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Home > Austin Music Source > Archives > 2009 > November > 03 > Entry
Fun Fun Fun Fest preview: Jesus Lizard
It’s this simple: In the 1990s, the Jesus Lizard was one of the best live rock bands on the planet.
They might, in fact, have been the best. They started in 1989 and disbanded in 1999. Until 1997, when original drummer Mac McNeilly quit, they owned the decade. And were simply pretty dang good thereafter.
They reunited this year with their original lineup to play a series of shows, and the band’s Touch and Go studio albums were re-released with improved sound and bonus tracks in October.
Just go to YouTube and check out the evidence of former (and current) glories. There’s singer David Yow, a wee yet terrifying man, launching himself into the crowd or reeling around the stage, drunk and shirtless and screaming.
There’s David Sims, the “Four-String Napoleon” who’s Yow’s old pal from Austin psychedelic punk legend Scratch Acid, grinding away on bass, looking vaguely hacked off.
There’s guitarist Duane Denison, the lanky silver fox, his riffs half-rockabilly shimmer, half-noise rock crunch.
And then there’s McNeilly, the hammer of the gods, one of the hardest-swinging, thunder-slinging-est drummers American punk ever produced.
They were a perfect rock band. And if reports from their reunion shows are to be believed, they are again a perfect band.
Nobody thought this reunion — which continues at Fun Fun Fun Fest this weekend — would ever happen. “A number of people approached us over the years,” Sims says from his New York home. “Mike Patton asked us to do the (All Tomorrow Party) he was curating (in 2008), but by the time he asked us, it wasn’t logistically possible. They said how about next year and we decided to nail it down.”
Sims says the band convened at Denison’s house in Nashville in January to rehearse: “He had the biggest house and an incredibly patient wife and daughter.” While the split in ‘99 wasn’t hostile, it had been a long time since these four guys had been in a room together.
“That first show (at All Tomorrow’s Parties in May) was a very emotional experience,” Sims says, “especially for so many people who had worked with the band over the years. There were a few guys who I won’t name who were backstage crying.” The band jumped to major label Capitol Records in 1996 for the album “Shot,” which caused a certain amount of consternation among the indie faithful. Sims thinks these wounds have healed.
“I’m a little surprised at how much fans are into the ‘Shot’ songs that we play,” Sims says. “There was a lot of backlash about them at the time, but they seem to have been rehabilitated, like an old Soviet premier that used to be airbrushed out of a photo.”
He has little good to say about the indie versus major wars of the 1990s. “It all seemed a little bit arbitrary and contrived to me,” Sims says. “We were very lucky to be on a spectacularly great label (like Touch and Go) but there was no shortage of scumbags running indies back then. When people drew this bright shining line with all of the majors on the dark side, my B.S. detectors went off. It was always a lot more complicated.”
As for future Lizard plans, Sims remains good and vague. “We haven’t really looked beyond this series of shows, but we’re also never say never,” he says. “I’ve been really happy with how the shows have gone, there’s been no down side to it.
“I really, really love playing with those guys and hanging out with them. They are three of my all time favorite people.”
Doesn’t get better than that. Neither does the rock.
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By no other Jesus
November 5, 2009 12:55 PM | Link to this
no one should desecrate the name of Jesus. It is the name above all names! No one should even name their kid Jesus, much less a band of rockheads with no spirituality! THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE - JESUS - who loves and saves…