Pump Down the Volume - 1994

“John and I were working in his office and there was a record on the turntable and it was turned up LOUD. The director of the film walked in and asked John to turn down the music. I think only people in our generation know what the phrase ‘turn down the music’ represents. I saw the look that shot across his face. He walked over and turned up the volume twice as loud. In my opinion, if God is the kind of fellow I think he is, this one act alone should grant John automatic admission into Heaven.”
— Don Novello’s obituary for John Belushi, 1982

“Every sound person in Richmond is almost deaf.”
— Scott Burger in “Throttle,” on why the music’s so loud

Dateline 1994 - John Belushi would think some of the Richmond clubs are heaven. Good, bad or indifferent, things are certainly loud, and we have to ask, if it’s so loud to the point of being indistinguishable, is this what the bands really want? Not be heard as anything but a consistent homogenized roar that all sounds alike?

Nik Turner of Hawkwind had a full-page ad in Swill magazine promoting his Space Ritual ‘94 tour “featuring an amazing light show,” and there Richmond was on the sked, squeezed in as usual between Chapel Hill and Baltimore.

Cleopatra records had sent me the CD and their repugnant catalog. We had dutifully listened and heard a lot of undescribable (as opposed to indescribable) music from guys who were pretending like they were on spaceships or something. We could a) not go and always wonder if we missed something “amazing” or b) go and see something “amazing” or c) go and know for sure we didn’t miss anything “amazing,” so we went, and it was pretty amazing, all right.

A little after 10 p.m., we’re debating whether it’s too early to go in. We want to avoid the opening bands, but Twisters shows are starting later and later. “Nobody comes until after 11 p.m.,” majordomo Steve Douglas says, but there’s a line forming at the door so in order just to secure a good standing spot for after midnight, we are being forced to set up camp on the bleachers and risk band burn-out long before the exalted Nik Turner shows up.

Whoa, band burn-out is instantaneous. They have white-guy dreadlocks, nasty devil goatees, gazillion tattoos, and they look like that Muppet band that has Animal as the drummer. They buckle down in some stance like they’re holding back hell and do something to the very bottom of the top guitar string that creates just a tremendous roar. The lead singer, who looks like an evil troll, is screaming. This goes on non-stop for an hour. Between songs, while sampled “War of the Worlds” type chatter plays on the PA, they turn their backs to the audience and light lots of cigarettes, pass them back and forth, and guzzle beer which is lined up on top of all the amps.

I don’t know who this is. They look like Sleep from San Francisco, rude, crude and multi-tattooed, but they don’t sound like the CD I have at home, so I turn to this blondie blonde guy on the bleachers next to me, and yell at him, “WHO’S THIS BAND?,” giving him a free ear blow in the process.

“THE FIRST ONE,” he says.

Aha ha ha. Wise ass.

Turns out it’s Buzzoven, or Buzzov•en as they prefer. Buzzov•en would have done a good job accompanying the Los Angeles earthquake. It sounded like the ground beneath Twisters was going to open up and suck us all down into a spiral of steaming lava. Equipment breakdowns did nothing to deter the roar. Douglas just swarmed around the rafters and over the amps like a monkey in a baseball cap, gluing, sticking, plugging, and screwing things back together. When the band finished, he swept up the broken glass.

The bill was attracting an almost exclusively male crowd, Richmond’s entire underground science fiction contingent, all these guys who spend their lives in their rooms reading comic books and look like Mr. Potato Head as rendered by Salvador Dali. It was a relief to see semi-normal Don’t Call Me Jimmeeee. We could send Don’t Call Me Jimmeeee on forays to the bar to get beer without losing our camp site on the top bleacher, although he was subsequently put on Twisters house arrest for drawing a picture of the United Nations logo on the men’s room wall.

