Oxbow / Pelican start a riot..

[Dr. Moody]

Dont know if you know these bands but this is pretty interesting...

http://www.cmj.com/relay/?p=1693

Most Frightening Bouncer-Audience Fight:
Oxbow at Spiro’s Amphitheater Friday night at 1am. Anyone who’s seen San Francisco art-meddlers Oxbow perform in the 20+ years they’ve been a band knows one thing is true: frontman Eugene Robinson hates pants. I guess the bouncers at Spiro’s, who strangely all wore neon light necklaces, have never seen Oxbow before. As usual, Robinson started the show fully dressed, with his ears covered in gaffer’s tape. But when he got down to his undershirt and his underwear, I noticed the bouncer behind the stage wasn’t just looking uncomfortable, he was downright angry.


After their fifth or sixth song, Robinson said, “The constabulary has informed me I need to put my pants back on. This is our last song.� Guess what? He didn’t put his pants back on. About three minutes into the song, a guy walks to the back wall and cuts the band’s power. In a fit, Robinson threw the mic to the floor as hard ash could. Drummer Greg Davis kept playing and the bouncers started swarming him. Guitarist Niko Wenner and bassist Dan Adams picked up drumsticks and played along in solidarity. Some of the guys from Pelican ascended the stage to intervene with the bouncers and one made the mistake of spitting at a bouncer. That’s when the riot began.

The bouncers start fighting with anyone they could, and they tackled the member of Pelican, three of them swarming on him. I tried to pull one of the bigger guys off him and was successful but then he started charging me and I got out of his way. Everything seemed to calm down for a minute and I tried talking to Hydra Head co-owner Mark Thompson, who then pointed towards the stage. The bouncers were stampeding in a horizontal line towards anyone in their way and out into the alley. Again they swarmed the member of Pelican, who apologized for spitting, and that’s when I saw the cops starting to arrive. As with most riots, that was my cue to leave.

The next day I called South By Southwest’s office to no avail and have subsequently written them a letter about the hostile, fascistic, homophobic (were it a woman stripping, it would have been different) and shortsighted actions on behalf of the club’s security staff. After meeting up with some of the guys from the night before, I was relieved to hear no one was seriously injured, luckily. Oxbow performed again Saturday night and Robinson made a joke that he hoped there wouldn’t be two nights/two fights. Guess Spiro’s just isn’t ready for subversive intellectual types.

Update: Thanks to those fuckers at Spiro’s, my camera’s got something rattling in it now. They’re lucky it works.

Fight Songs: An Interview With Oxbow Vocalist Eugne Robinson
What do you remember about the “Oxbow Incident�?
I see the bouncers moving closer to us and having been a bouncer once I figure it’s to a) tell us we have one more song to play and they’re anticipating us not being that into this or b) there’s a curfew. Imagine my surprise when it had to do with the fact that I was pantsless. Not underwear-less. Just without pants. The police had purportedly told them to tell me to put my pants on. I thanked him for telling me but indicated that I would, of course, not be putting my pants on until I finished. Just like f**king. They cut the power. Greg and I, per our standard operating procedure, keep playing. They attack Greg. I stop them. The crowd flips out. Spit is thrown and then subsequently punches. Show’s over in the middle of our last song. People outside the club screaming, “Spiro’s sucks! Spiro’s sucks!� I walk out of the club, still without pants, and have someone take a picture of me with a local cop. The local cop was more than happy to oblige.


Has this ever happened before at your shows?
Of course… A similar thing had happened before when we played with the Red Hot Chili Peppers… The problem there was because some people came out onstage and got married during our set. And they took the time out of our set. I went insane and then we had a roadie and he was insane and so we beat all the bouncers and only stopped when police came onstage with their guns drawn. I tried to apologize to the Chili Peppers but they were not so prone to being that understanding. My point is this though: do not attempt to stop the f**k. Unless your building is on fire.

What did you say to the Spiro’s people after all was said and done?
Well the biggest bouncer came over and apologized. He said he was a performer as well and he hated to do it but the cops had told him to. I told him I was unlikely to listen to anybody but a cop but I complained about how he had treated our friends in Pelican even if the guys had spit on him. But then I said that when I was a bouncer if someone had ever spit on me I’d have broken his jaw in two places and then have rubbed mucus in his eyes. So in the scheme of things I was accepting his apology. The club owner, despite having given me free booze earlier, was a cock with his mewling about calling the police back to arrest someone for hurting/threatening his bouncers.

Why do you think they were so adamant about you putting your pants back on?
At a certain point it really isn’t about the pants at all, right? At a certain point it’s “just because I told you so.�

Was anyone seriously hurt?
My sense of decorum took a beating. Outside of that? And the bumps and bruises suffered by the valiant men of Pelican, no.

[6FeetOver]

Pelican kick @ss.

Didn't Perry Farrell dangle his family jewels in front of a Lollapalooza crowd once, or something?

[davedecay]

here's a weird Oxbow story.
first, check out this link:
http://www.theoxbow.com/oxbow_content/newsletter_05.htm

#1 in their dead pool was a long-distance tape-trading friend of mine. i know the girlfriend they mention as being handcuffed to the bed, she became a close friend of mine after Karl OD'd.

i had never heard of Oxbow until after i knew Karl.