An apology to Blonde Redhead.

On Tuesday, May 8 2007 I went to go see one of my favorite bands Blonde Redhead perform at Webster Hall in NYC. While I don't want to go into a review of the show (which was sexy and awesome), I simply want to call your attention to one slightly disturbing event that occurred while I was there.

During one of the band's newer songs off of 23, the drummer Simone Pace triggered a sub bass sample with his midi drum pad that was, as I affectionately refer to it, the "shit-your-pants" note. It was so deep and so hard that it made your entire body shake, get stuck to the floor, and then shake again as the wave finished passing through you. In short, it was fucking loud and I loved it.

Unfortunately, too many people in the audience did not. At the end of the song, a sad group of human beings directly in front of Kazu called her attention and began yelling about how something was too loud.

The singer spoke her first words of the evening: "What? Too loud? Something is too lou- The bass? The bass is too loud?"

After looking around the stage for a moment, and listening to about 50 voices scream out "Bass drum!" or "Floor tom!" or "Bass!" Kazu finally shrugged her shoulders and declared that "You might be the most conservative people I've ever..."

She was cut off by Singer/Guitarist Amadeo Pace, who picked up his head from tuning his guitar to deadpan, "We don't have a bass player."

Those of us in the audience who were quickly growing tired with the whining bastards up front had to laugh at this bit of humor. And then we all laughed when the drummer finally pointed a finger up in the air, as if to say "Oh, I know what you mean!" and then slammed down on the midi trigger one more time to send that enormous deep wave at us again. With a smile on, of course.

So the sound man probably turned down the sub woofers at this point to appease the few people in the audience who seem to have forgotten who it was they came to see. Maybe this group of people had never listened to a Blonde Redhead record before Misery is a Butterfly. If they had, they'd realize that this was a band rooted in abrasive music - music that is loud and hard and makes your soul hurt a little bit because that feels good some times. I can understand why the band couldn't simply say "Fuck you" to their adoring fans who payed to see them, but I'd also put money on the fact that they left that stage wondering if the future of rock fans was going to be a dark one.
So on behalf of the Blonde Redhead fans at that Webster Hall show, I apologize to the band for the few who were so fucking lame.