I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: April 18, 2023] Skinny Puppy

I saw Skinny Puppy with my friend Garry back in 1988–on Halloween.  Thirty-four and a half years later and I saw them again on their Final Tour.  It would have been great to see them with him, but he was in Florida at the time, so that made it tough.  He did see the a few weeks ago though, so it’s almost like we saw the show together (except that his setlist was so much better than ours).

Turns out lead singer Oghr had been ill the night before and had to miss the Pittsburgh show.  He was fine for our show, although I assume ours was several songs shorter because of it.

So I admit to being something of a “fake fan” as my daughter says.  I liked them a lot back in the day, but haven’t really listened to them in twenty-five years.  I haven’t listened to much of any of their newer stuff at all.  But Garry told me that this was something of a greatest hits show.

The show didn’t really go very well for me in large part because of the audience.

The guy in front of me who had been into Lead Into Gold, suddenly turned into a full-on dancing arms in the air lunatic, making it impossible to stand behind him.  About half way in, some guy decided he was going to start slam dancing and managed to smash as hard as he could into everyone (including me) around him.  I  thought a fight might break out.  There were several girls who were talking at full volume and late in the show a very drunk guy started talking to me about how Oghr had been throwing up in Pittsburgh the night before.

Fortunately the music was really loud, so they couldn’t take away too much from the show.  I also realized that I don’t know a lot of lyrics to these songs (he mostly speak/growls) and I know the songs mostly for the samples.  The samples were included, but not in the same way during the live show.

There were just four people on stage.  Newcomer Matthew Setzer on guitar (he joined in 2015) and Justin Bennett on drums (2004).  Over on the far side was cEvin Key making all kinds of interesting noises.  I noticed that he was tuning in a radio on several occasions.  And then up front was Nivek Ogre (and an unnamed henchman who was his main antagonist).

The band came out and started jamming.  Then Nivek appeared behind a screen.  He was projected as a shadow onto the screen while the other unnamed person was back there with him doing shadow puppets and such.

After a couple of songs Nivek came out shrouded in a giant shawl.  He sang a few songs like this.  And after the first one, the other person came out dressed like a stormtrooper/policeman.  He started giving Nivek electric shocks and then began injecting him with something that he had taken from a statue of a dog at the front of the stage.

Then the shroud came off and Nivek revealed  that he had been wearing a giant alien head with glowing eyes the whole time.  He began singing the rest of the set with this mask on.  The policeman began attacking him further, wielding a giant stick.  He eventually grabbed Nivek and tied him to a chair.  Then he got out a screen which hid his work from us.  We saw him beating Nivek and then doing something to his head.

During the next song, Nivek wandered around while he sang and then his mask opened on the side to reveal an empty head.

Moments later, the policeman brought out a giant brain–clearly the one he had taken from Nivek’s head and began doing all kinds of terrible things to it, making Nivek jump and writhe.  He eventually out the brain on a podium, but this seemed to empower Nivek to fight back.

When the set ended with “Dig It,” the policeman had formed a noose, put it around Nivek’s head and dragged him off stage.

The band came back out for an encore.  Nivek was cleaned up and was just himself (with blond hair).  He spoke to us and thanked us for coming.  It was so humanizing, it was nice.

I had checked other shows and was really exited for the encores as they were songs that I knew really well.  Garry’s show had two encores, six songs in all.  All songs I wanted to hear.

But for us, they did two encores, one I was excited to hear “Deep Down Trauma Hounds,” but the second was one I didn’t know.  So that was kind of a bummer.  Indeed, the whole show was a little disappointing to me because of how few songs I recognized.  My fault, I realize since everyone around me seemed to know the words to everything.  But I was really assuming I’d be getting a lot more songs that I knew.  On the other hand, the band sounded great and I could easily enjoy the songs that I didn’t know.

It was a shame the crowd sucked so much.  But it was interesting being in the goth scene again for a few hours.

And the performance was really quite outstanding.

There doesn’t appear to be much online for our Irving Plaza show.  But here’s a video from Chicago from ten days earlier.  50 minutes is a remarkably short show.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brap