Laurel Aitken @ The Wetlands, NYC
Live Reviews | Jul 11th, 1999
Opening Bands: The Porkers, The Allstonians
Date: July 11th 1999
Venue: The Wetlands, NYC
I’m going to update this right after the show tonight because I’m going on vacation tomorrow morning.
So we’re driving on Joe Dimaggio Highway and we drive by the ABC studios building. What struck me funny is why and the hell would they have a big giant ass picture of Janet Reno’s ugly face? Anywho, we got down there an hour before the doors opened and we were first in line of course. We got inside and got the seats in the back and the first band was the Allstonians. I’ve seen them before and they didn’t have the Knuckleheads in the band. I think they quit or or something. They are very talented musicians but they kind of were boring for some songs. Paul and I thought they would be great for lounge playing. Next up was the band I was there to see and that was the almighty Porkers from Down Under.
They started off with Enter Porkman and I was snapping the pictures away. Porkman was going nuts the whole set and Pete told him that thank god this is his last show for awhile. The Porkers have a very good live show and whoever missed out of this set, really missed out! The NYC crowd didn’t seem up for them I guess because not too many people were dancing. I guess it was more of a Laurel Aitken crowd. They played all the good songs like “Bush Turkey,” “Alcohol,” “Deep Breath,” “Going Off,” and “Chemical Imbalance.” During “Perfect Teeth” (which their video for this song appeared on MTV), during the slower part, The Porkman ripped off his clothes and revealed his ass and had this big fake penis attached to his real thingy and had two giant set of balls filled with something. He squeezed them and they blew up over the Wetlands floor…I guess it was whipped cream or something. It was great… but very gross! They finished off with “Schooners of the Black.” I thought they played great and I’m glad they came over to NY.
After their set, I was talking to Pete Porker and he knew who I was because I e-mailed him a lot. That was cool. So we lost our spots when talking to Pete so we just chilled in the suddenly packed crowd waiting to see Laurel Aitken. The Godfather approached the stage and the crowd was cheering for him. He played some songs I don’t really know too much but I do know he played “Boogie in my Bones,””Sally Brown,” and “Long Shot Kick De Bucket.” I could read his lips and him saying that he was to old and stuff like that to Grant from bostonska.com. But then after he talked to him he started to skank and dance it up. He kept saying he was messing up the setlist which was kind of funny. I was surprised because I thought his songs were slower than the ones he was playing, which were really good and danceable. He played a song in spanish which was cool and he played a faster song which I never heard before but it was really good. After that, We decided to go because we were tired and wanted to stay ahead of the traffic. Overall, Three bands on the bill was good, short and sweet!
