Artsy Fartsy Nonsense

This week I had one of those one in a life time mind blowing experiences that will live with me forever. The kind that I'm not content just storing in memory and giggle about from time to time. This was one of those once in a life time experiences which you just have to rant about on a blog that no one other than your most sarcastic of friends would read. Any how lets cut to the chase. This Tuesday night I caught up with a uni mate for a bit of a catch up. Now the plan for the evening was to go and see one of our former uni lecturers do some stand up and heckle...erm...I mean show our support. So anyway we had time to kill before the actual show so we had a couple of games of fooseball which resulted in me being defeated and humiliated much like Scotland in their friendly against the yanks. After that we decided to grab a couple of Krush'ems from KFC. After taking around 40 minutes to finish mine I came to the conclusion that I would make a terrible gay guy. Just as well I wwasn't planning on going down that road anyway.

So after finally finishing my Krush'em and taking a couple of minutes to regain my breath we headed back to the gig to discover that our former uni lecturer had just got off the stage. Doh! We had a brief chat with him and he said we should stay and check out the remaining acts. I said, "Okay!" So me and my mate paid our £3 to enter, and looked like complete fools trying to get our glowstick wrist bands on (mine was pink by the way). We took a seat in the corner and eagerly anticipated the next act.

So trying to keep an open mind we watched the first performance which to my surprise was actually pretty good. It was a 3 actor performance piece that satirized the self righteous atheist movement. Since I am a self righteous atheist I got a real kick out of it. The message was seemed about as subtle as a punch to the face. I prefer my satire subtle. Anyway, after being pleasantly surprised the hostess gets up on stage and introduced the next act who was a DJ. Now the letters D and J stuck together strikes absolute terror in me and has done so ever since I stood in the Garage a few years back, bored out my mind listening to some twat dicking around on a MacBook for an hour while I was waiting for Steel Panther to come on. Now if I can go off on a tangent for a second. Just because you spent £800 pound on a MacBook with the same spec as a £400 PC does not make you a musical legend. It makes you a superficial wank pot. I can not fucking stand this super pompous aura that a lot of Mac owners have.  It is not a gimmick for impressing your mates and giving them metaphorical penis envy. It is merely a tool used to do work. Simple as that. Reigning it back to the topic at hand. So after his introduction a guy in a Pingu outfit gets on the stage and sets up a reel to reel tape player, a mixer and a bunch of other audio equipment. I thought to myself, "this looks interesting" as he starts "performing". Now how to describe what I heard. I'm known for my honesty so let me just say it was the most horrifically bad thing I've ever heard in my life. It sounded like white noise being fed back without any discernible tune. I felt like my brain was going to explode like the dude in Scanners. The noise droned on and on, and then then pingu pulls out what looks like a Kazoo and starts groaning through it in to the mic. From there he went out to the crowd, still growning, while I suddenly found religion and was praying that he wouldn't come near me. Thankfully it was heard and he walked on by. So after what seemed like an eternity, he finished and I took a sigh of relief. My mate turned to me and asked, "Have you ever felt so out of place?" I pondered that for a second, going through my personal hall of shame. I have been to the odd night club, surrounded by drunk idiots. I have been to a Juliet Lewis gig and listen to her talk pish in between mediocre tunes. I have even been to Ibiza or as I like to call it, "The land where culture goes to die". So weighing everything up I'd have to say that this probably wins the title of the most out of place I have ever been in my life. I think the thing I found most shocking was that the dude got a round of applause at the end. I know it was an artistic showcase and all that but get real what was that pish all about? It was like the musical equivalent of that chick who presented her unmade bed as an art exhibit. I would google her name... if I cared. It had absolutely nothing to convey as far as I could tell.

Now maybe the performance was a piss take or I could be a complete philistine and be missing the point entirely but that would require it either being funny or communicating something audible. It did neither. So how can I best describe what I had just experienced? I like the term "inaudible wank". Now I'm sure if I were to play the audience on that night a bit of Slayer they would have the same reaction as I had to this. And they would be justified in doing so if it ain't their thing. However,even on Slayers worst day they are more artists than any so called DJ. As a metal fan I often get people looking down their noses at what I listen to, dismissing it as just noise. Trust me there is more to that "noise" than there is all this techno, dance, trance pish. I think I'll close by saying that although what I experienced was a huge shock to my system I at least had the balls to endure it. I challenge anyone reading this to give metal the same chance I gave this performance. Rant over.