Two words: CRASH WORSHIP.
Crash Worship is a band from San Diego whos music evokes the image of Ministry being consumed by African cannibals. They played on the 13th at some nameless hole in SF and on the 16th at Berkeley Square. Doors opened at 9 or so, we showed up at 11:30 after walking a miserable ten or fifteen million blocks in the pouring rain; no one had remembered how far from Shattuck the Berkeley Square was. All was better after a drink, and we surveyed the crowd of cropped, shaved, pierced, tattooed, and generally Berkeley crowd.
A little after midnight the lights dimmed and the drumming started. People packed to the front and began twitching and writhing as the beats became more insistent. From start to finish, the drumming pulled everyone's strings, forcing continual motion in the face of a relentless sonic assault of guitar, screaming, and the low rumbling sounds of something big and really weird looking.
But people weren't just out for the music any more than punks drink cheap beer because drinking is a social activity. They were out for the 'show'. As people pressed tighter and twitched faster, someone appeared on the fore-front of the stage with a firehose and began spraying the audience. I noticed that the sound board, speakers, and all exposed electrical switches were covered with a thick layer of plastic. The pit of people got hotter, and wetter. People in the pit began producing bottles of wesson oil, chocolate syrup, party sized vats of industrial lubricant... and the pit became stickier and slipperier and moister. Shirts began to vanish. Pants began to vanish. The mean free distance between people rapidly approached zero. And then, pressing through the crowd, I saw him: the lard bucket man. Big, mostly naked, hairy, bearded, nasty, pushing his way sluglike through spaces between people that surely could never have admitted his bulk. Cradled in one massive hamlike fist, a bucket of something, lard, icy-hot, crisco, bearing grease, it didn't matter because the other paw was systematically smearing people with the mysterious substance. I grabbed Tammy, pointed her towards the danger, screamed "LARD MAN", and ran. Well squeezed, oozed, and pressed my way through the crowd, away from something terrible. Unstoppable he came on, a beatific expression of blankness, a man possessed by whatever horrible god he served, knowing only that he must baptize each and every forehead.
The show grew more and more depraved. People pressing through the massed people spraying water, smearing oil, drizzling wine on everyone in their path. Men in leather masks, persons of uncertain gender painted from head to toe, naked men, naked women, gods, goddesses, aliens, all were one pressed into the heat and humidity. Then the fires started. Billowing flames across the ceiling, the sharp reports of firecrackers, the searing brightness of magnesium flares, flames pouring from an oil drum. The smell of flame and gasoline mixed with sweat and excitement. The drums continued on and on and on. The motion continued on and on and on. I lost track of the lard man, I lost track of civilization, I lost track of everything save the sodden shorts and shirt tied to my belt, my housemate Tammy, and this cute drunk girl we'd been talking with when the drums started. Just as quickly as it began, there was a loud explosion, and it was over.
Dazed and drenched, we staggered in circles and followed the herd out into the night. Shivering and reeling, we stomped the light years back to the car and to a hot shower.
Upon reading this article, you might think that I'm joking or exaggerating the experience of Crash Worship, but neither is the case. It has to be seen to be believed. I have no idea when they'll be here next, but I'll be there, where ever. If you'll be there too, then take this advice: wear clothing you don't care much about, expect to lose your shirt, wear sturdy shoes, DON'T FALL DOWN, and if you see the LARD MAN, RUN!
(For you nutty internet freaks, heres where you can hear some of the sooper sounds of crash worship: http://www.msen.com/~ecook/charnel.catalog.html)
John M Vinopal
(Written for the Cowell Fishrap, Cowell, UCSC, 1995).