For everything that you hear and read about David Yow’s onstage antics, what is most compelling when watching this footage of the Jesus Lizard in concert (captured at a 1994 performance at Boston’s Venus Di Milo) are those few glimpses of calm and reason. During several songs, Yow will nonchalantly point to an area of the crowd he wishes to pounce on, seconds before he is throwing himself on top of them. Or those between song moments that find him curiously fiddling with the mic stand. Elsewhere, Yow is exactly as you’d expect: rubbing his sweaty back on the crowd, using the microphone as a phallus, and berating the crowd for wearing ear plugs. Oh, and he sings too. Or rather, he growls and moans like a tortured animal, spitting out barely intelligible lyrics rife with grotesque imagery, while behind him the other three members of the Jesus Lizard scratch out raw blasts of wiry punk and blues-tinged gutter rock.
Although this DVD is a fine representation of the band at the height of its powers (they were touring for the album Down at this point), it is also a fascinating artifact of the early ‘90s tsunami of popular culture that happened as a result of Nirvana’s rise to the top. During an interview, tacked on to the end of this disc, Yow is quizzed about the band’s request for a million dollars cash from Atlantic Records, who was going through a signing spree at the time (Daniel Johnston, Melvins, and even Matador Records released material with their imprint). As the credits roll, an off-camera gentleman gripes to Yow about the band’s videos being relegated to the very end of episodes of 120 Minutes. It was a brave new world at that time for groups like the Jesus Lizard, but ones in which, as evidenced by the crowd’s reaction to their tight and visceral performance, bands who made a grinding racket could put a dent in the popular consciousness.
--Robert Ham
