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Author's note: I hate writing live reviews, but WW Music Editor Matt Singer got me into this really expensive show for free so I promised I'd write one. It is written as a stream-of-consciousness sort of thing and I don't really care if you read it or not.
Thereâs really only one barometer for a bandâs success in live performance, and thatâs âDid the crowd go apeshit?â Tonight it did. It went apeshit from the moment Refused took the stage, even though it opened with a single from the new album Freedom. Come on, we all know no one cares about the new album, and "Elektra" sounds more like a nu-rock B-side than anything to wild out on. But these motherfuckers knew the words and they started the pit in earnest. And because just about everyone there was in their 30s, it was a caring, gentle pit.
Refused played pretty much all of The Shape of Punk to Come, the 1998 album that made less of a splash in its day than anyone cares to remember, then slow-burned into one of the more influential hard-rock albums of the '90s. The album was built of tiny, heavily manipulated pieces. It's a collage of micro-performances, samples, self-samples and reverse-engineered riffage. It's also great. I mean, it's still great now. My buddy Ben likes the previous album more, because it's more specific in its politics and less reliant on sonic gimmicks. He's right about that stuff, but he's wrong about it being the better album. Because ambition needs to be rewarded, even when it's more of a vague sort of "revolutionary" than it could be, which is a fair criticism of The Shape of Punk to Come. But it came out the same year as OK Computer, and to some of us, it was just as revelatory.
Anyway, Refused's live show was always purported to be the real shit back in the '90s (which is a phrase I don't like saying, because fuck the '90s, they were awful and they just wouldn't end. And then September 11 happened, and then—after a few beautiful weeks of people really caring for each other and crying in public for no reason—things got even more awful). The people who could attest to the live show being the shit, though, were few and far between. I met a couple of guys from Sweden when I was in college, and the first thing I asked them about was Refused. They were delighted that I'd heard of this band they loved, and regaled me with Tales of Refused, then made me a cassette of early live material, which I still have somewhere. Then a cool guy named Art made me another cassette. These guys weren't trying to be obscure or anything, cassettes were just easier than burning CDs. Burning CDs was hard back then. It was like 10 steps and half the time you wound up with a blank CD that couldn't be re-burned. I'm telling you, the '90s were the worst.
The other reason everyone thought Refused had a crazy live show was the âNew Noiseâ video, which is an exercise in myth-making that no band could ever really live up to, especially not a band thatâs a decade over reasonable amplifier-scaling age.
(Quick sidenote: I donât know what advertisement you get to start that video, but YouTube fed me this quasi-feminist Maybelline advertisement which included the line, âAct like no one ever said we canât.â The comments are really positive, because these days we all love it when a corporation tells us to be ourselves. We wanna call a truce, because if you try and unpack every goddamn ad that hits you every second of your life, youâll become horribly cynical like we all were in the â90sâand remember, the â90s sucked. So instead we offer them blanket forgiveness for all the nonsense they force-fed us in the past, and we give them the benefit of the doubt. Corporations are people now, and if those people are wearing cool clothes and saying vaguely revolutionary shit, then they must be good people.)
Sorry, like I said, I'm just spitballing here. The point I wanted to make was that Refused's live show was interesting mostly because frontman Dennis Lyxzén had zero interest in being a traditional hardcore frontman. His dance moves were part Jarvis Cocker, part James Brown. He did elaborate microphone tricks like a big-band crooner. His band wore nice suits. They looked like the anti-Beatles. And really, tonight, all of that shit still worked. Twenty-odd years after this band started playing, and with lineup changes I can't be bothered to Google, the live show is still really something to behold. There wasn't a real elaborate light show or stage setup, there was just this electrifying frontman who's still willing to throw himself into the crowd as a 42-year-old. He gets to be 25 again and we get to be 18 again and everything is fucking urgent for an hour and change. That's my review. All the other shit about politics and ticket prices is stupid. Bands are bands, they don't run for office and they don't pass legislation.
But maybe the politics of it matter. Maybe it matters that me and Ben read the liner notes over and over again and bought into the idea that this band was more than a band; that it was all anti-capitalist performance art thinly disguised as a rock band. When Lyxzén says, "We're Refused, a revolutionary rock band from Sweden," as he did tonight, our brains jump to the next question: "What message are you bringing us from the front, brother? What is the state of the revolution?" Lyxzén won't say. He says something like "There's a digital revolution, a diet revolution. We think it's time for a real revolution!" And still we wait for our instructions, comrade, standing outside your big tour bus on Burnside.
So we sit around and drink some more and debate how serious the revolutionary posturing was to begin with. Maybe it was always for show. Maybe it was real and the revolutionary passion faded with time. Maybe there's something we're not getting. After all, the band is intentionally playing small venues "where there's no barrier between us and the audience, and we're all covered in the same sweat," as I recall Lyxzén saying tonight. And Refused did just get an entire crowd to chant "Exterminate all the brutes," a phrase that's linked to colonial oppression, and he smiled deviously while he did it, as if thrilled by how unflinchingly we choose to join whatever crowd's the nearest. Maybe we're still all just pawns in his long game.
I think it's safe to say that most of the black-clad dudes at Doug Fir tonight (and dudes outnumbered women about 8 to 1) were less concerned with Refused's politics than its riffage. But the fact that they chant along to lyrics like "Rather be forgotten/Than remembered for giving in" at the top of their lungs, it has to register on some level, right? You can't be a right-wing Refused fan, can you? But, oh shit, Paul Ryan loves Rage Against the Machine, and so did the kids who called me "faggot" in high school. So, again, bands can't run for office and we can all look past lyrics sometimes, which is why I'm able to love the Bee Gees with every fiber of my being even though most of the lyrics are sorta bullshit.
Refused ended the show with the song that started The Shape of Punk to Come, "Worms of the Senses/Faculties of the Skull," a blistering and indulgent eight-minute rock epic. The song is actually more fitting as a closer than it ever was as an opener. "I took the first bus out of Coca-Cola City/It made me feel all nauseous and shitty/I took the first bus/Out of Shell Town/Cuz they didn't want me/Hanging around," Lyxzén sings, before inviting the listener with "Let's take the first bus out of here." It's punctuated with joyous little exclamations ("Damn, damn!") and jazzy instrumental interludes, all of which the Doug Fir crowd knew by heart. I don't know if I've ever seen an audience leave a show as happy as this on. Everyone got what they wanted, even if it cost $35 to get it.
There was a dude who stage-dived like 25 times. It was a little excessive, actually, but maybe he'd decided this was going to be his last stage-diving show. I feel like maybe it was my last pit, and I only made it through two songs in there. Anyway, on my walk home, I saw the stage-diving dude running real fast and jumping into and through bushes. That's probably worth $35.
Postscript: I went and read a bunch of Dennis Lyxzén's Tweets and in doing so found out he's a huge record-collecting nerd and a vegan and he runs a non-vanity record label back in Sweden, and now I sorta feel like I should take back all my questions. Maybe it's all right to set a little faith aside for your teenage heroes. They don't always let you down. Refused certainly didn't let me down tonight.
All photos by Thomas Teal.
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WWeek 2015