It was 9-9-09, and Motorhead were in town here in NYC playing the Roseland Ballroom....
After sending an email out to a bunch of friends to gather a posse, I headed to Roseland all by my lonesome. No-one was interested.... weird, I think - it's not everyday that Motorhead come to town.
Anyway, they were supported by Nashville Pussy and Reverend Horton Heat - neither of whom I had seen live.
Nashville Pussy's lead guitarist is a chunky chick, dressed in black skinny jeans (aka painted on jeans) and she slings a black SG. The moment she put her leg up on the foldback and literally ripped the strings off her SG, I was sold.
Reverend Horton Heat kind of started off 'cold'... and I was a little disappointed with the reverend's sound - his gretsch didn't have that snarly 'KKRANNGGGG' that we all know and love. After a few tunes, however, they warmed up. By the end, I wanted more - a great, tight little 3 piece with many cool psychobilly numbers.... and a mini country set to boot....
So there I was, all by meself.... damned if I wasn't going to get me a good spot. So I went right up to the front. As the lights dimmed, the crowd became increasingly dense. If you hadn't moved forward by this time, forget it. Ten feet behind the front row, a group of tattooed dudes with no shirts were starting to get 'antsy'. Once the show started they were full on shoulder thumping each other - super aggressively but that was their game. This went on throughout the show, as did the flow of bourbon.
Don't get me wrong, where I was located wasn't sesame street. It was basically a fight between falling and subsequent inevitable trampling and ducking out of the way when some crowd surfer's foot came from nowhere.
The mosh pit was surprisingly soft (blokes from Long Island covered in a layer of tatts, which covered a layer of the good life), and despite Matt Sorum's best efforts to impart rhythm to the experience (he was on drums that night) the crowd was surprisingly rhythmically challenged.
Finally, this was the loudest gig I've been too. Don't get me wrong - I like it loud - I used to gig with 2 marshall quadboxes in small clubs - but this was alarming. My brain was trembling. And by the next morning, hearing still hadn't been restored to it's pre Motorhead state. It meant that you couldn't really hear anything at all. Coupled with the fact that most of Motorhead's songs are heavily distorted E chords in various guises and the sound was essentially mush.
But I loved it anyway.
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