Tight & Shiny: Remembering The Jesus Lizard

One of the biggest disappointments I have this year is not finding enough initiative to prioritize Touch & Go Records’ 25th Anniversary shows in Chicago as a destination. It should have been and I didn’t react selfishly enough when I heard about the line ups (Scratch Acid reunited! Big Black reunited!) and immediately book a hotel room for the event. Damn me and this domestication!
This prompted me to grab a Jesus Lizard cd the other day and remember those times when I had a chance to see them perform live when they were still a working unit. These shows are permanently embedded in my mind and they remain some of the most intense performances I’ve ever had the opportunity to witness.

I’d been a big fan of Scratch Acid, vocalist David Yow and bassist Davis Sims former band, and even had a chance to see them live. It goes without saying that it was a great performance. It also goes without saying that it was a drag to read about their breakup before anyone had a chance to hear and fully appreciate them.
But fate is a curious thing, and when the news that Sims and Yow had relocated to Chicago and formed another band called The Jesus Lizard, well, you tend to forget about what could have been and focus on what will become.
What they initially became was a real disappointment; part of the appeal of Scratch Acid was the rhythm section as Sims had a great drummer, Rey Washam, to play off of. The Jesus Lizard, on the other hand, started without a drummer and it undercuts the power of their first e.p. “Pure.” I mean, Big Black tried this approach first and they perfected it, so why bother replicating it?
Thankfully, they added a real drummer, Mac McNeilly, and then the real fireworks began. Their Touch & Go albums were perfectly recorded by Steve Albini and they do a great job of capturing the Jesus Lizard’s fury.
At the same time, the best way to appreciate this fury was to see them live. I don’t know what prompted me to travel on a weeknight to see them live with the knowledge that the show would end well past Midnight and the 90 minute drive home wouldn’t help my job performance at work the following day.
But I did. And I’m better for it.
I noticed David, a small man, standing by the soundboard before the show drinking a beer and failed to strike up a conversation. He looked approachable, but when their set began, he transformed into a lunatic.
Within thirty seconds, Yow was leaning into the front row of the tightly packed crowd of this infamous Iowa venue. Within 1 minute, Yow was on top of the crowd, the microphone chord his only connection with the stage. For well over an hour, David spent most of the performance either being passed over the heads of the audience, in the obligatory push ‘n pull of the crowd, or somewhere underneath a sea of sweaty concert-goers. Because I didn’t know any better, I found myself in the middle of all this. Yow’s boots kicked my head on a few occasions, his sweat dripped on my body, and he screamed unintelligible words every time I passed him overhead. It was glorious.

It’s easy to write about his drunken shenanigans, but it’s harder to express at how good the, essentially, power trio on stage was throughout this intense ordeal. They were more dangerous than Yow. Literally. Sims maintained his section of the stage by chugging out incessant rhythms on his bass while occasionally welding the headstock of his Fender like a baseball bat. I do remember the pegs of his instrument connecting with the head of an audience member who thought he would use Sims’ area as his own stage diving platform. The connection served as notice; nobody used that section of the stage to dive off of again.
On stage right, Duane Denison turned out creepy chord structures with his Travis Bean(!) guitar that belied their complexity. Seriously. Try to learn a few J.L. chord progressions and you’ll see that what he’s doing ain’t normal for your stereotypical band fronted by a small drunk dude.
And then there’s Mac McNeilly, who’s most lengthy appendage is more certainly his arms, bashing out the entire drive-by-shooting with stellar precision.
It was a twisted, beautiful racket that I simply cannot efficiently describe.
The Lizard was my savior. I vowed to attend church again.
That time came a few months later. Same venue, more people.
About thirty miles into trip, and unbelievable racket sounded from the engine of my Ford Ranger pickup. Like the aluminum headstock of a Travis Bean guitar, the sound was the undeniable noise of metal upon metal. And you don’t need to be a service technician at the filling station to understand that, when you hear the sound of metal on metal in a vehicle, it is not a good thing. Understanding that I was most certainly faced with completely ruining the engine if I continued onward, I had to make a decision: proceed to the show or pull over and call a tow truck. The truck was moving forward, so I steered it towards the show, which was well over an hour away, with my fingers crossed that I would make it.
Same venue. More people. The place was packed, hot and sweaty, but I was happy that the Ford brought me to the service. For some reason, I brought a gift for David Yow: an airline bottle of Absolut vodka. I pushed my way to the front and got situated between two tame looking indie rockers who had no idea what they were in for that close to the stage.
Most of the fear that the Jesus Lizard produces comes from the unsettling music along with the drunken unpredictability of Yow; you never know what to expect with a man who’s had too much to drink and with relatively little to lose.
Again, before the minute mark of the first song of their set, David was leaning into the audience, sweating, barking, and clearly loving his ability to shock the first timers like the ones next to me. He sprayed his beer into the crowd, and I thought that would be a good time to give him the little bottle of Absolut. He examined my gift as I handed it to him. He continued to scream into the microphone while he opened the bottle and, without a taste, he immediately sprayed the crowd with the liquor. I was a little put off that he didn’t drink it, but any good drunk will tell you not to mix your poisons.
Some of the more vocal members of the crowd continually berated David with profanity, a strange form of flattery that also served as a way to pry a primitive response from him. Being a veteran of the punk rock circuit and being used to probably more eloquent forms of verbal harassment, Yow ignored most of the verbal volleys. One did manage to catch his ear, and hey yelled back “Hey shitmouth!” to appease the baiter’s request for attention.
Another show, another life-affirming experience. That’s batting a thousand for you baseball fans and it placed the Jesus Lizard into the category of “must see” shows for me. The rapture overtook my reality and, for 90 minutes, I completely forgot about the late-model pickup with the barely working engine that sat in the parking lot of a friend’s apartment building.
The Ford dealership questioned why I didn’t bring the truck to them sooner, explaining that not enough oil was reaching all of the cylinders, thereby creating the unbelievable racket from the engine compartment. I didn’t hear a lot of the scolding, my ears were still ringing from the show, but I did hear that the costs of the repairs were all covered under the factory warranty.

