Oh, Henry!

We saw Henry Rollins do his spoken word thing tonight at the Rave.  It was amazing!  Henry spoke for three hours – if only the Rave had seating that didn’t bruise your tailbone!

Let me take you back to the beginning of my Rollins experiences.  It was the early ’90’s and MTV still (sometimes – when The Real World wasn’t on) played videos.  Sometime they started playing this video of a strangely psychotic-looking guy and his band (The Rollins Band) playing the song “Liar”.  My first impression was that this was awesome and I had to learn more.  I bought the CD, learned about the band and Rollins, and became a fan. 

Over the years, I learned about some of the books he published and read through some of them.  I thoroughly enjoyed his (sometimes incoherent) ramblings.  Jerry and I found that he had performed some spoken word shows and rented the DVD.  We watched and were enthralled.  He was funny, insightful, and just when you thought you were having a good time, Henry invoked the power of human emotion to pull your heart out of your chest, throw it on the ground, and make you watch it slowly stop beating as you felt the pain he wanted you to feel. 

Since then, the show has evolved.  Henry is talking about new issues and tearing at your heart in new ways.  He talks about his travels around the world – and hopefully opens some eyes. 

I’ve read people’s reviews of Rollins’ work.  Some people think he’s unintelligent and pompous.  And though he may not be intelligent in the I’ve-written-lots-of-research-papers kind of way, Henry sure is intelligent in an everyman, self-educated kind of way.  Honestly, he’s very smart.  And insightful.  And human.  So he’s not perfect.  But that’s part of why we like people, right?  Anyway, I can’t see the pompousness.  Rollins may be pompous, but I might just be too enamored with him after more than a decade of fandom that I can’t see it.  And that’s alright.  Most people who are fans of particular performers can’t see the performers biggest faults.  Some Britney Spears fans really do think she can sing.  So, I may just be blinded by fandom, but Henry seems like a down-to-Earth kind of guy who doesn’t try to take things for granted. 

And he gave a show last night that was everything we wanted.  He had us the entire three hours – and could’ve had us much longer if he wanted.   If only it weren’t for those horrible seats!

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