Rob Zombie @ 9:30 Club (March 26, 2006)

Rob Zombie likes vintage porn. Rob Zombie likes Charlie Manson. Rob Zombie likes his bass player to wear a shirt with his last name on it. Rob Zombie likes designer jeans (or he puts rhinestones on his jeans with crazy glue). Rob Zombie likes old school B-horror flicks. Rob Zombie likes to play a 70 minute set. Rob Zombie likes to take a few breaks between the last three songs. We knew this....well, we knew most of it. I wish I didn't know the last two.

I don't own any White Zombie albums and I don't own any Rob Zombie albums. My introduction to Rob Zombie came from my older brother when we were in high school via LA SEXORCISTO and ASTRO-CREEP 2000. I know every word to "Thunder Kiss '65" and "More Human Than Human" because Zombie (along with Metallica, Corrosion of Conformity, and Megadeth) were on heavy rotation in the bedroom I shared with my bro. When these tickets came up, it was a no brainer. I knew that Zombie was a pretty interesting guy and that there was some talent behind all of the mayhem.

We get to the 9:30 Club and score a great parking spot right in front of the gas station. The Club was pretty packed and I remembered that these tickets had sold out pretty quick. We got in as the last opener, Lacuna Coil was wrapping up. We managed to get about halfway up the main floor before settling in. (It is funny, at a show like this I see less people getting rowdy jockying for position than I did when my girlfriend and I had to battle it out with the yuppies at James Blunt. I guess people at these shows get out enough to realize that it doesn't really matter where you stand at a venue this small.)

Lights go down. Cue Shel Silverstein "The Cover of the Rolling Stone." Some crowd participation in this and I am thinking it is all part of the Zombie entrance. Pretty funny. Next we get a video shot of a bunch of horses running through a field (Zombie's new album is called EDUCATED HORSES). The crew walks out, crowd goes nuts and they immediately rip into some trademark stuff. During the entire show we were privy to some vintage porn, clips from Zombie's movies, a couple of animated Nazis and general cartoon mayhem (at one point two creatures from Tremors came out of a woman's breasts), and video clips of the Manson gang. We also got some tamer Nick at Nite "Addams Family" stuff and the simple flame/explosion/Windows Media Player visualizations. This stuff was entertaining in that "I want to be shocked" kind of way...There was definitely a full on visual and aural assault that lasted the entire show. I am sure there are a lot of people that would take it seriously and get pretty offended (Zombie related a funny story of the 700 Club's coverage of him when he first came to DC), but you have to take it for what it is: sleazed up, grooved out, shock rock with a B-movie spin.

Zombie is a pretty funny guy, and he is entertaining as well. I am always pleased to see a frontman getting into the music and displaying a little showmanship. If I come to see Rob Zombie, I kind of expect that type of energy. And he delivers. His head no longer carries the excessive dreads I remember from my youth, but it is still long, and he still headbangs like a champ with it. Notable anecdotes he shared on stage included a story about how his grandmother had to be a prostitute in Germany during WWII "to make ends meet" and how when he brought it up on a radio station that morning people were laughing at him. The crowd was laughing at him telling the story so he made a big joke out of it and said "I guess everyone loved fucking her, I don't know." He then informed the crowd that he wrote the song "Foxy, Foxy" for her. "Foxy, Foxy" is the new single and it is classic Zombie: a riff that makes you want to move, lyrics that aren't aiming too deep...just shooting for immediate shock and entertainment value. The accompanying video provided a break from the B-movie, vintage porn schlock and gave us some well endowed girls (complete with tight shirts reading "Foxy Foxy") rocking out in a field while Zombie and the boys tear through the song on stage.

Zombie played every song I came in there wanting to hear (again, my knowledge of the man and his music is not extensive): "Thunder Kiss '65," "More Human Than Human," "Hands of Death," "Never Gonna Stop," and "Living Dead Girl." For the 70 minutes that he played it was great. Their guitarist is currently John 5 of Marylin Manson fame (it should come to no surprise that he is married to a porn star, are we noticing a theme here?) and he threw his chops out for a little bit (riffing "Paranoid," some Van Halen, and a few others), but for the most part he stuck to the heavy groove that is the Zombie trademark sound.

The show kind of left me wanting more. It reminded me of the Wu-Tang show in a sense because an hour had gone by and all of a sudden...that's it. As we were walking out, I noticed a kid wearing a shirt that said: ZOMBIE 20 YEARS on it. Something tells me that if you're around for 20 years you can hook the kids up with a little more than an hour. It's one thing to walk into an Arctic Monkeys show and know that you will see a shorter set (we will be doing that tonight). It's another thing to see a guy with a pretty impressive resume and only get 70 minutes for your $46 ticket. All in all, I wanted more.