MODEST MOUSE

It's the summer of 2002, and I've become a Modest Mouse fan. A hip friend gives me a copy of their Lonesome Crowded West cd, and I'm unable to stop listening to it for about a week. That August, just before my My Right Leg Hurts open-mic tour, the hip friend and I drive to Oklahoma City to see Modest Mouse play.

The venue's a big open room of a place, and the Oklahoma heat makes it nice and toasty in the middle of August. And by 'toasty' I mean 'sweltering.' The opening bands (The Anniversary and the Hackensaw Boys) are good, but by the time Modest Mouse hits the stage the heat is getting oppressive. I've only been to one other show this uncomfortable -- it was the Beautiful South in Cleveland in 1994, and that venue was closed by the fire marshal a week later.

Modest Mouse's ever-edgy leader, Isaac Brock, spends about half the show threatening to kill the soundman. Not playful, not in a joking way, literally threatening to kill the guy after the show. It's weird, because from the crowd the sound is actually pretty good, but apparently it sounds horrible on stage.

He's also pissed at the venue people for the heat that's wearing us all down (I can only imagine how it must have felt under the lights), and eventually they respond by sending a bartender to the stage with a few pitchers of ice water. He throws his arms forward very quickly, spraying the cool water out over the crowd powerfully like a water jet, which is a great idea and cools people down a little bit.

Keeping the ice in the ice water when throwing it on us so speedily, however, is not such a great idea. I realize this when I feel a painful THWUMP above my left eye. An ice cube has hit right above my glasses and has taken out a chunk of my eyebrow. It bleeds a little, and I end up with a headache.

Still, like that Beautiful South show in Cleveland, it turns out to be one of the best shows I've ever seen.