David Rhoden

Dirty Knives played the Bayou in Baton Rouge with Rigid and Ouroboros.

. Day .

still picture of The Bayou, 124 W Chimes St, Baton Rouge, LA 70802, United States, from the movie Sex, Lies, and Videotape

This was one of the silliest events I've ever been a part of.

First of all, we thought we were playing with Electrical Spectacle, who were really good, very fun. They were also smarter than us and refused to travel to Baton Rouge without a guarantee. Loki, the promoter, found a replacement, a hippie conglomerate calling itself Ouroboros like many other hippie conglomerates past and present.

I spoke briefly with one of the members before the show and asked what instrument he played.
"Didgeridoo", he answered. And I'll come back to that.

We played first. We had been overserved at the bar and also made the unwise decision to go get Tex-Mex chow down the street so we were absolutely stuffed and sleepy. I think our show went fine. Loki kept trying to talk to me during the set but it was hard to understand him because he was wearing a black bondage mask for some reason, and had to unzip the mouth hole every time he wanted to tell me something. But our set went fine. We played "Blitzkrieg Bop", unrehearsed, as Joey Ramone had died the night before. What a tribute. Next up was Ouroboros.

When the band went on it was pretty much a drum circle. They had a dark-haired lightly-clad wisp of a woman twirling fire as part of the act. She told me sincerely she was sorry for my loss, the loss of my friend Joey. "I can tell you were close," she said.

On and on Ouroboros banged, but: no didgeridoo. What happened to my new friend?

And then he appeared. He came bursting from back stage, dressed only in a loincloth, barefoot, face and chest painted in a tribal-looking ladder pattern. That all made sense. But did he have a long, tubular instrument, commonly known as a "didgeridoo"? No. He had a microphone. And into this microphone he groaned and moaned, just as you might do if you wanted to pretend you played the didgeridoo.

I don't think I've seen anyone confront a college audience with more effrontery. It was a classic performance, the likes of which I'll never see again. It set the bar.

Rigid was a bit of an anti-climax after that; they played a solid show, but by that time the topless cage dancers that Loki had spent the guarantee money on arrived and took their shirts off, causing the crowd to come up to the front, just not for the bands.

Trey and I loaded some of our gear out to the rented trailer and noticed we forgot to bring a lock, and would need to stand guard over our stuff. Which was interesting. A young, nice-looking girl was occupying the center of the parking lot, offering to fight anyone who had the guts to tell her she had maybe had enough to drink. The first guy to try it got whupped pretty good, not with your standard punches, more like big arm-swinging slaps to the head and face. Everyone that approached her, guys, girls; they all got the same treatment. Knocked to the pavement. I don't think they ever got her to settle down. We had to leave before that.

On our way back, we got passed by a wobbling van that had to be going a hundred miles an hour. It was startling. We resolved to drive carefully. And as we were driving, we saw the van again, now pulled over, its inhabitants spread out for patdowns on the side of the van. And among them, in the glow of a cop's Maglite, were the wisp-woman and the didge man, still in his loincloth.

What I wrote about it on the Dirty Knives website at the time:

The Bayou show (promoted by Wake the Dead and The Silver Machine) with Rigid and Ouroboros (replaced the Electrical Spectacle, who cancelled) was, uh, eventful? We played great despite the giant drinks (beer cups of liquor) that made me forget some of the parts of our songs, like, for example, the choruses. We just played louder when we made mistakes. After we played it was hard to know what to do - some girls got in the cage (yeah, they have a cage on the stage) and took most of each others clothes off and did some stuff to each other, which really got the guys to move up to the front.

Outside, the action was almost equally active with a feisty firecracker of a gal slapping the hell out of some guy who was dressed as a bouncer but wasn't one (please don't ask me why). Classy! I can't wait to go back!

Rigid turned out to be super nice guys. I thought maybe they would be kind of rigid.

Rigid was fronted by Scott Guion, who turned out to be a terrific painter. https://www.scottguionart.com/

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