How long was the set? Last time they played for barely over an hour. It was a good show despite being short, but I still kinda felt ripped off.
Spun the new CD last night, not feeling it at all. Sounded more like generic techno than the TKK I grew up with. I might still go but leaning towards sitting this one out.
What was the merch like? I got into a habit of collecting TKK t-shirts for awhile. I’m also hoping they still have copies of Death Threat since the disc is no longer available on their site and it’s overpriced anywhere else I find it.
Honestly, I wasn’t keeping the time. I want to say they played for an hour and a half. I think they played 12 songs and then did a four song encore.
The merch booth was lacking, they had two different shirts…a standard tour shirt (they also had a poster with the same art) and a xian/zombie/vampyre shirt (which is actually pretty cool, I picked one up) those were $25 each.
The CDs were $10 each. They only had 5 titles available: Spooky Tricks, Reincarnation of Luna, Luna Remixes, Sinister Whisperz (Wax Trax Years) and an album by the Bomb Gang Girlz.
I completely forgot about the TKK show nearest me, and so would also be interested to hear how they did this time around.
One of the most balanced shows I actually saw them do was for the “Crime for all Seasons” tour - I remember “Gateway to Hell” as an opener, a nice slow-burning “Hand in Hand” and renditions of their then-new album that were a lot more fiery than the studio versions.
All time favorite, though, would have to be a one-off in Chicago in 1996 (I don’t remember it being part of an actual tour, and there were zero songs from any ‘new’ album.) Pretty much every song from “I See Good Spirits…” and early singles were played except “Easy Girl”, including “Universal Blackness” kicking off the show. Everything was note-for-note true to the record: no live drums, no ‘updated’ synth sequences, maybe the electric bass lines were the only key difference in the sound. Curse Mackey had just become their manager at that point and was standing off to the side of the Metro stage with a justifiably contented “now that’s what I’m talking about” sort of demeanor.
I’ve seen TKK twice. The second time was opening for Ministry, and they were awful.
The first time was a couple of years prior. I remember very little about the show, but we hung out with the band at the bar downstairs and that was pretty fun. I had to drag my then-girlfriend out of there earlier than she would have liked because she had to catch a plane in the morning, but she has a picture of her and Groovy and a bunch of other fans crammed into a photobooth.
First time I saw TKK they were fucking awesome… it was the Crime for All Seasons tour and they had a live drummer, live guitar player and Levi Levi on bass. It had more of a rock’n’roll feel as opposed to a techno/DJ show feel and had great energy. They also had two or three of the bomb gang girlz, including Sinderella Pussy, who was really smoking hot at the time and it brought a lot of sexually charged energy to the perfermance.
Saw them a couple of years later and it was Groovy, Buzz, and some guy with a couple of snare drums hooked up to a sampler that did live loops. No live guitarists or bassists, and the single bomb gang girl was sub-par and somewhat mediocre in her performance. The show was pretty disappointing and felt more like Thrill Kill Karaoke than a proper performance.
After Crime was released I really wasn’t impressed with the material they were releasing and avoided them when they came on tour. From what I hear they were pretty awful. Supposedly Groovy was going through problems with alcohol during these years which might explain something.
Saw them again in 2009 and in 2012 and they were both great performances, still nowhere near as good as the 1997 “Crime” tour, but good, and back to having live musicians. And unlike Ministry, they seemed happy to play the classics, and played them enthusiastically, which certainly helped.
I dunno, I had just seen the Swans not too long before the 2012 TKK tour and TKK’s hour long (maybe hour and 1/2 long) performance seemed kind of weak compared to the Swan’s 3+ hour performance and I felt kind of cheated.
After Crime was released I really wasn’t impressed with the material they were releasing and avoided them when they came on tour. From what I hear they were pretty awful. Supposedly Groovy was going through problems with alcohol during these years which might explain something.
It’s eminently possible, the few times I’d see him stroll into my lovely Tower franchise, he seemed really ‘loopy’ - I remember one exchange where he just wanted some VHS tapes or something, and found this whole process of exchanging money for said tapes to be the funniest thing in the world.
Saw them again in 2009 and in 2012 and they were both great performances, still nowhere near as good as the 1997 “Crime” tour, but good, and back to having live musicians. And unlike Ministry, they seemed happy to play the classics, and played them enthusiastically, which certainly helped.
I dunno, I had just seen the Swans not too long before the 2012 TKK tour and TKK’s hour long (maybe hour and 1/2 long) performance seemed kind of weak compared to the Swan’s 3+ hour performance and I felt kind of cheated.
