“Afraid of Everyone” by The National merges into a Fleetwood Mac song and I can’t remember the name and this soon flows into “New York State of Mind” and that’s because it is on my mind as –jr and I have decided to do our first ever tour of New York in October and I chuckle to myself when I consider if we should invade local New York blogs months in advance like ticks creating the type of curiosity and hype that we achieved for the 2009 Blowout but that plan and that story is for another time because I am en route to Small’s in Hamtramck to cover the Batusis show.
“What the hell kind of name is Bat-Sooeys?” –jr asked me a few hours earlier that day as we were playing Marvel Ultimate Alliance on the Xbox 360.
“No, it Batusis,” I reply as I complete a combo attack assisted by a computer-controlled Wolverine.
“Well then, what the hell does Batusis even mean? It has to be the stupidest name…”
“It’s the dance that Batman did on the 60’s TV show, guy. It has to do with comics so its cool I guess,” I offer.
“Hate it,” –jr hisses and he spaces the words out deliberately as his character (Thor) grabs something called The Ultimate Nullifier and I click off my controller to head downtown and now I’m downtown and I meet up with Ceep Ceep who lives close to the bar. I manage to get a parking spot near the bar which only gives me one chance to play “Tease the bum with a dollar”. Ceep Ceep and I head into the bar (guest list of course) and grab a seat and the first band starts to play.
“So, how’s it going?” I ask Ceep Ceep, initiating a conversation for the first time in months.
“It’s okay as it can be,” he answers, typically vague, “Hey Metro, I thought you were banned from here!”
“Don’t believe everything you read,” I warn and he shuts up for a while but I need something to distract me from my job, the reason I am here. I fail.
“So, who is this playing?” I ask him.
“They’re called Lies Unknown. Ummm, they play rock music.”
“I see. They kind of remind me of ‘Shout at the Devil’ Motley Crue, but I’m not sure,” I stutter.
“How the hell did you ever get started reviewing shows?” he guffaws.
“I’ll be the first to tell you that music is not my forte, but I’m not afraid to do what’s necessary to let people know the truth.”
“What are you talking about Metro?” he asks, not understanding what I am implying.
“Never mind. This band plays rock music.”
“They used to have a hot girl with them,” he says, then a pause, “but now they don’t.”
“I don’t understand what you mean,” I ask, craning my neck trying to see that band in the other room since we are still at the table in the bar area.
“You know; a hot girl,” he repeats.
“A hot girl,” I repeat, finally conceding.
“Yeah. But now they don’t.”
“Mmmhmmmm.”
The band stops playing and the jukebox comes back on playing the Talking Heads and I swallow a Xanax in preparation.
“So who’s up next?” I ask.
“The Luxury Pushers,” he answers, and I hide a small shudder.
“What are they like? Do they have a hot girl?” I ask, leaning in, leering.
“They play rock music,” Ceep Ceep replies helpfully.
“Can’t wait!” I say, unironically and the band starts up.
“They remind me of the Trash Brats,” I say after a beat, repeating something I overheard at the bar.
“I think one of them was in the Trash Brats, Metro,” he says and we slap high five.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Trash Brats. Live music stresses me out, y’know… Did the Trash Brats have a hot girl?”
“I’m not sure,” his answer, pathetic.
“So did you see Inception?” I ask after the band wraps up.
“Nope. Not yet. I want…”
“I think that it’s the best American movie since Inglourious Basterds…or maybe The Runaways,” I interrupt.
“Really?”
“Yeah. DiCaprio is on a real roll lately. I think he has surpassed Clooney, Depp, Downey Jr. as the beat working American actor. His choices in roles are impeccable. I can’t even think of a female counterpart with the same drive, sense of challenge.”
“Huh,” Ceep Ceep says, a question (?) I don’t know.
“I can’t think of a female actor with the same career vision is what I’m saying. Do you have a Twitter account?”
“Metro, you’re a devil,” he says playfully as Batusis take the stage and I get up and leave him at the bar and stand at the back of the small, but raucous, crowd at the foot of the stage.
I sleepwalk through the first song trying to think of a female actor, an actress, who is on a creative peak the level of Leonardo DiCaprio right now. The second song snaps me out of it. It is “I Wanna Be Loved”, a cover of the old Heartbreakers song. The rest of the crowd jumped into it at this point, quite literally, as Lies Unknown started a mosh pit on training wheels and I stepped back because I am above these things.
The banter between Sylvain Sylvain and Cheetah Chrome was humorous and they looked to be having a genuinely good time getting back to their roots. “Sonic Reducer” was next with Cheetah on vox. The Lies Unknown mosh pit peaked at this point as the various looks I observed said, “I can’t handle this too much longer. I drank too much.” Sylvain took over for the next song announcing, “How do you call your lover boy?” sending the band into the Dolls classic “Trash”. I went into never never land at this point scratching the L.A.M.F. tattoo on my bicep (right under the Super Mario tattoo) and for some reason this song reminded me of my last girlfriend, Lexus Slurr. I snapped out of my daydream (nightmare?) as one of the Lies Unknown kids bumped into some guy who looked to have time travelled from a 2003 Social Distortion show, knocking his beer to the ground. Before I could point and laugh, the Social D. square picked up the bottle and flung it at Cheetah’s head. As soon as the song ended, the Small’s task force stopped the show and Cheetah demanded that the person who threw it come up on stage. Surprisingly, Social D. complied and was promptly threatened to be taken out back and maimed and I looked at the bottom of my shoe to discover a piece of confetti….
By this point, I had attached myself to the ceiling with my belt and was pretending to be a hummingbird. The next song was a cover of the Velvet Underground’s “Femme Fatale”, a pleasant surprise, and I started buzzing my hummingbird wings spilling beer on the people below. This was followed by “Blue’s Theme”, “Jet Boy” (a personal favorite) which had the crowd clapping along whooping and hollering, and the set closed with “Dizzy Miss Lizzie”. I quickly left after this because I had a 15 hour work day ahead of me and when I looked for Ceep Ceep to say goodbye I saw that he had already begun the process of cocooning himself onto the wall at the bar, using what looked to be imported silk and as I was running to my truck (shrieking “Little Drummer Boy”) I stabbed a bum (I think it was a bum) with a bottle opener but made sure to just pierce his upper thigh so he could at least hobble to the Medical Center I passed on Caniff and I notice that a small Oriental woman may have seen me so I mouth “Who’s next?” at her and then teleport to Seattle, Washington using the special powers that Minka taught me the other day, sitting outside at the Edge of the World. Batusis was a blast!
Batusis 07/18/10-Smalls- A solid B+
From the Iceman Commeth,
Bryan Metro
Bryan Metro is the anti-show reviewer for Detroit’s anti-blog. When he isn’t too busy, he is also the lead vocalist for underground quasi-celebs on the cusp, The Jesus Chainsaw Massacre. Follow his twitter here or e-mail him here and disappear here