Henry is disciplined and on time - always. I never made this mistake again and every time I've been to see him since I've anally kept to the time on the tickets knowing that Henry would be on only minutes after the stated time. The show at the Royal Festival Hall on Friday night was no different. The ticket said 7.30pm - I was there and seated in my front row seat at 7.20pm and so were the very vast majority of the crowd (ahhh so I'm not Robinson Crusoe!). Henry came on at 7.40pm and didn't leave the stage until around 10.15pm.
Did I say Henry was disciplined? He was on stage for 2 hours and 35 minutes with no break, no toliet stop and not even a drink of water - and this is completely normal and expected of his performances. He is far too busy having a good time taking in our rapt attention to need to concern himself with the normal workings of mere mortals!
Actually he's a complete fucking spoken word machine and I love him! *insert further gushing*
I hear those people who've never seen Henry in action say 'What you just sit and listen to him talk for over two hours?' - well yeah - and it's easily some of the best time I've ever spent.
Over the period of 15/16 years that I've been seeing Henry perform spoken word shows there has (unsurprisingly) been a huge improvement in the quality of his shows - not necessarily in the content - that has always been great - but more in terms of delivery. His shows are now, in a word, seamless and he shifts from one story to another with absolute ease.
His first story tonight delves into the vintage period surrounding his involvement with Black Flag in the early 80s - it's his 'Get In the Van' period. You would have thought by now that I'd have heard all his GITV anecdotes but the two pearlers he brings out tonight have not been heard - at least by me. The first involves the somewhat tragic story of woman literally losing an eye in a Black Flag mosh in New York after being landed upon by a huge hairy behemoth of a man who thought a stage dive mid-set would be a good idea - ahhh slightly hardcore - yeah?
The second GITV parable is set during Black Flag's European tour in the mid-80s in Sweden where the entire audience at a gig are all skin-heads but for a number of out of place 'long hairs' at the front. The 'long hairs' are later introduced to the members of Black Flag backstage as a band in their own right and little note is taken of them until some years later when Henry recalls the meeting and the name of band - Metallica. Gold!!
After a hilarious story about scaring the bejesus out of Dennis Hopper outside a Santa Monica gallery, we leap like a gazelle from
the GITV era into something a bit more recent as Henry recounts a
visit to the bulk-buy jungle that is CostCo with his assistant Heidi ('the
Demon') to undertake the innocuous task of buying a ladder and bizarrely, a
copy of George Dubya's biography - Decision Point (no really that's what
it's called!). Now I don't know if many people have actually been into a
CostCo, but it is a fairly scary place in terms of the sheer physical tonnage
of food and alcohol and it fits right into the psyche of American excess (to be
fair on my one and only visit to a CostCo I found it VERY hard to walk past a
2kg bag of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups - but I did keep walking!). It's a retail
journey many people make everyday, but it seems to epitomise the attitude held
by those making up the common denominator (with the help of some
megacorporations). It's real and scary, but not without hope.
Henry
then moves on to some of the more interesting things he has participated in
since his last visit to the UK - the most important and entertaining of which
have occurred as part of his role filming and narrating National Geographic
documentaries detailing the more bizarre connections between humans and
animals.
I'm
not sure if many people are aware but Henry is an avid serpent fan and actually
keeps snakes himself at home so it's no surprise to me that his two NatGeo related
stories involve humans interacting with snakes in various unique ways. The
first story finds us in India in an interesting and slightly neanderthal
'bro-down' with some local snake catchers who actually undertake a huge service
for their community by catching and milking the venom of some of the world's
most dangerous snakes to provide the locals with anti-venom where a hospital is
far too far away to assist anyone who gets bitten.
There
is much successful hunting and milking of snakes which is then celebrated with
a dinner of field-roasted rat liver - I shit you not!
The second tale switches to the deep south in the US where a small number of Pentecostal churches engage in 'serpent handling' as a religious ritual. The deal apparently is that if you 'believe' then you won't get bitten. I'm not myself convinced and neither was Henry when he made a pre-ritual visit to the Pastor and found his house chock full of rattlesnakes and Cottonmouths who were chock full of venom and ready to party snake style!
Henry attends the ritual faithfully reporting that no-one is bitten and that the whole night's activities are undertaken to a 3 hour soundtrack provided by the Pastor blues-wailing on his gold-top Gibson Les Paul - TESTIFY!!! - maybe I've got the Pentecostal faithful wrong? Take out the snakes and it sounds like a good night!!
Henry is a major traveller and his further anecdotes relate to his trips through India, North Korea, Vietnam, Tibet and Haiti. An interesting list of places with plenty of interesting stories. I won't go into the full details of each story but some of the highlights include:
- the very long list of items which you cannot take on a flight in India which range from acid to bolt-cutters and brassknuckles (a new Henry salutation), chilly (yes spelt this way!), spices and sabres;
- using all his willpower to overcome his ADD and not run down the travelator visiting the mausoleum containing the in-state body of former North Korean leader Kim Il-Sung;
- his guide, Mr Ka's, hilarious and inappropriate payout of John McCain at the Hanoi Hilton;
- his description of Tibet as a beautifully tragic place where he greets any monk on a cell phone or scooter with delight; and
- his attempts to overcome the 'no soap, no dignity' situation in Haiti by delivering hundreds of 8 cent bars of soap and soccer balls.
Henry is always pretty much preaching to the converted at his shows, but his insistence that we can do better as humans and that we need to get out and see the world (the 'knowledge without milage equals bullshit' edict) always permeates all his spoken word performances. He says what he means, and he means what he says - we desperately need more adults in the world like Henry Rollins.
He's 50 years old and I don't know anyone more punk than Hank - he simply makes me want to go!
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