marble stature

So there was a “down low” New Bomb Turks show at the Carabar this past Saturday night- kind of a coincidence because they last played Columbus a week before I moved to Rhode Island two years ago. I got the call about the secret show from CDR co-chief Burger J about two weeks ago, who wanted me to draft up some fliers, to which I responded (more or less) “why? …That sucker’s gone be packed.” I just figured that word of mouth alone is going to put the hot spot at capacity… and it was. Some pre-show drinking occurred at the House of Pleasure on the occasion of the Buckeyes’ season opener, but the party got moved over to the Outer Spacist compound smack dab in the woods of West Tulane. We put on a Feelies album and lost track of our minds, and almost missed Necropolis kick-off spot; luckily we only missed two songs because thems on fire. Probably the best set I’ve seen them play, but who am I kidding, they’re always great. Grafton staggered onstage and walloped with some dirty ass rock ‘n roll. I leaned over to Adam Smith during their first song (and first song on their new album Jumpstart Wire), “Never Had Less,” and said, “I just hope they play the whole fucking album.” Sadly they only got about halfway in then they decided to call it a night, I probably would’ve been pissed if I weren’t so excited to see the Turks.

When the Turks played Skully’s two years ago with The Spitzz and Mike Rep and the Quotas, the place was beyond crowded even though the Skully’s is at least twice the size of the Carabar (and about half the cool). So I was pretty glad that the Comets on Fire show at Little Brother’s helped distract enough people to make the Carabar attendance bearable. I always wondered what it must’ve been like to see the Turks back at Stache’s in 1992, when Destroy-Oh-Boy! was just the word on the street, and Saturday night was about as close as I’m ever gonna get. They were on fire. The crowd up front was rowdy and packed in tight, and when Eric Davidson hopped up on stage we all just realized how intimate of a stage we’re dealing with at the Carabar, and everybody just exploded with wild furor upon hearing Jim Weber's first riff on “Id Slips in,” from their second album Information Highway Revisited. And the momentum never stopped. Even when Don Bovee took a nasty spill trying to get onstage to sing Batman, he eventually sopped up the blood from the throbbing gash on his forehead, stood up and started singing his signature tune; thus turning his serious fall into his crowning moment. After the Grafton set I stockpiled 4 cans of Pabst and put them safely by the PA monitor, but after the first five songs, I could hardly drink ‘em and decided to use the beers for some beer showers during “Sucker Punch,” “Tail Crush,” “The Anal Swipe,” “Tattooed Apathetic Boys,” “Born Toulouse-Lautrec,” and even had a few drops for their encore closer, “Last Lost Fight,” which the rocked the crowd so hard that I was flung up on stage. I think every member of The Feelers crowd surfed, and Davidson crowd surfed on a few occasions, it was like seeing my first punk show all over again. There was an after party at the Outer Spacist West Tulane compound, but it didn’t really matter, I was rocked so hard that my mind was completely blown; I sat in a chair with a blank expression hearing the Flamin’ Groovies, but still listening to the Turks in my head. I couldn’t even listen to anything on Sunday and drove around in complete silence. On Saturday morning I went to Used Kids and found Cyclops’ Goat Volume for $5 in the avant-garde section and that finally lulled me awake from my coma on Monday afternoon. I’m going to write a review for it tomorrow, so check back for that.