Suicidal Tendencies & Oddman

Legend has it that at an ASR Trade show in ’98 a boxing match had been planned between snowboarder Shaun Palmer and skate boy Simon Woodstock. Both embarked on rigorous training programs to settle once and for all the age old dispute, snow or pavement?

Remaining true to his sport, Palmer flaked and the event was called off at the last minute. The lead singer of Suicidal Tendencies, Mike Muir, happened to be milling around the show; never one to disappoint an audience, he jumped into the ring untrained and took on the challenge, for no other apparent reason than being the bad ass that he is.

Well, Psycho Mike did it again.

I’ve seen quite a bit of live punk rock in my day, and I am completely convinced that Mike Muir can beat up any other lead man out there. Okay, it would be a damn good brawl between him and Henry Rollins, but Muir would still tear him a new one.

The Suicidal Tendencies show this past Tuesday did not disappoint, proving to me for the second time that Rollins isn’t the only thing that Muir can tear up. This nearly twenty-year-old band seems to be faster, harder and tighter than ever before, with no sign of slowing down in the near future. In fact, they are such a hard-driving, pulsating, in-your-face, old-school, punk-rock, skate group that the crowd easily becomes heady, almost drunk with the power that Suicidal pours into their audience. This was indisputable after the second guy made the 20-foot jump off of the upstairs balcony on to some poor girl, causing much ado and one broken arm; the first testosterone-filled daredevil apparently escaped unscathed.

Although I’d heard the name, I saw the suprisingly hardcore local band Oddman for the first time, as the opening act they were obviously in their element here with their local crew, they achieved as much enthusiasm as the headliner, no small task for an opening band.

All in all it was a great show: two chicks got pulled onstage to sing "La-La-La-Lovely" and didn’t know the words, some bones got broken, a guy got taken to jail. You know, just another Suicidal show. Never one to miss.

-Amber Snow
photo by Lloyd Herrera

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