There’s very little that approaches the last couple of Swans tours in terms of sheer physical and emotional impact, which is made even better by the humility they have about being that unstoppable. I always feel sorry for the opening acts that are brought along as ritual sacrifices.
There’s very little that approaches the last couple of Swans tours in terms of sheer physical and emotional impact, which is made even better by the humility they have about being that unstoppable. I always feel sorry for the opening acts that are brought along as ritual sacrifices.
Which is why I chose to save my money and just go to the Swans show this Monday instead [;)]
Hey Tomasz, are you a GIS professional that lived in the Chicago area by chance?
Hey Tomasz, are you a GIS professional that lived in the Chicago area by chance?
I did live in Chicago throughout the latter half of the 90s, and again in 2004 after limping back from central Europe in a pathetic state.
Though to be honest I’ve never been in that business…being in a comfortable financial situation is not something I’m good at. All the details will be in my next book, “Industrial Music Ruined My Life!!!”, as told to Gerda Barker.
Honestly, I wasn’t keeping the time. I want to say they played for an hour and a half. I think they played 12 songs and then did a four song encore.
The merch booth was lacking, they had two different shirts…a standard tour shirt (they also had a poster with the same art) and a xian/zombie/vampyre shirt (which is actually pretty cool, I picked one up) those were $25 each.
The CDs were $10 each. They only had 5 titles available: Spooky Tricks, Reincarnation of Luna, Luna Remixes, Sinister Whisperz (Wax Trax Years) and an album by the Bomb Gang Girlz.
They played close to 2 hours in SF in '12, but it was also first night of the tour. Good thing that CD’s are still $10 each. That’s hella funny they still have copies of those 2 Luna albums over a decade after they were released. Reincarnation was so bad they re-recorded it a few years later and renamed it The Resurrection Of Luna. I still haven’t done the proper compare/contrast of the 2 (let alone listen to them start to finish), but I will say I prefer the versions of the good songs on Resurrection over Reincarnation.
Could you possibly post a pic of the shirt you bought? Normally I’d say $25 is a little much for a t-shirt, but when I went on my waxtraxchicago.com shopping spree 2 years ago, I bought a vintage Sexplosion shirt for $50.
EDIT: That really sucks they ran out of Death Threat. I guess I’ll be getting that one on amazon.
It’s eminently possible, the few times I’d see him stroll into my lovely Tower franchise, he seemed really ‘loopy’ - I remember one exchange where he just wanted some VHS tapes or something, and found this whole process of exchanging money for said tapes to be the funniest thing in the world.
Hilarious and it doesn’t surprise me one bit. When I was backstage during the last tour, he got stoned and rambled on about bunch of nonsensical yet funny shit supposedly about his life. One of the few coherent things I do remember him saying was his response to my asking him about when he was gonna put out an autobiography. He said that he had started working on one and that he wanted to call it “My Life Without The Thrill Kill Kult” and that it was gonna be about his pre-TKK days. If there ever was a book about the band, I’d like to see it in the same style as Motley Crue’s “The Dirt” with stories from everyone in the band. Well maybe not every single member since there’s been somewhere between 20-30 members over the years.
I did live in Chicago throughout the latter half of the 90s, and again in 2004 after limping back from central Europe in a pathetic state.
Though to be honest I’ve never been in that business…being in a comfortable financial situation is not something I’m good at. All the details will be in my next book, “Industrial Music Ruined My Life!!!”, as told to Gerda Barker.
[:)]
Hah ha, I hear that. My life has been ruined too, mostly by ADD, dyslexia, bullying at a young age, followed by social anxiety, followed by drug abuse, alcoholism, and yes I too have dabbled in industrial musics among others…
But really, I had to ask because there is this friend of mine who had a coworker/friend name Thomaz who he spoke of that was big on Ministry, and who lived near us in the Chicago region. (Imagine that, a Polish guy named Thomasz in the Chicago region?! Get the hell out!)
Anyway so this guy was a heavy drinker and really into Ministry and other similar musics from what I hear, but apparently he went sober, got married, and became a born-again Christian, so I was wondering if you were that guy and had “relapsed” into sin again. [;)]
Guess you aren’t that guy, but pleased to meet you anhow 
Pete
Hah ha, I hear that. My life has been ruined too, mostly by ADD, dyslexia, bullying at a young age, followed by social anxiety, followed by drug abuse, alcoholism, and yes I too have dabbled in industrial musics among others…
I’ve had encounters with some of those things. But for all my most persistent problems, I can’t blame anyone but myself (and maybe my parents here and there), which is the tough part to swallow. I’d say my challenges began with being nearly killed off several times by an off-the-charts nasty case of childhood asthma, which destroyed my social life - imagine thinking you’re going to go to the emergency room every time you laugh heartily - and my subsequent need to over-do everything in life when I grew out of this. I wanted to do anything and everything now that I was “really” alive and that’s led to some poor, short-sighted moves.
