Imagine Hanna-Barbera puppets getting piss-drunk and conducting a speed-metal concert in the side-bar of a giant music venue. Now imagine those puppets being followed by an entourage of potty-mouthed grownups armed to the teeth with cowboy boots, leather, heavy-metal, tits and booze. This was fantasy turned reality on Saturday night thanks to Green Jelly and Nashville Pussy.
The all-ages show headlined by Nashville Pussy was part of the Parental Advisory Tour - aptly named, as the whole scene would have scared the pants off any reasonable child.
Early in the night, the stage reminded me of my first trip to Disneyland in 1985, complete with light-up toys and oversized plush cartoon characters drifting in from all sides with ambiguous intentions to either bulldoze or embosom me.
A spectacle like this demands explanation, so first, a brief history of Green Jelly:
Along with Blind Melon’s No Rain and Soul Asylum’s Runaway Train, alternative radio in 1993 blessed listeners with the Billboard 100 hit "Three Little Pigs" from Green Jelly’s album Cereal Killer, where lead singer Bill Manspeaker growls, “Little pig, little pig, let me in!” amidst crashing guitars and the odd pig snort.
If that wasn’t your bag back then, maybe this video, #35 on VH1’s Most Awesomely Bad Metal Songs…Ever, will inspire a change of heart. And how could anyone not buckle beneath the charms of "The Bear Song," during which one band member sashays across the stage with an inflatable polar bear (presumably lifted from a holiday-decorated suburban lawn) while chanting, “The bear went over the mountain to see what he could see!”?
Whatever their intentions, Green Jelly’s antics that night brought smiles and laughter to all the boys and girls, some of whom, after an exhilarating mosh-pit warm-up, were chosen to don giant day-glow Flinstone head-masks for "Anarchy in Bedrock" - a modern Stone Age cover of the Sex Pistols’ "Anarchy in the UK."
The first volunteer to wear the “Pebbles head” was a gracious young lady with bottle-blonde pigtails whom the band deemed “drunk girl” after she earned the title by way of one too many stage dives, microphone grabs, collapses, and repeated attempts at fondling the guitar player.
By the end of Green Jelly’s set, the children eschewed parental advice and rushed the stage to join a suddenly pantless, shirtless Manspeaker and his cartoon friends for an inspirational sing-along about partying, sex, drugs and rock-and-roll. The band then waved goodbye as the audience engaged in an emotional departing chant: “Green Jelly sucks! Green Jelly sucks! Green Jelly sucks!" - which, forebodingly, sounded like a warped homage to Billy Madison’s famed “O’doyle rules!” banana-peel-sends-station-wagon-off-cliff scene.
I couldn’t help but applaud with gusto as the band disappeared backstage. Because Green Jelly, in all their awesome badness, rekindled an important sentiment lost in my years steeped in smart, calculated indie rock: metal-heads (and blondes) have more fun.
Nashville Pussy had a tough act to follow.
The stage-hands finish checking all the equipment on stage while Blaine, Ruyter, Karen, and Jeremy headed toward their respective instruments. The overhead speakers played sound bytes of the greasy guy outside the Titty Twister strip bar in Tarantino’s "From Dusk ‘til Dawn" – “Pussy, pussy, pussy! All pussy must go. At the Titty Twister we're slashing pussy in half! This is a pussy blow out! Make us an offer on our vast selection of pussy! We got white pussy, Spanish pussy … big pussy…”
This, of course, grabbed everyone’s attention.
Nashville Pussy broke into "Speed Machine," the first track on their latest album, From Hell to Texas. Blaine, adorned in a faded black Judas Priest t-shirt and eyes at half mast, took the mic. Ruyter took lead guitar, boobs barely concealed behind a Harley Davidson shirt that appeared to have had an altercation with a pair of scissors. Karen, looking classically rock-and-roll with two-tone hair and a badass-babe gait, took bass guitar, and Jeremy stationed himself at a drum set, which he managed to play with a grace I have never witnessed from a band that produces such violent sound.
Blaine was kind enough to share his plans for the evening with us before playing "I’m So High (I gotta look down to see the sky)": “We’ve got a day off tomorrow so we’re gonna get fucked up tonight and hit a couple strip bars. What the hell, it’s a good night for a heart attack.”- to which the crowd replied with enthusiastic applause.
The highlights of Nashville Pussy’s performance, however, were a tie between two events: 1) Blaine’s dedication of "Hate and Whiskey" to our photographer Rodrigo, who, serendipitously, also grew up in Bowling Green, Kentucky; and 2) Ruyter’s “mounting of the speaker box” finale where she tore off the strings of her guitar and partitioned each one (“Who wants the G-string?”) to adoring fans.
Despite their tough attitude and naughty language, Nashville Pussy are an endearing bunch. I highly recommend catching them on their tour, which ends in Phoenix, Arizona on May 30.
