[kj] Killing Joke Last Night in LA

[LONESTYLE at aol.com]

T.B.
 
I fully agree with you it was a walking on air show! Me and the wife got  
there early, got our tickets at will call,  and  waited for the  resturant to 
open. When all of a sudden we heard sound check which was KJ! We  walked in and 
stood there watching in awe! And right to our side was Mike  Sand Storm so that 
was cool meeting you dude by the way ! Anyway I am pretty  beat, but TB 
basically summed it up. The show was amazing, and that security was  tighter then I 
have ever seen, true!  More to come later.
 
Cheers,
 
~LB
 
 
In a message dated 10/10/2008 9:35:47 AM Pacific Daylight Time,  
partyslammer at socal.rr.com writes:

Holy  shit, what a great show.  Hands down, the best KJ show I've ever seen  
(even if that comes down to one '85 show and one '03 show and a lot of  
bootlegs).

Got in the House of Blues just after 8pm and immediately  noticed security 
was tighter than just a month ago.  Staff used metal  detector wands to 
search people going in and I noticed several LA police  cars parked on the 
street.  It took a long time for the venue to fill  up, but from what I could 
tell, there was a lot of walk up ticket buyers  and by the time KJ came on at 
10:40, the place seemed pretty full. The  audience was a pretty wild mix of 
old school mid 80's punkers and younger  people right outta High School.  I 
even saw one guy with an elaborate  Lords of the New Church/Alien Sex Fiends 
jacket and another punker easily  in his mid 50's with a balding, grey 
mohawk.

Pigmy Love Circus,  which was the opening band, played a 45 minute set. 
Music was kind of a  mix of Revolting Cocks and The Supersuckers with a  bit 
of Rob Zombie  thrown in. One of the guitarists looked to be about 300lbs and 
the rest of  the band were pretty butt-ugly. Not bad, and they got a decent 
reception  from the crowd, but not what I'd call a good opening band for KJ.

After  a long wait, Killing Joke came on and opened with "Requiem."  For the  
first few songs, I was kind of on the fence about Paul Ferguson but when  
they broke into "Follow The Leaders" about 5 songs in, I was blown away  with 
his playing and power.  For the most part, the crowd was really  into the 
show and the floor got progressively more rowdy to the point  there was big 
time moshing by about the halfway mark.  A big  highlight about 45 minutes 
into the show was the double shot of "Love Like  Blood" (dedicated to Raven 
with Jaz emotionally tearing up at the end of  the song) and a very fast 
paced "Eighties" (prefaced with Cobain comment)  back to back.  I was kind of 
surprised to hear Communion buried near  the end of the set in a nice, 
compact version although the keyboard string  backing was a bit too prominent 
for my tastes.  "Pandemonium" which  closed out the main set also had a 
sparser arrangement that had at times  just bass and drums which worked very 
well.

Other songs in the 24 -  25 song set played included Change, Primitive, The 
Wait, Exorcism,  Madness,  Money Is Not Our God and Asteroid.  Speaking of  
Asteroid, I can kind of understand why they continue to play that one as  
they clearly have fun playing it and the audience really loved shouting  
"AAAAASTEROOOOOIIIDDD!!!" at the key moments.  The only song I really  
noticed kind of fell flat was "Turn To Red" which Youth clearly enjoyed  
playing but left the audience cold.  For the encore, one of the new  songs 
was played, "Fresh Fever From The Skies" which was pretty  decent.  The 1 
hour 45 minute show ended around 12:15 with a slamming  version of "Wardance" 
and it almost looked like we'd get a second encore  but that didn't happen.

The band was really tight.  Jaz was at his  theatrical best, focused and in 
fine voice and as the show went on, he  clearly grew more and more happy with 
the very enthusiastic  response.  Whoever said Geordie's tone is much 
improved is absolutely  right on.  Much more "crunchy," and compact and not 
drenched in out  of control feedback like it was on the '03 tour.  Geordie 
managed to  chug down a bottle of wine through the set and started on a 2nd 
one during  the encores but didn't smoke even though at one point he motioned 
 
frantically for a smoke from one of the roadies.  Youth who reminds  me 
physically of Paul McCartney fit in very nicely and clearly enjoyed  being 
onstage with the band and several times thanked the band for getting  him his 
start in music. I do have to say, I preferred Raven's playing over  Youths'. 
Big Paul killed on drums really giving energy and new life  especially to a 
lot of the Night Time and Pandemonium album tunes.   Although it's clear 
there's a noticeable divide between Jaz/Geordie and  Paul/Youth,

The sound was actually one of the best sounding shows I've  caught at the 
Hollywood HoB.  Not overdriven although for the first  couple songs, I 
thought Geordie wasn't high enough in the mix and Pauls  drumming sounded a 
bit thin but that improved to perfection by the 3rd  song or so.  The asshole 
factor on the floor got a little out of hand  by about an hour into the show 
which some of the more aggressive slamming  nearly causing a few fights.  One 
obnoxious fat blond chick with huge  tits wearing a tiara was drunkenly 
slamming into anyone she could but if  someone, especially this older balding 
punk (who almost passed out loaded  near the end of the show) would bounce 
into her, she'd get all pissed and  angrily shove back at them.  However, I 
hung out on Geordies side  about 15 feet back from the stage and rarely had 
anyone bounce into  me.

The very limited merchandise only consisted of two black t-shirts  
respectively  featuring the first two album's artwork for $25 (no  XXlarge 
for you big boys) and a small black pamphlet of Youth's  poems.

I *really* hope they put out a new album and continue  touring.  Based on 
last night's show, they still have plenty of fire  for a lot more music, on 
stage and off.  Those catching the Chicago  and NYC shows are in for a huge 
treat.

T.B.  




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