My top three performer-audience mano-y-mano, mi-show-tu-show moments at the Grinderman performance at Slim’s on July 27:
3) A toss-up between the umpteenth time this dude in front of me yelled, “STAGGER LEE!” causing his long-suffering female companion to gently pat him on the shoulder and say, “Yeah. OK. We all know now,” and the moment Nick Cave inadvertently insulted another rabid fan bellowing for old Bad Seeds songs by calling him short and bald. It’s Grinderman, get it? Just play along, dumbkopf. Of course Cave, being the grindingly productive gentleman of letters he’s famously morphed into, immediately qualified the insult with “I’m sure you’re perfectly nice” or some such soft-pedal. Ever feel like you’ve walked into some kind of ongoing dialogue…otherwise known as a rock show?
2) The decision about the last song of the first encore landing in the hands of the guy hollering “TUPELO!” for most of the night. His time came when Cave and Grindermen gathered to decide on the final number – this after playing a raucous, brawling, beer-swilling “Henry Lee,” a genuinely moving “Lucy,” a torrid “The Weeping Song,” and the predictable “Red Right Hand.”
“You can’t leave the country without playing ‘Tupelo,'” hollered our friend.
“What did you say?” asked Cave, straining to hear and seeming to be honestly interested.
“YOU CAN’T LEAVE THE COUNTRY WITHOUT PLAYING ‘TUPELO’!”
“What was that?” The crowd appeared to somehow part, creating a quiet corrider between the singer and the screamer.
To make a painfully protracted interaction mercifully short, let’s just say the guy had to yell the same thing about four or five times before ole Caveroni made the connection. And lo, Grinderman played “Tupelo” with about as much roaring vigor as can be expected from a band half the size of the Bad Seeds. Needless to say, dude was probably beyond psyched.
The crumbled sugar cookie topper: after the song ended, Cave turned back to the audience as the rest of Grinderman shuffled off the stage, and declared, “Now…we can leave the country.”
1) That perfect end was upstaged by the second encore – and the bizarre sight of both Henry Rollins and Jello Biafra jumping on stage to sing hearty backup on a jig-worthy “Deanna.” Who could have imagined that Cave would have been willing and able to orchestrate this totally surreal Giants of Punk Vocals summit. Maybe someone should be enlisting the songwriter for Mideast peace talks.