by Dave.
Coogee Bay Hotel, Sydney, Australia. April 8, 1998.
I went along to this concert knowing hardly any of the bands songs. I knew Shake Hands with Beef, Wynona, and Too Many Puppies. That's it. One of my mates lent me Frizzle Fry a couple of days before the event, so that I could at least know what I was in for.
It was held out at Coogee, a bitch of a place to get to, and when we made it there, we promptly headed for the bar. WHAT?!? Three bucks a beer? Get stuffed. We quickly decided that maybe it would be better off to see the concert sober. (Prices inside were even worse.) When we got inside, Finiscad had already started playing. I was never a big fan of Finiscad. The only song of there's I knew sucked (IMHO), but they turned out to be pretty damn good live.
Next up were The Jesus Lizard. I had been warned about their lead singer... he's a freakin' psycho. He got on stage totally shitfaced... and proceeded to drink even more. Highlights of this band were his constant spitting, he went crowd surfing ( away from us though ), and my personal favourite... he came out into the crowd again, this time near us. He then proceeded to curl up into the foetal position, on the floor, and scream into the microphone. Hmmmmmmm.
Anyways, I was here to see Primus, and see them I did. Front row the entire show. I was within spitting distance of Ler, less than 2 metres. (Couldn't be stuffed figuring out an Imperial conversion. ;) Being crushed up againt a barricade has never been so awesome. As I already said, I went to this concert knowing bugger all of their songs, but they went off!
Les was in typical cartoon character mode ( just lurrrrv that goatee). He had a few "speeches", the more humourous being... "...Ler has been diagnosed with tonsilitus. So he is here risking life and limb for your listening pleasure", and "The man, the myth, the pseudo Mexican...Brain". The latter was for Brains drum solo. He belted the christ out of those skins, and even downed a beer mid solo whilst he continued to hammer the drums with only one hand. Ler also pulled off that "beer bottle slide" trick for one of the songs. I think they encored with Jerry was a RacecarDriver, but hey, don't quote me.
In all, that one gig is gonna cost me a shitload, as I now will have to systematically buy all their albums.