Weirdest shit ever...

So I went to the Rendezvous on Monday night for their weekly new music showcase. They do it every Monday night, which is going to be a regular thing for me cuz I like music and it's a good spot to meet people and feel out the local scene.

Last week was the first time I went, and it was what I expected. The high ceilings are a detriment to the sound quality, but these are just local bands. The first act I saw was a one-man band kind of thing with a guy (forget his name) playing guitar and drums. Sort of rockabillyish. Then they had a sort of punk band called MK Ultra Culken. They were once an instrumental punk band, but now they have a chick singer (pardon the mysoginist lingo, but they are a punk band, and they'd probably appreciate it). The singer was obviously new cuz she was singing off of cue cards for the entire set.

So week one: local bands playing in a local bar. Not outstanding music, with not outstanding sound, but pretty standard expectable stuff.

Which brings me to Monday night. I was expecting similar fare. The first two bands fit the mold; local, unassuming rock bands, that play nonthreatening tunes, that sound ok at best, worse in the poor acoustic surroundings.

But then there was a band from Philadelphia called Mose Giganticus (later research suggests that Mose Giganticus is the name of the lead singer [stage name I presume, the band just plays for him]). They appeared to be a three piece. The lead singer, drummer and guitar player. But then I noticed that the lead singer had a keytar:



He also had quite a shiny-bright collection of electronics on his rig. Lots of buttons. Turns out he also had a vocoder voice synth deal, and his keytar was programmed into a sampler of some sort. (
www.myspace.com/mosegiganticus) They played a kind of synthy pop-punk music and had a lot of energy. I liked it. I even stood up to watch which was unexpected.
Two other strange things though: they brought a camera man who took a lot of pictures with a weird flash in one hand camera in the other hand kind of deals, and a weird dude dressed like a cowboy who didn't appear to be more than a groupy until...

The band finished their set and started tearing down their equipment. The cowboy appeared to be helping out. I thought it was weird that they were piping a punky version of the theme song to the American Office tv series. Then the cowboy started the sampler and started 'singing.' Turns out he's a performer called 'The Emotron.' His act was quite bizarre. The songs were ridiculous, and all he did was sort of freak out on the stage area. As the 'performance' continued he stripped off his cowboy outfit revealing some sort of leotard. Oh, almost forgot, he was wearing safety glasses with one lens sort of fucked up. As the 'show' progressed he also stripped off his cowboy hat, then his hair piece revealing quite a large and perhaps bogus bald spot (hard to tell how old this guy is for sure and I wouldn't put it past him to fake it). He filled the blank spaces between songs with nonsensical rants, since it was cinco de maio most of them were about drunk Mexicans, oh and fucking, and sayin the word fuck. Further along he stripped down to his undies, then brought out some substance, sprayed it on his junk and set it on fire, then did the same to his head, and repeat. I highly recommend you check this shit out, its beyond words:

www.myspace.com/theemotron

www.youtube.com/user/TheEmotron

And if you thought that was the end of the night, nope. The closing act was a 'band' called The Cartridge Family. Can't find them online at all, it's possible that they've been banned from the internet. They've apparently been banned from most bars in Lansing. Not a surprise considering their style. I didn't count all of them, but I think there were 8-10 of them, only 4 of which were actually playing instruments (drums, bass, guitar, keys). The rest were just acting a fool. They ran around jumping on stuff, firing off confetti, tossing garbage around, wrapping people in tape, dancing on people, getting naked, breaking a large piniata (sp), spitting fire, etc... The overweight lead singer (he was wearing a cut off sleeveless shirt to accentuate his bear belly, and to go with his black and white striped leotard) jumped onto and destroyed a table about 5 seconds into their first song. I thought the bouncers were going to physically throw them out before they could even get started.

Long story short, best $5 cover I ever paid for anything ever. Next week will likely be lame as hell.