Flies in the Comatorium

In yesterday’s blog, I touched on my two main musical influences. The first was Nine Inch Nails, the second is The Mars Volta.

Last night I saw The Mars Volta at First Ave.

Close, intimate, surreal. I had seen the Volta at the Roy Wilkins Auditorium a year and a half ago, back on their Goliath tour, with the eight piece band. It was perhaps the better concert, in that they were all in good spirits, laughing at each other’s mistakes, improvising. You could see the friendship between the band members.

Last night they seemed to be in sour moods. Stripped of two members, the songs were less about improvisation and more about tight, coherent beginnings and endings. They dabbled in a lot of their older material, including a run of “Eunuch Provocateur” from the Tremulant EP, my personal fave of the night. Cedric went crazy, Omar even crazier.

The cherry on top was this: Omar Rodriguez-Lopez may very well be slightly second to Trent Reznor as far as my musical heroes go. Being up front, so close to my musical god, it’s surreal. There he is. But being up close and personal in the front row also lends itself to stripping away your hero’s glamour and seeing them for who they really are. Just another dude or dudette.

That being said, Omar’s fly was down the entire concert, and I couldn’t stop laughing about it . . .

*THE MARS VOLTA -- LIVE AT FIRST AVE 9.10.09 -- "VISCERA EYES"*


The Mars Volta -- "Eunuch Provocateur"