Turbonegro
8 out of 10 - Great. Good show.
Thursday, October 20, 2005
Roseland Theater, Portland Oregon
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To preface this review: I'm writing from the vantage point of a twenty-nine year old man. When I saw AC/DC, I was too young to understand that it didn't begin and end with Money Talks. My first Ramones experience saw the band opening for Social Distortion. Yes, the Ramones were warming the crowd for someone else. CBGB's sounded like a Sesame Street character.
As the decade turned into the 90's, I was given a skewed view of the world of punk rock and its hierarchy. I'm closer to the truth now, but even with that being said, my perspective is strictly historical. I can say in academic sense why the Ramones shouldn't open for anyone, but I was never on the floor to give you an anecdote. I'm rarely surprised or, for that matter, I'm really ever blown away.
I've set this up too far, and now the reader will assume, "oh boy, this schmuck is going to go on and praise Turbonegro as his personal epiphany." Maybe I am, who knows. What I'd like to impart however, is that maybe its time to say that the good old days are gone, and acknowledge a whole new pantheon of rock gods. Perhaps balls-to-the-wall punk rock can live again.
When Turbonegro takes the stage, it's with great anticipation, and ends up nothing short of a circus: German soldiers manning instruments, happy sailors bouncing back and forth, a midget dressed in medieval garb, and then the real thing, a larger, darker Nordic warrior, named Hank Von Helvete. He prances, twirls a riding crop and belts out insults to the crowd between numbers. He taunts the city with his tasteless remarks, calls its residents names, and flogs his band members without remorse. It has all the markings of an easily dismissed sideshow. On the surface, they're every town's joke band only amplified.
Then they play; guitars strike, drums pound and the wall of sound is quickly erected, then dropped line a ton of bricks. You know now that Turbonegro isn't just a sideshow: they are, without a doubt, why you're here. Songs like "All My Friends Are Dead", "Sell Your Body (To The Night)" and "Wasted Again" are so absolutely thunderous and riveting, it whips a weekday crowd into a frenzy of dangerous proportions. From above, one must question the engineering solvency of the second story floor. Sure the little tricks pop up (encores in underwear, balloons dropped from the rafters) but walking out of the theater, ears ringing, twenty-nine year old neck sore, there is little doubt it was the music that was the star of the night.
I'm willing to give Turbonegro more credit than it seems most reviewers are (a standard Google search should yield enough parodies of their efforts). For the most part they're cast off as a joke band, a loud, screaming gimmick, and they do play to that but there is a lot more at play when the band takes the stage. It seems as though they've knowingly cobbled together every element that marked their forerunner's success. They're like the Misfits; they're like the Ramones.
Hopefully in ten years someone might say, hey, those guys are just like Turbonegro.
In summary, they're not going to prepare you for your standardized law school test, or give you something to talk about in civilized company, but they will remind you that good times still can be had in make-up and black leather - er, I mean denim. The boys like denim. In a punk rock world filled with outright gimmicks, this is maybe as real as it has been for years.
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