I have a confession. Up until this weekend I had never been to La Zona Rosa. I have a follow up; I have also never seen a Henry Rollins show.

Both of these things have now been remedied and all I have to say is:

Wow

Seriously, having not ever seen a full show I really didn’t understand what I was in for. I thought this would be 90 minutes of some angry guy being funny. I was so wrong. He was almost sweet, definitely brilliant and outrageously funny while being thoughtful. He is somewhat of a contradiction.

He began his non-stop monologue by discussing the recent Presidential and Vice-Presidential debates. I figured I was in for some serious bashing and didn’t get it. He did proclaim a preference but made several points – good and bad for both parties. The audience had to think. We laughed ourselves silly but we had to think.

President Bush ended up on the receiving end of what can only be called a Southern Stealth Insult. Rollins exclaimed that the president was his English teacher, that they way he put words together was incomparable. Every step of the way he was saying something that should be good while grinding Bush’s poor verbal skills into the dirt. It was masterful.

A great portion of the show dealt with him visiting other countries. He spoke at length about the people and places he had been. He went out in the streets and met normal people doing normal things. By bringing them to life so perfectly he managed to bring home the point that the war was killing people. Not killing horrible evil non-beings, but people, just like us. If there was one central theme for the night’s show it would be that war was a terrible, bad, awful thing and we should stop it.

He discussed his projects, all of which seem to be on a global scale and talked about a world that my limited experience doesn’t quite let me understand – yet. But now I have a lot more incentive to go exploring and learning.

The downer was the venue – sorta. La Zona Rosa is overall a pretty nice little place. They were organized and friendly and things were handled quite well. The downfall was the seating. We were in tiny little chairs that were so close to each other that you could feel the knees of the person behind you. Normally, this wouldn’t be so much of an issue but Rollins show is long. Really long, just over three hours and entertaining in a way that the time would not be noticeable except that the chairs were so awful. People basically sprang from the chairs and bolted for the doors the moment the show was over. I can guaranty that all of those people would have stayed for another few hours to listen to Rollins talk but were all glad to be off those seats

When Rollins comes back to town I will be one of the first people trying to get tickets and will not miss another chance to see him. I can’t wait to read his books and watch his other spoken word performances. I will also make an effort to hit more shows at La Zona Rosa. As a rule most down town venues are chaotic, dirty places and this one was pretty great on those counts.

Of course, it is possible that Rollins makes any place seem great.

Tags: Henry Rollins, La Zona Rosa
Posted in news |

This entry was posted on Monday, October 6th, 2008 at 9:14 am and is filed under news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.