But really, I had to ask because there is this friend of mine who had a coworker/friend name Thomaz who he spoke of that was big on Ministry, and who lived near us in the Chicago region. (Imagine that, a Polish guy named Thomasz in the Chicago region?! Get the hell out!)
A confession - I added the extra ‘z’ to the end of my name as kind of tribute to a recently fallen friend and mentor, the Polish composer Zbigniew Karkowski. But I was kind of an ‘adopted’ Czech / Pole for the time I was in those countries, though it isn’t in my genes.
Anyway so this guy was a heavy drinker and really into Ministry and other similar musics from what I hear, but apparently he went sober, got married, and became a born-again Christian, so I was wondering if you were that guy and had “relapsed” into sin again. [;)]
Guess you aren’t that guy, but pleased to meet you anhow
I’m definitely not a born-again Christian haha…unless, of course, someone wants to throw millions of dollars my way to form a phony evangelical band a la Eric Cartman’s “Faith +1.”
Could you possibly post a pic of the shirt you bought?
Here ya go. The colors are hard to see due to lighting, but this is in green & purple glow in the dark-esque neon colors. The clerk mentioned this is meant to worn under a black light.
Looks like something you’d find at a Halloween store for half the price!^
It’s a quarter after 6 and I’m finally back from the show. I can honestly say it’s the best I’ve ever seen. I even got to chill with Groovie and Mimi afterwards. I’ll post more details later.
Awesome, post details! Groovie seemed very cool. Got to shake hands, but didn’t have enough time after the show to really hang out.
I noticed that Buzz was using an old Emulator II synth on stage, I got a kick out of that because most bands nowadays store the old sounds in a laptop and use a midi controller.
What did you think about DJ Rainbow? I’m not into the whole dubstep thing, so I sat out on most of it. We had a local DJ before him spinning Wax Trax era industrial, and that was a lot of fun.
I noticed that Buzz was using an old Emulator II synth on stage, I got a kick out of that because most bands nowadays store the old sounds in a laptop and use a midi controller.
Don’t those load their samples from 5 1/2" floppy disks? Even with the older TKK material, that can’t be the only place where those samples reside. Seems like an odd choice.
I’m not into the whole dubstep thing, so I sat out on most of it. We had a local DJ before him spinning Wax Trax era industrial, and that was a lot of fun.
Dubstep was a genre I drank my fill of really quickly. When people like Kevin Martin were pioneering it the quality control was a lot better, but it just seems like it devolved into very “spazz”-y, too many bells-and-whistles sort of material. Going crazy with a wavetable synth is fun to do for personal pleasure, but I can’t stand it when the ‘message’ behind the music seems like nothing more than “I’m skillful at manipulating electronics.”
Don’t those load their samples from 5 1/2" floppy disks? Even with the older TKK material, that can’t be the only place where those samples reside. Seems like an odd choice.
Yep. I didn’t see him changing floppies during the set though. It did seam that he was only using it on the tracks from the 80s. It was a weird choice, but it was cool to finally see one in action.
Dubstep was a genre I drank my fill of really quickly. When people like Kevin Martin were pioneering it the quality control was a lot better, but it just seems like it devolved into very “spazz”-y, too many bells-and-whistles sort of material. Going crazy with a wavetable synth is fun to do for personal pleasure, but I can’t stand it when the ‘message’ behind the music seems like nothing more than “I’m skillful at manipulating electronics.”
I think Download was the first thing I heard that was similar to what would become known as Dubstep. As a sample based genre, I find it more intriguing than rap, but I think you’re right. Too many people are playing into the novelty of showing how fast they can manipulate a sound, rather than trying to produce something interesting.
I think Download was the first thing I heard that was similar to what would become known as Dubstep. As a sample based genre, I find it more intriguing than rap, but I think you’re right. Too many people are playing into the novelty of showing how fast they can manipulate a sound, rather than trying to produce something interesting.
Funny you say that, I was blasting “The Eyes of Stanley Pain” in the car the other day.
I kept thinking, ok, why does this still impress me with its sonic busy-ness, and the latest whizz-bang dubstep record doesn’t. I want to think it’s not just to do with my personal bias towards the Puppy clan, and my dislike of things that are currently being hyped, since I try to only judge music on whether it sounds good or not. Maybe it’s the variance in moods that Download strive for; so much dubstep just seems to be in permanent cyber-badass mode and that gets fatiguing.
