ASSOCIATE EDITOR KORY GROW: HENRY ROLLINS SPOKEN-WORD SHOW REVIEW

Last week I saw the always-impressive Henry Rollins do a spoken-word show at Brooklyn’s Warsaw. If you’ve never seen the former Black Flag vocalist/Rollins Band leader do one of these, basically he gets onstage, wraps the mic cord around his hand, and proceeds to pummel the audience with funny, tragic, and often tragically funny anecdotes about life, liberty, and the pursuit of rock. This might be the tenth time or so I’ve seen him do a spoken-word show over the years, and this was one of the best.

After grabbing some pierogies and kielbasa, one of the many delights of seeing him at a Polish rec hall, we found our seats just as he found his soapbox. Incidentally, as liberal as he is politically, Rollins never once told us who to vote for or what to believe—it’s almost humbling how accepting he is of everyone’s viewpoints. His rants ranged from the “unwashed humanity” of touring with Black Flag to the “wop bop bozey bop” nonsense scat-talk of David Lee Roth (and of course that of George Bush).

Some interesting things struck me, as they always do. For one, no matter how much traveling I’ve done, I’ll never match this guy. When Rollins picks a vacation he goes to…hmmm…Islamabad, Pakistan. He told a long story about being there in December when Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated, and how a young man told him that he, personally, needed to tell Mr. Bush not to be friends with Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf. On another occasion, when Rollins was in Sweden, an Iraqi cab driver told him the biggest problem he had with America was Paul Bremer, the dude who dissolved Iraq’s Ba’athist party. The way Rollins illustrated this was by imagining Belgians getting on a boat, docking in Manhattan, and telling us they were “liberating” us, that our government was fired, and that they’d be here for a while. The Iraqi people must feel humiliated. One of Rollins’ great qualities is to show the humanity of a nation that has been painted as faceless in American media. As I said before, Rollins didn’t preach, though. He said he didn’t care whom we voted for, just as long as we voted. He also said that in the remaining months of Bush’s presidency, he’s going to just enjoy the stupid things he says, like this:

(Just to be clear, at the time of this writing, former South African President Nelson Mandela is very much alive at the venerable age of 89.) Rollins also talked about visiting Robben Island, South Africa, which contains the cell where Mandela was incarcerated for 18 years by the racist Apartheid government. While down there, Rollins filmed a documentary for the cable channel IFC that should air, according to him, “sometime.”

Of course Rollins talked about music, too, his funniest story being his excursion to see “the Van Halen.” (“You have to be very careful how you ask someone if they like Van Halen,” he said, as so many people object to the campy ’80s chart toppers, though he himself is a fan. His recommended opener: “’What do you think of the Van Halen?’”) He had met David Lee Roth at an exhibition of artist and Black Flag logo designer Raymond Pettibone’s work in the ’80s, and Roth remembered Rollins and got him last-minute tickets to the concert. He said the scariest thing about the show was seeing the massive audience chomping on their plastic-like cheese-coated arena nachos. Van Halen fans would do well in Iraq, Rollins suggested. He also told a poignant story about singing with British punks the Ruts, knowing that guitarist Paul Fox had cancer and would die. The way Rollins intertwines humor and pathos is unparalleled—and is what separates him from your average standup comics.

At the show, I picked up volume 2 of Rollins’ book Fanatic! These are his collected lists and liner notes from his radio show on Los Angeles–area radio station Indie 103.1. Rollins has excellent taste, and even if his writing chops aren’t quite up to Lester Bangs’ level, his prose is still entertaining and persuasive. I mean, he argues that Black Sabbath’s Bill Ward–sung “It’s Alright,” off 1976’s spotty-at-best Technical Ecstasy is one of their best songs—and now I’m starting to reconsider it myself. I always thought of it as Black Sabbath’s bid to match Kiss with their drummer-sung 1976 calm-down-honey-I-still-love-you ballad “Beth.” Rollins is right, though: “It’s Alright” is all right. (Although I still have no idea what the fuck the lyrics are about.) In any case, check Revolver’s tour page and see if Rollins is coming to a town near you. Trust me, it’s worth it.