Yes, Henry Rollins is back out on tour. This one is 'The Long March' and apparently it's about 200 shows long so there is little excuse to miss your chance to go and let Henry talk to you for two and a half hours non stop.
We were sitting quite far back this time, well in the 5th row which seems far back to us at a Rollins show. Still the Festival Hall looked pretty close to sold out and Henry was soon telling us about being 50 and then he gave us some very funny and sad stories of his time out on tour with Black Flag. That really make you realise why he might prefer doing spoken word to going out with a hard core punk band, at least no one spits at him or tries to set light to his balls and I guess the promoter at the festival hall didn't refuse to pay him at gunpoint either.
The most disturbing Black Flag tale is about the Human Zeppelin: a salutary and sobering tale of the bad old days of Hardcore audiences, to find out the true horror of this tale you will have to go see Henry tell it like it was. I won't spoil it here by giving too much away.
Anyway, Henry was soon telling us about living on Sex Dental Floss and chocolate which is a great combination that can only be enhanced by Henry urging us all to listen to Captain Beefheart and telling a great tale about going to see an exhibition of the Good Captain's art and what he did to Dennis Hopper afterwards. That was no doubt the reason he never got to appear in a film with Dennis! A great prank that had us laughing about it all weekend afterwards as we imagined who else we could perform this act on!!
We then got the disturbing image and tale of when his office manager (or Heidi the beast) insisted Henry go with her to Costco to buy some paper and a ladder. Yes he was lost in Costco with no idea why anyone would go there. It was funny and a good reminder of the culture of over-abundance we have been living in.
We then got to the highlight of many a Rollins talk -the section where he recounts the travels he's been on since last seeing us. This time he started with tales from the filming of his new series for National Geographic TV. They sent him to India to see a tribe that venerates snakes and the men who go out and catch them to milk them for the venom and make antidotes. Oh and they also have a sideline in BBQ'd rats that of course poor Henry has to eat or look like a pussy! He also read us the list of what you can't take on a plane in India: a fascinating list most of which should be obvious. What? Why can't I take my land mines with me...?
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Also in his snakes series was a trip to a pentecostal church in the deep south were they fiercly follow the book of Mark and uses venemous snakes in the services. He described it as being one of the greatest gigs he's been to, well when the rev plays a gold top Les Paul it's gonna rock some!!
Then he was back off on his travels to North Korea. Not exactly a hoot but not as dark as it might have been apart from the fact you must stand still on the moving sidewalk to see the great leaders mausoleum and we all know Henry doesn't like to stand still much. From there he went to Mongolia and Bhutan and on to Tibet where he had some intense experiences and made a good argument for the Chinese to leave Tibet to the Tibetans as he likes to hang out with the monks there.
He then went to Hanoi in Vietnam and hired a hysterically funny guy to be his war tour guide to show him some of the sites from that war and he gave us a good histroy lesson on the Xmas Bombings and why the Vietnamese still think John McCain is a figure of fun.
He finished the show with a touching story of going to Haiti and seeing that all the aid money that poured into Port Au Prince seems to have evaporated, while his attempts to help some tent cities with soccer balls and soap on its own is clearly a well-intenttioned but misguided aid mission.
As ever with Henry at the end of the show we felt knackered from the enegy it takes to listen to him talk so intensely and funnily for that long. He must be drained but will be on tour till the summer, so go and see him if he gets near you, you won't regret it. I never have in 25 years of seeing his spoken word shows.
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