at punk shows.
Later in the show, another crowd surfer was passing over me and kicked me in the back of the head, sending my expensive-ass titanium rim glasses flying over the barrier. Now, I was 99% sure that they had landed at the security guy's feet, so I alerted him: "hey, would you mind checking to see if my glasses are at your feet?" He gave a millisecond glance before declaring, "no, haven't seen 'em." Of course, long story short, post-show I walked around the back of the barrier only to find my glasses had been stomped into a bizarre trapezoidal shape and completely crushed at the exact point where the security guy had been standing. FUCK!!
3.) "Rapey" at Social Distortion, July 25th at Mulcahy's -- I'll keep this one brief, because frankly I don't enjoy thinking about it. The Social D show was filled with drunken hooligans; one such lout was being particularly rough with a woman to my right, grabbing and pulling at her in order to try to get in front and closer to the stage. She protested, telling him to get his hands off her. Without batting an eyelash, the guy responded, "shut up you dumb bitch before I rape you." Shudder. Stay classy, Long Island!
2.) "The crowd in general" at Atakke, October 1st at Don Pedro's -- Atakke's singer was late so the crowd was getting ornery while waiting for their set to begin. People were killing the time by double-fisting PBRs, and combine that with the lack of air conditioning/ventilation, it was getting pretty ripe around the stage. The tension was high. As Atakke started up, blasting into their set at a billion miles an hour, the wheelchair-bound fan who was next to me was upended by a gaggle of particularly overzealous/drunk moshers, and dumped out of said chair onto the middle of the floor where people were slamming into each other with force and aggression the likes of which I've rarely seen. Now, while this was pretty fucked up, the truly fucked up part of this is that a large percentage of the crowd saw this happen but most made no attempt to help the guy up; one bald leather jacketed dude even heckled him. Yikes.
1.) "Pushy wide-ass shitcunt" at Gil Mantera's Party Dream, January 13th -- I had the displeasure of having this worthless bitch over my left shoulder for the majority of the opening acts' sets and throughout the pre-Gil Mantera setbreak. Of course, I was standing front row center, just like always, and she clearly wasn't enjoying the view from behind me. Several times during opening band Free Blood's set she tried to pull me away from my prized spot and elbow me behind her. Finally, during the setbreak, she got REALLY annoying, repeatedly pestering me with horseshit reasons why I should let her stand in front of me. This included offering me free reign to play with her tits during the show. Now, normally, this would obviously be a fantastic offer I'd willingly accept, but she was with her boyfriend and call me a prude but I derive no pleasure from feeling some random chick up in front of her sig other unless I'm hammered, which I definitely wasn't. Plus (and perhaps most importantly) she wasn't exactly my cup of tea. Pinched, evil Eastern European face that would have made her a good villainess in an 80's Bond flick. ("Vee have vays of making you talk, Comrade Bond <<dramatic cigarette pull>>.") Over and over I brushed off her "generous" offer and tried to ignore her, but GODDAMN was she persistent. Eventually I tried the pussy route out, mentioning my constant back pain and trying to reason with her that I need to lean on the stage to support my back. Of course, I wanted to mention to her that since her ass was approximately the size of a hot dog cart, she shouldn't have any trouble "boxing people out" Charles Barkley-style and clearing ample space from which to view the show. But alas I took the high road on that one.
Okay. Eventually when the Party Dream came onstage this spoiled whore's mode of communication morphed from verbal to physical -- lots of pinching, scratching and assorted unnecessary jostling, all directed at my back and meaty flanks. And, of course, eventually she took advantage of a none-too-rare "Tuddd dancing off-balance" moment to claw her way in front of me, securing a spot at the front of the stage. What I wasn't expecting, however, was that she'd instantly flop onstage, assaulting Ultimate Donny in an amusing display of White Trash affection, rolling around with him and cramming her AIDSy tongue down his throat. Hilarious in a "cant turn your head from the trainwreck" way.
Furthermore, what I really wasn't expecting was that the instant she got offstage she began denying the incident ever happened when confronted by her boyfriend. "What are you talking about? I didn't kiss him!" Uh, riiiiiight. If you're going to commit facerape (pronounced FAH-chay RAH-pay) and expect to get away with it, best not to do it ONSTAGE IN FRONT OF A FULL ROOM OF ONLOOKERS THAT INCLUDES YOUR BOYFRIEND. Retard.
Shortly (and predictably), she turned into a slobbering/sobbing drunken mess and thankfully disappeared, along with her boyfriend, presumably to throw herself in front of an oncoming bus (or so I fantasized). I felt a bit bad for the guy because he seemed to be a legit fan, singing along with all the lyrics from the first couple of songs. Meh, fuck 'im.
Anyway, this has gone on long enough. In closing let me mention that in second place for the evening's Annoying Fan crown was "Overagressive Solo Crowdsurfing Moron Who Kicked Me in the Face." You really have to hand it to "Pushy Wide-ass Shitcunt," though. How often is it that someone kicks you in the face at a show and they wind up being only the second biggest asshole you meet?