The band Sleep came on next, and once again there is an hour’s worth of roaring from hell. Anne, who’s supposed to be covering this band for the Journal but has been rendered inoperative because she’s on a date, says, “this is better than a vibrator,” as a sonic buzz saw sound slams the air. We sit down on the bleachers to experience it properly. It is like a vibrator. Film from a moon landing plays on a screen behind them. The guitar player is wearing only red sweat pants and he has no shoulders, no chest, no hips, and the sweat pants are creeping lower and lower. There’s a tattoo on his tail bone.

“WHERE ARE THEY FROM?” Don’t Call Me Jimmeeee yells in my ear. I write on my pad, “San Francisco.” He yells back do I like them? I write back, “We’re waiting for his pants to fall down.” Kami has the camera ready to go for the moon shot but it doesn’t happen. The crowd on the floor is dense and bobbing. After Sleep comes off stage, Red Pants is standing right in front of us talking to somebody. Don’t Call me Jimmee is holding Kami’s camera looking for motor speed or F-stops or something and we go into a panic to get it back because suddenly WE HAVE CRACK! Red Pants’ drawers have now slipped to appliance repairman level right in front of our faces and we can’t get Don’t Call Me Jimmee’s attention to hand the camera back. We’re hysterical. Kami finally rips it out of his hands, but by this time Red Pants has wrapped a shirt around his mostly bare ass. No posterior is caught for posterity.

Now it’s finally time for Nik Turner and as if some walkee-talkee communication is going on, the last crew of sci-fi heads come in at exactly the right moment for the headliner, accompanied by the extraordinarily dapper looking Buzzy Lawler. We swoon. It’s 12:40 a.m. How he’d know exactly what time to come? How do you compute these things?

The “amazing light show” is floating green blobs on the wall. I’ve seen this done better in little psychedelic bars back in the Sixties where some hippie sat in a booth and dripped food coloring on glass slides and held them up in front of a projector. There’s a white strobe light flashing which is always a cool effect, and a fog machine, but where’s Nik Turner?

And who’s this guy trying to fight his way through the crowd wearing weird goggles and a bicycle racing helmet with flashing lights on it, shaking two phone-book sized maraca things? The crowd doesn’t let him through. Goofs dressed like this are so common on Grace Street, it takes awhile for people to realize this is the star of the show! Let him through!

The star is wearing black long winter underwear with electric blue lights imbedded in them. He has an old man’s body, skinny, narrow, emaciated shoulders, flaccid thighs, and a little, low hanging, poochy stomach. But his helmet and goggles and weird mechanical voice and hand movements have a certain erotic style and so we have a show.

Don’t Call Me Jimmee is howling, “They all expected Hawkwind playing with Motorhead and what they’re getting is Devo!” He thinks this is a hoot. We are fairly entertained, but it would have been better earlier without two hours of head-exploding opening acts. Kami says the lighting for a photo is hopeless and has gone; Anne has moved to another venue; Don’t Call Me Jimmee is now formally under Twister house arrest for graffiti crime; Buzzy has disappeared; I’ve had too many beers, too many Camels, and feel like my head’s been banged against the wall too many times. At 1:45 a.m., at a point I estimated was two-thirds through Turner’s set, I surrender, hoping whatever truly “amazing” thing about the light show didn’t happen after I left. (Later I hear Turner played until 3:45 a.m., another two hours! Is this possible?!)

Just as I’m pulling away, I see the delectable Dirtball drummer Peter Headley coming down the street. His timing is even better than the sci-fi heads. Come at the end of the last set, see the finale and pay no cover. Some people have got the knack of this down. Well, damn.

All the way home I hear crickets. Something has happened to my hearing. Inside my apartment I hear crickets. Even though I live in the city, crickets roar in my head all night. Fortunately crickets is not a bad noise to sleep to. Next morning I hear crickets. All day long I hear crickets. I call Anne that evening and Anne’s hearing crickets. Everyone who was at the show is hearing crickets. We now live in an invisible cricket-filled sci-fi environment. Maybe this is the amazing thing that happens on the Space Ritual ‘94 tour.

YOU WILL HEAR CRICKETS FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE.

Epilogue 2007: This was the beginning of why you have to yell at me now if you want me to hear you.