Jesus Lizard

Since I've been so bad with the blog lately, my friend Jon sent me an entry. It's out of order but well worth it.

June 10, 1995

I had been booking shows in Peoria for less than six months. This was my biggest to date, and the first to warrant advance tickets. I was 19 years old, operating out of my dorm room, and was soooo excited to head to Lum’s on Knoxville, where we all drank coffee and smoked cigarettes, and announce it to my friends.

The Jesus Lizard had released Down, their fourth studio album, the previous fall. It would be their last great record, and their final one for Touch & Go. They’d just signed to Capitol, and the Peoria show was a warm-up gig for their slot on Lollapalooza that summer. 

When the band showed up, they seemed a bit surprised (pleasantly so) that I’d actually purchased ALL the liquor requested on their rider. More than $200 worth.  I wasn’t 21—I didn’t even drink at the time...I had to get someone to buy it all for me. They drank. A lot. And afterward, hauled a vanload of alcohol with them back to Chicago.

Slightly more than 500 people packed into the American Legion Hall at 406 NE Monroe in downtown Peoria. The building’s no longer there— they literally tore it down to make way for a parking lot, next to a shiny, new Catholic Diocese building, where the ghosts of back in the day still roam the hallways. In my head, at least.

Sidekick Kato and Nora Hate opened the show, and both were in peak form. And then…watching the Lizard file on stage and launch into “Destroy Before Reading,” the crowd bobbing up and down, I rubbed my eyes in amazement. Here was one of my favorite bands, playing a legion hall for a bunch of (mostly) underage kids in Peoria. How did this happen? They were probably wondering the same thing.

The band played beneath a banner that read, “For God and Country.” This would become the theme of the evening—as the madman patriot, David Yow, would not let us forget. “This next song….is for God and country”… he proclaimed that evening, more than a few times.

It was classic, no-holds-barred Yow, prowling the stage back and forth, hurling himself into the crowd, all sweat and spit and scratches all over. When the band went into “Lady Shoes” from Goat, he spotted a large wooden pulpit at stage left, lifted it up and carried it out onto the stage. Now he was a reverend, preaching to the awed congregation, and perfectly illustrating the song’s creepy tension.

As a fan, I was thrilled. But as the promoter, I held my breath, watching that pulpit teeter back and forth, just waiting for it to fall, thinking I’m gonna be paying for that after the show. Sure enough, it toppled to the ground, but when the song was over, it was still in one piece. Yow dragged it back where it came from. I exhaled.

David Wm. Sims was his usual menacing self, glaring at the crowd, daring them to get close enough to kick in the face with his steel toes. Duane Denison was cool, calm, collected, the jazz player. And Mac McNeilly was the workhorse, pounding away, holding it all down.

We’d all been wondering if Yow would perform his trademark “tight and shiny” act (Just google it.)  He did…as did my friend Stan! Later that July, after a Lollapalooza date, Yow was taken into custody by Cincinnati police for the same deed; a writer at the Journal Star got wind of it, and the paper printed an editorial decrying the moral decline of western civilization…

After the show, some guy came up to me and started asking a bunch of questions. Said he was a reporter. After five or ten minutes, I asked him who he wrote for. “Rolling Stone,” he said.

“As in Rolling Stone magazine? THE Rolling Stone?” I asked incredulously.

Indeed, several weeks later, a feature on the Jesus Lizard ran in Rolling Stone. “America, You’ve Been Warned,” announced the blurb on the front cover, right next to Hootie & the Blowfish. Inside, in big, block letters, the article opened with “For God and Country.” Naturally.

A video crew came down from Chicago and filmed the show for a documentary on the Chicago music scene. It was called Out of the Loop, it came out in 1997, and it’s long out of print. I’ve had a VHS copy of this show for years.  It’s amazing…and recently digitized. I will be sharing soon.

This show was very special.