Today is my 36th birthday. Yay. Yesterday night I went to see Henry Rollins. The European leg of his "Provoked" tour brought him to Köln, in the Gloria theatre.
Gloria is a great place, good atmosphere, nice people, easy to find as well. I've been a fan of Henry Rollins & band for quite some time. Unfortunately, the late 70s, early 80s punk period was just a bit too early for me to really appreciate (I was 7,8,9 then), but a neighboring teenager was a real punk. He dressed like a punk (is there a dress-code?), and listened to lots of punk records. I didn't really understand the actual "punk" scene, but back then already I liked the music and noise. I bet I also heard some Black Flag music, although I didn't know that of course.
Anyway, as a fan I have quite a few books, CDs and DVDs by and from Rollins. Lots of live shows as well. A live show on DVD usually is cut into shorter scenes and in total may take about 1.5 to 2 hours. Not this real-life live show. From 9pm to past midnight the public got blasted non-stop with witty quotes, humorous stories, interesting food-for-thought subjects and that at a relentless speed that Rollins is known of.
It was great. His latest trip to Pakistan and his impressions of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto was an up-to-date item in his show. Of course the story of the final the Ruts concert was not left out (also in the US leg), and one can only imagine how impressive this must have been for the band and Henry. I can't wait to get my hands on the DVD of that concert. I'm not going too much into show detail, everyone should just go and see (if you can still get a ticket, that is)!
Too bad I didn't catch the man after the show, my partner was completely exhausted (she's not a real Rollins fan, so 3 hours of him is a little bit too much I guess) so we got to the car straight away. Next time I'll either go alone or take someone else hah!
This morning I emailed Henry to say I loved the show and I told him another very interesting country to visit is North Korea (DPRK). That's already scheduled, he answered, probably in May. Cool, isn't it. I'll be very curious what he has to tell about it, and if his experiences match mine. He's also very quick to reply (I guess he was just checking his email at the moment I sent him mine. I got a (short) reply within about 7 minutes!
Well, if you got the opportunity and find tickets, and if you like his style and theme, you may want to try and get to it. Great show, nice person (oh, and I didn't really think he's smaller in real life than on tv.. )
