Finger Clicking Good
Phil Wilding
"FUCK OFF you stupid Goth! Typical f"kin' Goth!" The not so, genteel six foot plus of Faith No More T-shirt to my left raises the obligatory finger at the bottle black haircut 10 foot ahead. With little prompting and a degree of luck, he's managed to elevate himself up to stand on his mate's shoulders, miraculously avoid the almost perpetual torrent of plastic bottles and cups rained upon him, and by way of celebration is swiveling around like an alarmed windmill with a cog seriously amiss.
Mike Patton fails to notice any of this. He's trying his hand at Audience Participation: "Could you all snap your fingers like this?". He holds out his arm and exaggerates a brief finger-clicking motion. "Hey, Mr Soundman, they all snapping their fingers at the back?"
Indeed. "Wow".
As if by way of thank you, 'We Care A Lot' comes careering in all punch and happy homicide. The Glasgow Space Cadets go craaaazee, and Windmill goes down like a house of cards hit by a concrete block. Before I boarded my plane, a Scots native in exile told me there was nothing quite tike a Glaswegian welcome. A remark I've heard a thousand times before, from a hundred different sources, about god knows how many different towns, venues, from people who were looking back.
The Glaswegian hardcore stems from the lip of the stage to the very rear of the hall. In a barn as humid as the Louisiana springtime, they didn't let up for an instant.
Faith No More received the kind of welcome that couldn't have been more elated or passionately heartfelt had they been raised in nearby George Square rather than the Bay Area. Finally, the 'Real Thing'.
FNM bathe in it and bow to it under the rainbow dazzle of their metal rectangle of the lighting rig. Patton, bare torso and a white towel over his head, legs spread apart, has a stance and delivery aligned more to the degrees of intense rap music than anything like hard rock.
He annunciates a little like Robin Williams: "You eat your haggis this morning?" to a chorus of good natured jeers. "You gotta eat your haggis, otherwise you won't get big and strong...".
Where the cue amongst that lot is I've no idea, but 'Surprise, Your Dead', hits me straight in the face as forcefully and emphatically as a jealous slap.
Then there's a brief commotion up my side, one that I mistake for a fight and step back expecting to watch the dull punches and heavy intrusion of security. Instead, there's a girl, no more than five foot being dragged out of the furious crowd. For the moment it looks as though she's stopped breathing, her boyfriend doubted over her still form. Then the air comes out of her in sobs, she's okay, and 'Epic' is a starting gun shot from the stage. A pair of upturned legs form a surreal "V" close to the front. Baseball boot soles reaching
towards the white diamonds of the curved ceiling. The band throttle 'Woodpecker From Mars' resolutely then return to the impatient stamping and cheering with the wonderfully absurd 'Zombie Eaters'. 'War Pigs', not surprisingly, rumbles as a dirty finale, with its heavy kick the final stamp over the sodden, sold-out Barrowlands. An echo repeating above the warm mist rising from the crazy, stinky, sticky crowd.
FNM and their audience deserve each other; and they both deserved exactly what they got.
Set List
From Out Of Nowhere
Falling To Pieces
Introduce Yourself
The Real Thing
Underwater Love
As The Worm Turns
The Crab Song
Edge Of The World
The Morning After
Chinese Arithmetic
We Care A Lot
Surprise! You're Dead!
Epic
Woodpecker From Mars
Zombie Eaters
Death March
War Pigs (Black Sabbath)
