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| Venus in Furs | mp3.com/VenusinFurs |
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"I bet if you punched a giraffe in the neck hard enough it would talk." -Muncipal Fervor, while discussing giraffes' lack of vocal cords with Steve Albini
NEWS (11/02/03): The night before last's Hallowed Be Thy Ween Version 2.0 show went excellently. It was more raucous in front of the stage and more polite behind the scenes than last year, both good things. All six bands played well and kept an old-school punk vibe going the entire Misfits-themed show. It was the first time I'd seen a mosh pit going at the Underground, actually. In addition to playing well, all of the band members were very easy to get along with. Last year's show at Reed Lane had one notorious incident involving Fargo's answer to Spinal Tap, but also none of the less public "we've played two shows, treat us like rock stars!" behavior that went on at the Reed Lane show (and many others) was evident this year. Around 150 people attended, and we actually achieved that fabled feat of breaking even at the Underground, a place known almost as much for reaming every last dollar out of you without a reacharound as they are for the Concordia Activities Board's lame events (this is not a slander against Concordia College mind you, CAB is an MSUM organization dedicated to making people THINK they're at Concordia). ViF's set in particular was marred by bad sound, this being due to having no one to run the mixing board because of last minute scheduling conflicts. Joe ran sound for the other five bands, but not even he could be in two places at once for our set. Minimal Expectations singer Jason "Mobey" Moberg and some guy I see all the time at school but whose name I still don't know tried their best at running the board, but between not having a sound guy familiar with the weird non-standard board and our two front monitors blowing out almost immediately, sound was a losing battles for us. Those two monitors, by the way, were purchased at Marguerite's Music in Moorhead, and Joe discovered after the show when he opened one up to do an autopsy of sorts that they were listed on the outside as handling 1/3 more power than they were actually capable of. If you're not familiar with Marguerite's, they are a once-respected music store that now follows the tried and true Wal-Mart formula of "put the small stores out of business and then sell inferior crap at jacked up prices." I hope their aged founder who gets paraded around Queen of England-figurehead style under the illusion of still running things is proud. Sound quality aside, our set went very well. Joe and I were both dressed in Misfits-style garb and glow in the dark facepaint, though Joe's outfit was admittedly thrown together at my house about an hour before the show as opposed to my more elaborate bondage gear and devillock getup. I also painted stage blood dripping from my eyes, an aracane reference to the (unintentionally) recurring theme of blindness and eye mutilation in many early Venus in Furs songs (Wyrms, Razor, Payphone, etc.). As I never really had time to explain it to anyone, I doubt anyone else in the band, let alone in the audience, got the reference. The other ViF member dressed for Halloween was Corey, who went as his guitar/imaginary friend/menacing voice in his head, Sprinkles. If you ever wondered what a human version of a gold sparkled Ibanez Talman looks like, pictures from the show (courtesy of Emily Wheelwright) will soon be up on this page. By complete coincidence, the look of ViF's other Ibanez was sported by another member of our entourage. Leann Kopperud, who is Clint's sister (in sort of the same way that Corey is a married 34 year-old Muncipal) and for that night was probably the closest we've ever had to a real live roadie, was dressed in a costume colored oddly similar to Joe's Jet King (does that make Leann a Jet Queen?). On the topic of costumes, Thrive on Apathy, who opened the show with a set that appropriately included the Misfits' "Halloween," were probably the best-coordinated band, with all of them sporting either Misfits and/or old school punk rock looks. By the way, while the punk style definately fit their overall sound, am I the only one who heard just a bit of Judas Priest influence in there? The Decomposeurs looked like a bunch of swarthy pimps, so I'm still not sure if they were actually wearing costumes or not. They played a set that was both their most impressive so far and the most riddled with weird inside jokes about their bass player's girth. It was apparently their debut as a four-piece, with a new guitarist named Gabe likely playing a substantial role in their improved sound. Gabe actually looks just a tad bit TOO much like former ViF guitarist Geoff Grinney (the guy after Danny and before Corey; he lasted for only one show and even if you're IN the band you might not remember him). Messing With Texas drummer Erik Block had some impressive troll makeup, but he more notably led his band through several Misifts songs on vocals and bass when MWT pulled a ViF-style Chinese firedrill on their instruments for the cover songs. The best wig of the night was the impressive Afro sported by one of the member of Lost For Cause. I realized too late that I had made a daft faux pas when I complimented him on his impeccable wiggery only to learn that it was his real hair. Why the Mars Volta haven't picked him up as a touring member is beyond me. Star Wars fan Mobey was on loan from the ValleyCon science fiction festival, and he screamed through his band's set in full punk-rock Jedi gear. During ViF's audience-requested performance of "I Wanna Be Your Dog," Mobey and bandmate Mike Lentz lept up from the audience and tackled me, leading to all three of us screaming a particularly rousing final chorus from a heap on the floor of the stage. Mobey's light saber was briefly lost in the scuffle, but it was quickly retrieved (no doubt because the presence of The Force is strong in the lyrics of Iggy Pop). The rest of our covers-heavy set also went well, with the highlights probably being our contributions to the Misfits tribute theme. We opened with our now-familiar version of "138" and closed with "Last Caress" (on which a mob in front of the stage shouted along to every word). Somewhere in the middle we played "She" (my personal favorite Misfits tune), during which I went down on Clint's guitar David Bowie-style. We also did a profane, punkish version of Aqua's novelty song "Barbie Girl" to the annoyance to anyone who had finally gotten the song out of their head only recently, and I dedicated "Coma White" to a disturbingly life-like fascimile of Marilyn Manson in the audience. Though I didn't have a bullhorn to smash in commemoration of last year's first smashing during the song (the local Radio Shack has run out because I've smashed them all), we still played "Ich bin Ein Auslander." I think I crammed bits of a record amount of other songs into the improvised second half, throwing in the Happy Mondays' "Loose Fit" ("don't ya know I got bad taste"... damn Shaun Ryder for beating me to writing that line), A3's "Mansion On the Hill" (with references thrown in to the closing of Reed Lane just a week after last year's Halloween show), Low's "The Lamb," and Tom Waits' "The Black Rider." Our set was actually so full of covers, rarities, and requests that it was (I believe) the first full-length Venus in Furs set ever to not include "Wyrms." -Adam To send questions, comments, hate mail, disturbing requests, etc. to us, click the "Contact" tab above. This web page is generally run by Adam Bursack, but all of the band members are involved. Any correspondence to people other than Adam will eventually find its way to the band member in question. Band photo copyright 2003 Robyn McDaniels
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