King Buzzo
Friday, July 18 at The Southern Cafe and Music Hall, Charlottesville, VA
“Please shut the fuck up.” The girl next to me looked over. No one else heard me, but she did. Who talks in an outside voice at an acoustic show? The drunk dude, up front, throwing out lines like he’s deep sea fishing.
King Buzzo
Friday, July 18 at The Southern Cafe and Music Hall, Charlottesville, VA
“Please shut the fuck up.” The girl next to me looked over. No one else heard me, but she did. Who talks in an outside voice at an acoustic show? The drunk dude, up front, throwing out lines like he’s deep sea fishing.
The venue was pretty dark. A few lights on. 300 person, standing capacity. 200 seated. Imagine a place you’d see a poetry reading. Maybe someone doing interpretive dance. Mike Myers on Sprockets.
Stalking around the stage: King Buzzo. His acoustic guitar held like a shotgun. A detonation of curly hair above him like the graying smoke of a mushroom cloud. Some type of monk. An almost ethereal being. No one in that room was on his level.
He hit some notes and strummed into a song I didn’t know and hadn’t heard before. It was good. Slowly at first, the lead Melvin pinballed from the back of the stage to the front like a chrome orb, appearing to wander at times, but the deliberate look on his face and the “fuck you” approach to the vibratos, deep string bends, and sludgy chug left no question that this wasn’t a goddamned accident. He-Man on a mountain vocals dropped back to the sound of a garbled chest bog. Then almost a sniveling approach, or what I’d imagine Uriah Heep (the Dickens character, not the band) would have sounded like in front of a microphone.
It seemed almost holy.
Photo by Erichka Ilich
Rocking back and forth, I looked around and saw a few other people doing the same thing. He played some more songs. Silent parts throughout. Playing off the lack of volume. Using it almost as a percussion instrument. Then he’d let his voice thunder. King Buzzo has the voice of a king.
While we were driving to Charlottesville, my friend Henry told me he’d read a recent interview with Buzzo. Said he didn’t want to make music like a lot of rock singers who put out an acoustic record. James Taylor cut with Muddy Waters or someone like that.
It certainly wasn’t like any acoustic show I’d ever been to. I didn’t skip out to have a cigarette. Didn’t need to go get a beer. I just stood there like a guy frozen in the batter’s box. Struck out on three pitches. It was excellent.
My buddy Bryan was standing next to me with one of those lightsaber-esque electronic cigarettes. Some dude I didn’t know was on the other side of me, and he had one of those electronic hash pens. Both were sharing. I didn’t need to go anywhere. I whispered or made hand motions (read: acoustic show etiquette) when I wanted to partake in both, but mainly I stayed focused on the stage.
Photo by Todd Cooper
“SLAYER,” shouted that same dongbag from the beginning of the article. I admit, I kinda laughed at this. Really though, I hoped the guy would get dragged out back and tied in a knot.
Buzzo deflected the comment with far less wit than I’d expected. I wanted him to go the New Jack City route. Tell the guy to sit his five dollar ass down. I think he said something about voting instead? Maybe he talked about the band Kansas. I can’t remember. The guy with the hash pen was passing it back my way, and I’ve got the attention span of a small bird.
He probably looked out from under the sparse lights, saw the crowd, and figured he was outnumbered by a small body of collared shirts, plaid shorts, pony tails, and halter tops. Drunks murmuring like wounded seagulls as the audience ebbed from the stage.
“My boyfriend likes him, but I don’t get it,” someone behind me said. Just goes to show that an expensive education doesn’t buy fucking manners.
Buzzo continued on. I’m assuming all of the songs (besides a cover of Alice Cooper’s “Ballad of Dwight Fry”and some random Melvins songs) were from his solo acoustic album, This Machine Kills Artists, which came out in June. I don’t know. But I enjoyed everything he played. Nothing like James Taylor or Muddy Waters or someone like that.
Regarding the album, I walked into the show with a blank slate. This was done on purpose. I wanted the show at The Southern Cafe and Music Hall to be a phantom. Like a shadowy figure in an alley–not certain whether he’s going to open my throat up with a dull razor or begin helping that drunk guy tied in a knot over by the dumpster. A surprise. Buzzo didn’t do either, but my back was resting against the brick in anticipation for whatever he planned on throwing at me.
The song before his final song of the evening was “Hooch” from (the) Melvins’ 1993 album Houdini. It moved me into one of those slow, stoned, full-body bangs that lasted the remainder of his set–which ended with “Revolve,” from 1994’s classic Stoner Witch–like one of those insatiable, felt-beaked drinking birds, bending down to sip the water and flinging itself back up in one continuous, fluid (not perpetual) motion. A chiropractor can’t even give your back that kind of orgasm.