Third show. Bigger venue. The legendary First Avenue in Minneapolis was full of the Lizard brethren and it was nice to see them in a larger setting, although it was offsetting to lose some of the intimacy. It’s hard to smell Yow from a distance and you miss the impact of assisting him scale the club as he passes above you.
Nonetheless, the band started the set with my favorite J.L. song of all time, “Glamorous.”
Denison crunched out the familiar chords while “Mac” counted off with his hi-hat. Yow stalked around the drum riser, mush-mouthing the first few verses before parking himself directly next to the bass cabinet.
“Smoke it down to the filter! And put it out on your hand!”
With the microphone still in his hand, he ran, full speed, towards the audience and completely cleared the first five rows before landing on the top of outstretched hands of the (literally) supportive audience.
First Avenue can hold a few people. So appreciate the distance that Yow covered while out in the crowd; the apparent goal was to try and take him back towards the doors to the bar area, and by-God, he nearly made it on a few tries.
“Shitmouth, I love you.” David muttered at one point while back on stage. Apparently Yow had seemingly come to terms with the loud audience member who kept yelling a request for “Seasick.”
A chance to see the Lizard for a fourth time in Peoria came and went thanks to some unsuccessful detective work on the part of my cousin who could find no mention of a Jesus Lizard show in his hometown and found it hard to believe that a band would even be playing at the local V.F.W. hall there. But it was true: a concert review in the next issue of Rolling Stone documented the performance and it mentioned that Yow had unveiled his “tight and shiny” routine for the crowd their. This trick consisted of David pulling out his sweaty testicles and displaying them under the bright stage lights for the attendees. It goes without saying that I was very disappointed with my cousin’s lack of drive in trying to find tickets.
Their next album, “Down,” was their final on Touch & Go and the band’s final work with Steve Albini. It was a bit of a “downer” for me as the band, understanding that they had pretty much run the course of abrasive noise guitar rock, attempted to shore up the chaos in favor for a more scaled down approach. Think of the albums “Goat” and “Liar” as reflections of getting violently drunk; think of “Down” as merely an even-paced way at getting inebriated. There’s a difference, and the Jesus Lizard started to sound like the beer was almost empty.
Curiously, they jumped to the majors. Why the decision to record for Capitol seemed like a good idea was beyond me; the band had limited commercial appeal and I didn’t think that the label’s better distribution could expand their audience much.
Albini didn’t like it either. He wasn’t present for the last two records and much of their fan base wasn’t present either. This included me.
It had nothing to do with “selling out,” again, there was no way the band could have been accused of that. It had everything to do with changing out of those sweat and beer-soaked jeans into a new pair of Levi’s off the rack. There was nothing wrong with that old pair. They may have been a little stained and smelly, but hey shitmouth, they fit just fine.
So the mention of “Touch & Go” records’ 25th anniversary show has got me reminiscing a little, and it’s made me realize that a band like the Jesus Lizard was fairly uncommon back in the day and even more so today. There was no video budget, no myspace street team, no video game tie-in that demonstrated their supposed street-cred. There was just a little man with total disregard for his own health and safety and a hammering trio that drove him to the edge of the stage night after night.
And there was us, a few thousand rock ‘n roll revival converts that were sure that was the face of God on stages some nights. On others, it was just the reflection of a middle-aged man’s testicles.