Jesus Lizard show review

I started off Friday night meeting up with friends at hipster hole the Cha Cha. I make fun of the Cha Cha, but I actually like drinking there, it's dark and has a zillion things to look at (beyond people watching). It was actually a bit of an older less hipster crowd that night, probably because other folks were getting their drink on pre-Jesus Lizard there as well. When my friends I were primed and ready we headed over Neumos. We just missed Black Elk, who I think are good, but nothing special. I ran into Suze right off the bat that used to shoot photos for 10 Things (and Flipside) back in the day. She'd flown in from LA for the show because she thought the LA show was so awesome, plus they wouldn't let photographers bring in real cameras there, and you could at Neumos. The club was full, but not at capacity, which was actually really nice. I'm sure the $25 ticket price (really $32 if you bought them at Rudy's like I did or $36 online) was a deterrent for a lot of people, people on the NW Punk Board mentioned they just couldn't afford it.




Within the first 10 seconds of the first song, David Yow was stage diving into the crowd. Awesome. It was a sign of things to come, as the band cranked through material, Yow spend plenty of time out in the crowd, either bouncing off the people at the front of the stage as they propped him up or riding around crowd surfing above the audience. Hell, he crowd surfed all the way from the stage to the back of the venue, a good 300 feet, then back to the stage while somehow still singing into the mic.

There's this great dichotomy in the Jesus Lizard with a very wild, loose performance by Yow that borders on totally out of control and the rest of the band, who plays really tight precise notes and rhythms and seemingly never miss a beat. I think some people don't get that about the Jesus Lizard, because even at 49, Yow is a complete wildman on stage. And people get the impression the whole band is pretty loose--one of my friends that had never seen them before said he was surprised how loose they were after the show. But they aren't really, while Yow's larger-than-life performance is loose, the rest of the band is fucking tight. I read somewhere that Steve Albini said in recording them that they were one of the tightest bands he'd ever worked with.

Anyway, The Jesus Lizard were fucking on it Friday night. It's like they never signed with Capitol Records in 1995 and put out those mediocre records and had the turmoil that led to their break up on 1999. It was as if we were teleported back to The Jesus Lizard of the early 1990s, only the gray hair gave away the 15 years time that had passed. The crowd ate it up, there was a large pit of sweaty bodies pounding against each other the whole show, stopping to reach up their arms to carry and support Yow occasionally as he tumbled over their heads. Great show!

The Jesus Lizard brings their balls to the Block Party!

Hi, my name is David Yow. You may just know my band's name because we did a split single with Nirvana if you're a clueless asshole, but we were actually considered to be one of the best live bands of the 1990s. I was known to get a little wild live. Sure, there were some occasional fisticuffs and I was banned from playing Seattle for repeatedly stage diving into the audience despite the Fire Marshall warning me not to, but what a lot of people remember most about my live performance is my almost primal stage presence. Oh, and my balls. You see, during our song "Tight and Shiny," I liked to pull out my balls on stage. Back in the day it was quite a hit with the kids.

Recently my band reunited, and guess what Seattle, we're coming back to your town, the town that dared to ban me from live performances in the past. We will be playing The Capitol Hill Block Party, anyone heard of this shit? They are paying us quite well, so we're stoked. I hope it's not packed with a bunch of douchebags and hipster jerks. Wait a minute, now that I think about it, I actually I hope it is! Because I don't give a fuck about you and will teabag your whole city! We may be twice as old as many of you, but The Jesus Lizard will still blow away most the bands at yer little Seattle music festival. So get up front and watch us go balls out at our show July 24... I dare you.

For the full details on The Capitol Hill Block Party and getting cheaper advanced tickets, go to: capitolhillblockparty.com

The Jesus Lizard return!

Check out this 1994 live footage of The Jesus Lizard, around 45 seconds in David Yow gets knocked out when a bottle is thrown at him. Eventually he gets back up, they clean the glass off the state, the band starts up again, and a now pissed off Yow belts out the rest of the song. Both lame (the bottle throw) and awesome (his recovery and willingness to continue).



For fans of Yow and The Jesus Lizard, this performance isn't very surprising. For a full decade from 1989 to 1999, David Yow would bring it 110% live fronting The Jesus Lizard. And the good news is we all might get to hear it and see it again! From Touch and Go Records:

The Jesus Lizard to reunite, seminal albums remastered and reissued!

In what has to rank as one of the most unlikely developments in rock, the awe-inspiring primal force of the Jesus Lizard will return, briefly, in 2009. The original lineup of David Yow, Duane Denison, David Wm. Sims and Mac McNeilly will reform for a very limited series of live dates in 2009, starting with the All Tomorrow’s Parties event dubbed The Fans Strike Back in Minehead, UK on May 9 and 10 and ending with a final appearance in Chicago in late November. These shows will be the Jesus Lizard’s first since disbanding in 1999 and the first in twelve years to feature the original storied quartet. As anyone who has experienced the Jesus Lizard live can attest, they are one of the most intense and visceral musical assemblies to ever stalk a stage. This fleeting reunion offers an incredible opportunity to either be blown away all over again or to immerse yourself in the sweaty power and driving mayhem for the very first time.

In celebration of this event, Touch and Go Records will reissue four full-length releases and one EP from the Jesus Lizard in May 2009. Remastered recordings of Head (still to include the remastered Pure EP on CD), Goat, Liar, and Down will be available on both LP and CD - plus a remaster of their 5-song EP Pure on vinyl, all with expanded packaging and liner notes. Bob Weston is heading up the remastering process with Steve Albini, the original session engineer, sitting in.