Nitzer Ebb and Motor
Slim's, San Francisco, CA
September 14, 2006

Based on a tip from her UK DJ friends Ants, Veronica picked up tickets in advance for us to catch the Bay Area installment of industrial stalwarts Nitzer Ebb's reunion tour. After dinner at Thailand Restaurant in the Castro, we drove over to Slim's, parked, and waited until a reasonable 10-15 minutes before NE's scheduled 10:30pm appearance. Turns out 10:30 was a bit optimistic, and we entered the club in the middle of openers Motor. I have no idea where these guys were from (Allmusic tells me they're a multinational lot based in London, with such colorful monikers as Mr. Nô and Bryan Black), but their accents were hilarious, particularly when added on top of the bizarre vocal effect they were using. Their electro-rock wasn't bad, but then it wasn't particularly fresh either. After twenty minutes, Motor exited and we made our way to a spot a few feet from stage left. The two long-standing members of the band Douglas McCarthy and Bon Harris emerged twenty minutes later, preceded by sexy drummer Courtney. All were decked out in black boots, short-sleeve collared shirts, and slacks held up by a single leather suspender, looking every bit three members of the SS. Despite boning up on their backcatalog earlier in the afternoon i wasn't familiar with lots of their set, although it seemed to be drawn entirely from their fundamental 1987-1991 album quartet of That Total Age, Belief, Showtime, and Ebbhead. Frontman McCarthy was a whirling dervish, dancing feverishly to each song and enacting an impromptu striptease and near-masturbation during "Lightning Man". As i remember from seeing them open for Depeche Mode in 1989, the instruments on stage are largely for show. Both Courtney and fellow percussionist and awful dancer Bon Harris are playing mostly for show, with the vast majority of sounds being produced by two Mac Powerbooks. Despite that, the spectacle was an entertaining one. Personal favorite songs included "Let Your Body Learn", "Murderous", "Join in the Chant", and the hypnotic "Hearts and Minds". The band played for roughly an hour, then came back for a one song encore of "Fun To Be Had", leading the crowd in the rather contrived chorus of "whether you be glad, sad, or bad, you've got to know that there's fun to be had". Then back offstage, at which point the die-hard fan who had been clapping in my face all evening long had a mini-breakdown ("i've waited 20 years for this and now it's over!"). Luckily for him the trio emerged for one final number, "I Give To You" from Ebbhead. Overall, an odd but not unpleasant trip back to 1990.

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