First of all, I want to thank Bruce Duff
for inviting Publicity Whore to Beatfest 2002 at
the Knitting Factory.
The multi-day festival included such artists
as Ray Manzerick, Dee Dee Ramone, Harry Dean Staton, Lynda
Lunch, Simon Stokes, and bands X, ADZ, and The Starvations.
The first night I saw Simon Stokes perform
a great hard rocking blues set, and even invited Texas
Terri to sing with him on stage. Later I watched some
of the beat poets. It was cool seeing random people reading
their poetry on stage. This one cat came on and read a
poem about 'Love And Freedom', and as he read he it did
these hip-hop jive like movements on stage.
Publicity Whore fit right in on Friday night
with performance of the seventies punk rock band X. After
several side projects from all members of the band it
was refreshing to see X together again especially John
Doe and Exene. The show started out with the rockabilly
act The Starvations.
Next was the great ADZ, featuring Adolescents
frontman Tony Cadena. They put on a powerful set as Tony
belted out to the crowd trying in vain to start a mosh
pit. A few guys jumped around a slammed into each other,
but this hardly constitutes a pit. I realized not everyone
goes to a show to slam in the pit - some actually enjoy
watching the bands on stage.
The crowd quickly gathered for punk rock
legends X. Boy they rock, but they're pretty fucking old.
Exene can now almost sadly be categorized as the Punk
Rock Grandma. But she did have a lot of energy singing
X classics like 'Bloody Red Ashfault', and 'Los Angeles.'
She swayed around, grasping onto her arms in a way that
was quite sexy for an older broad. John Doe played some
of his own tunes along with the X songs.
X played a mutliple song encore, showing
once again they were glad to be together playing the songs
of their punk rock youth.
GOT
SOMETHING TO SAY?
