For me it was Wolfmother at a major German festival. I didn’t really know them before and did not expect too much, but was totally blown away by their performance.
For me it was Wolfmother at a major German festival. I didn’t really know them before and did not expect too much, but was totally blown away by their performance.
Crash Worship. They did sort of tribal industrial experimental music from the mid-80s through (I think) the mid-00s. I don’t know if they came out of the OG Burning Man crowd, but they very much had the Burning Man vibe from back when the Burning Man experience still included shooting guns. I saw them play a NYE show at a 1920s-era movie house turned music venue called the Aztlan, and it was bonkers.
The show started with a massive floor-to-ceiling fireball, and kind of escalated from there. There were a lot of drummers and fire performers moving through the crowd flanked by a phalanx of nubile people in various states of undress carrying alcohol whose mission seemed to be to get as many people as possible as drunk as possible as quickly as possible. At one point I was so soaked with kerosene and alcohol that I was genuinely worried about lighting my own cigarette. Fortunately I was shortly put at ease about it when I got hit with a stray firework and didn’t burst into flame.
It was a pretty intense experience. It’s not surprising that Crash Worship has been banned from just about every venue they’ve ever played (and I think maybe some entire cities as well). There’s no way the owners of the Aztlan knew what they were signing up for when they made this booking. I’m glad I got to be there to see it though.