Right, so Martin’s announced a special live performance of Killing Joke’s Extremities, Dirt, and Various Repressed Emotions at Reggies this November, thus delivering a social media shocker and, for many of us, prompting all the feels.
(And on Martin’s end, a couple of exclusive VIP package deals, because Martin.)
Naturally, my fandom for the record (and anything else these scoundrels have ever conceived) — coupled with my musical and journalistic exploits — has led me to enjoy plenty of incomparable experiences over the years, including but not limited to:
* Getting an invite from Jaz to spend “a wild weekend” with him in Prague – an offer my budget and sense of self-preservation prevented me from indulging.
* Sitting and chatting with Mike Coles in a London pub.
* Enduring a colorful, hysterically funny, frequently combative, and perennially bipolar connection with charming charlatan and bona fide frenemy Paul Raven, who still somehow managed to endear himself to me even when threatening to relieve me of my life. (By the way, the guy’s still fucking with me from beyond the grave through methods that I won’t divulge here but are surely understood by anyone who knew him. I don’t miss him, as he's never really gone away.)
* Lee Popa filling my ears with more dirt than I can ever publish.
* Most significantly, meeting and gallivanting with beautifully brilliant and deeply fascinating female Gatherers — among the most extraordinary people I’ve ever known.
And then there’s Martin, the striped-shirted nutter I’ve known since I ran into him on the street in New Orleans 32 years ago. An Incredible Hulk behind the kit AND the scenes. (Don’t make Atkins angry … You wouldn't like Atkins when he’s angry.) An immensely kind, loving, and giving soul and one of the most temperamental twats I’ve ever worked with. A man who puts everything on the line in pursuit of THE THING that can make a hodgepodge of dozens of disparate strangers soar together on stage in front of thousands. A visionary, a mentor, a sweetheart, an occasionally disagreeable asshole, and an irreplaceable friend.
My life is richer, more explosive, and creatively deeper for having him in it.
But enough about him. I’m thrilled that Steven Seibold is going to handle guitar. The guy’s a walking chef’s kiss of musical expression. And he’s got the sound right. Don’t believe me? Listen to his work on “Laugh Track” off the second Damage Manual record.
He’ll do Geordie proud - and to emphasize that point using only the most subject-appropriate parlance, I wouldn't fucking write that fucking sentence if I didn't fucking believe every fucking word.
THANK YOU for doing this, Martin! It’s gonna be so fucking great.
