As Black Lips guitarist Ian St. Pe descends the backstage stairs following the show, he makes a beeline for the cooler, which turns out to be empty. He surveys the room, which is littered with cigarette butts, empty bottles, and the gangly frame of a snoozing Bradford Cox, whose band of noise-rock freaks, Deerhunter, was also on tonight’s bill. “I should have known,” St. Pe says, laughing, flashing a few gold-grilled teeth.
“Anything liquid here is gone,” says Lips bassist Jared Swilley. The quartet, which also includes guitarist Cole Alexander and drummer Joe Bradley, began the party a little early tonight. Their enthusiasm is understandable: Tonight’s sold-out gig at the Variety Playhouse was a triumphant homecoming for the band, who played their first Atlanta show since releasing their most tuneful and accomplished slab of anarchic rock’n’roll yet, Good Bad Not Evil, in September. Though the show lacked some of the antics the Lips have become infamous for—urinating in their own mouths, onstage fisticuffs, leading an audience on a march— they promise that the postshow house party will deliver some debauchery. “One of the guys from Mastodon has a side project, and he’s gonna play,” says Swilley. “Although, last time I saw him, he was already pretty fucked-up, so we’ll see.”
Jared Swilley, beer Olympics contender
The Lips onstage in the Dirty South
St. Pe with 24 of his friends
Swilley preparing to swill
The house is just around the corner from the venue, and already there’s a police car parked out front, blue lights flashing. It’s a coincidence—the cop is arresting a random troublemaker.
Brent Hinds, guitarist/singer for prog-metal powerhouse Mastodon, makes an appearance as promised and is evidently as fucked-up as expected; he makes no move toward the guitar and amp in the corner of the living room.
As the house fills with bearded drunks, local musicians, and a pair of contortionists, the four band members retire to the bathroom, where a barrel of Pabst Blue Ribbon ices in a claw-foot tub. Alexander and St. Pe hoist Swilley up by his legs for a keg-stand, while Bradley goads him on. Next up: Jell-O shots and the assembly of a pyramid-
shaped champagne fountain. The band downs the bubbly after screaming a toast: “Fuck the world! F-T-W! F-T-W!”
By 3: 30 A. M., a woman who looks like she came from a GOP fund-raiser has passed out on the living-room couch, and by 4 A.M., Bradley has offered his services as a—gulp!—designated driver. His passengers try to convince him to make a stop at the city’s infamous greasier-than-greasy spoon, the Majestic, but he balks. “No way,
dudes. We can eat at my place,” he says. “I’ve got pizza rolls!” Swilley is hunkered down with another beer on the stairs, waiting for his fiancée to arrive from work at a local nightspot. St. Pe and his girlfriend vanish around 4: 30, followed by an almost incoherent Alexander, who is dragged away by a female friend, his face smeared in black lipstick, but not before offering these parting words of wisdom: “Y’aaalll be carefully leaving heeeere. It’s the holiday seasons. Just don’t do nothing wrong.” Right back at ya. DAVID PEISNER
50 FEBRUARY 2008 WWW. SPIN.COM
References:
http://www.myspace.com/theblacklips
http://www.vicerecords.com/blacklips.php
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