ilyĀIMY.com

December 12th, 2018.

Ministry came to town. Thanks to Pandora, every time my favourite 90s industrial band came up in my music feed I was made aware that they were coming to town and for months I’ve been poking friends to see if ANYONE ELSE CARED. Finally Rowan cared.

  • Christmas at the mall? YES PLEASE!!!
  • Christmas in the outdoor malls? YES PLEASE!!!!
  • The first band Wednesday December 5th at the Fillmore in Silver Spring : Alien Weaponry.
  • Band two : Carpenter Brut.
  • The main event – MINISTRY!!!
  • The first set was all new stuff, the second stuff all the old stuff. I enjoyed the new stuff. I LOVED the old stuff.

I bought the tickets. He drove and bought the pizza.

We wandered Silver Spring’s Christmas-clad streets before ducking into the show not knowing anything about the opening acts but determined to catch the whole night.

First up : Alien Weaponry. Maori thrash metal trio? Yes please! Many of the songs kicked off with Hakas, plenty had Maori lyrics. Pretty bad ass.

Second up : Carpentry Brut. This was like Rob Zombie’s rave, complete with darkwave electronica and 60s sexploitation flicks re-imagined into a narrative about a small town psycho killer inspired by heavy metal music killing cheerleaders. It was kind of amazing.

And then Ministry. I Love this band. Al Jourgensen and his bands performed all through the late 80s and 90s and songs like New World Order, Thieves and So What spoke strongly to me as I raged and railed against not very much. The heavy, industrial metal sound that Ministry had was a perfect mix of shredding and metal clanking and the warbling distorted vocals with their marginally comprehensible chants and wails were something I sang along to whether I knew what he was saying or not.

But I never got to see them, and then they kind of vanished.

Well, Trump’s made Al feel like he needed to perform again – and many songs were introduced with a line something like “I wrote this song 30 years ago about fascism. Now I have to play it again” or “I wrote this song 25 years ago about gun control. I guess it’s great that I can keep playing it”. And indeed, in my folksy world of cleverly-worded songs that express feelings of disenchantment with the current political climate, it was really, really satisfying to just be screaming ….

I’ve got something to say to you
I’ll back it up with my fist
Sick and tired of dealing with assholes
That’s why I resist

We’re not snowflakes
We are the antifa

Ministry

Chanting “What do we want?!?!” “VIOLENCE!!!” “When do we want it?!?!” “NOW!!!” with pictures morphing back and forth between Trump and Hitler and people in costumes running back and forth with red and black flags – well, I’m not particularly a believer in violent revolution, but sometimes it’s good to scream it….

  • Thursday was my second Ho Ho Happy Hour open mic in the Harbor – Melanie Avery returned…
  • and we had new faces too! Like my friend Loralyn Coles (all the way from Northern Virginia!)
  • And Keyan Johnson – last seen at the Bill’s Music open mic benefit for Ellicott City!
  • Dave Godbey…
  • And Pete, who was just hanging out. I get it that Christmas “should” be Jesusy, but I was non-plussed that his songs weren’t just “God is great” but specifically “our God is the BEST God”. Literally.
Came home for 17 minutes between running the open mic in the Harbor and racing out to Frederick to play Firestone’s. I had just enough time to eat something and think “huh, the cat’s in the crater with the silver spoon” and then get back in the car.
Heather and I always like to take the opportunity to stand in the middle of the street in Frederick, lapping up the Christmasish. Firestone’s was even more bar than usual, so we needed some pretty lights.
Early Christmas present! Kristen got me a Krampus shirt!
ilyAIMY loading in and soundchecking at the New Deal Cafe. I was happy to run my own sound and brought additional monitors and logged everyone into the mixer so they could run them themselves while I dealt with front of house… it wasn’t until later that someone pointed out that the guys all hopped right into it, adjusting their mixes and fine-tuning their volume, while Heather and Kristen were just like… “whatever”.
  • Sunday we went Christmas tree hunting…
  • … and since Greg Klyma was in town, he got dragged along!
  • We found the perfect tree.
  • One of the new ornaments for this year : A white walker from Game of Thrones.
  • And Animal has beat out Bumble, Khan and the Krampus for top position this year!
Monday, before going up to Teavolve for the open mic, we went down to Takoma Park where Anthem was doing some recording at Asparagus. I helped set up and even recorded some much-needed MIAOWS for the new song before taking Greg Klyma over to House of Musical Traditions to explore mandocellos.
  • Monday’s Teavolve open mic.
  • A new artist with a happy face.
  • My Lovely wife.
  • Greg Klyma was my featured artist!
  • Greg and Kristen.
  • Morgan Gonce
  • After the open mic we went up to Miracle on 34th, the Annual Baltimore Christmas light celebration…
  • It was late enough that it was pretty much abandoned…
  • Christmas narwhal…
  • MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!! (almost)
robilyaimy

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