6. One Armed Scissor - At The Drive In

I wonder, sometimes, what it is I love about music.

Is it the words, or the melody?

Perhaps an experience, a fleeting event, never to be lived again.

Or something else entirely maybe.

I have no answer to this — probably never will — but it’s something that pops up in my head occasionally.

It tends to come up when I’m thinking about a particular song — “Oh, I love the lyrics in this one!” or “The guitar here is the bit I love about this song.”

And then there’s One Armed Scissor by At the Drive In.

It’s not the lyrics, because I have NO idea what the lyrics mean in this song.

I mean, here’s the first ‘verse’:

Yes this is the campaign

Slithered entrails

In the cargo bay

Neutered is the vastness

Hallow vacuum check the

Oxygen tanks

They hibernate

But have they kissed the ground

Pucker up and kiss the asphalt now

Tease this amputation

Splintered larynx

It has access now

It can’t be the music because even now my brain refuses to unpack the instruments and sounds that blast out of the speaker every time I put it on.

It’s not easy to describe and I imagine it is something of an acquired taste.

Think jagged punk with lyrics carved from nonsense, with exquisitely harsh musicianship, bananas singing and a beat that shakes your spine.

Attacked by Texans with Texas-sized afros and deliverers of the most incendiary, enticing, amazing live show I’ve ever seen.

Commonly flagged ‘post-hardcore’, it is safe to say it’s a pretty unique sound.

No, it’s not the music or the lyrics that give this song such meaning to me.

This one is purely experiential, the memory of the most explosively memorable gig I’ve ever been to, by a band burning far too brightly to last for long.

It transports me, immediately, to Big Day Out, January 2001.

The Big Day Out is no more, of course.

And I hadn’t been in years anyway — the appeal of a day spent in the sun waiting in a crowd to see the few bands I like had faded as my 20s marched on.

But 2001 was my final year at high school, and a few friends and I went to check it out.

Sadly, a young girl had died during a set in the preceding Sydney show.

People talked about it, but it didn’t fell terribly real.

I was 17, a year older than she’ll always be, and inflicted with a teenager’s invincibility.

So it didn’t really register, beyond the additional precautions and warnings in place on the main stages.

I was excited, and keen to see a few bands.

I’d been listening to Relationship Of Command (At The Drive In’s album) solidly in the months leading up to festival.

It was, is, a beguiling album. Intense, loud, spiky, weird, articulate, challenging with that voice.

I was keen to see them live, especially as the reviews were starting to roll in on the intensity of their live show.

Into this mix was the fact that At The Drive In had walked off mid-set in Sydney after the violence in the crowd simply got out of hand.

Until then, so the story went, they were on fire, but after warning the crowd of bogans and fighters multiple times, they left, citing real safety concerns.

Which means I wasn’t sure if they’d even play the Melbourne show.

It was hot, and the legendary dust started blowing early.

I hadn’t yet built the confidence to walk into a licensed area and ask for beer, so it was water and soft drink for us all day.

I wandered over to the small side stage where they were expected and there was a small, but growing crowd of people milling around.

Strangers started wondering if the band were going to show:

“They’re here, I heard they’re definitely here.”

“Hear what happened in Sydney? Imagine bailing over that.”

“Nah, these crowds get out of control, they totally did the right thing.”

The anticipation started to build and the crowd moved closer to the stage.

Getting ready.

Then…out they came. A quick introduction, and…BANG!

The singer — Cedric Bixler-Zavala — started bounding and stalking around the stage, raggedly spinning and screaming into the mike.

The lead guitarist circled him, pacing, swinging in and out of the magnetic orbit.

Grinding on those strings, chasing the feedback through the speaker stacks.

Playing one ballistic melody, dancing to another with his eyes swimming to a third.

The drummer was rolling, brutally, and then we were off.

I remember the sun dropping, but the air was bone dry, there was never enough water.

The crowd dove headfirst, embracing the kind of respectful havoc we’d silently agreed was acceptable.

Because none of us was going to be the person to make them walk off, not now.

There were speaker dives, guitar spins, torn vocal chords. The mike stand was a prop to be tossed around.

Hair was flying, everywhere, people were frantically dancing, stomping, spinning, screaming, shouting into the air.

The scene was electric and incendiary and engrossing.

The crowd, well, you had a choice: Get on board or drown in confusion.

None of this made sense.

The melodies were off, the lyrics just insensible screaming, the stage the place for the most frenetic ballet we’d ever see.

I couldn’t tell you if they were even in tune.

We’d been promised a show, and I think we realised pretty quickly we were getting a show…that we’d talk about for the rest of our lives.

The rest is a blur.

It felt like the speakers were still recovering as the band walked off the stage.

We all stood there, panting, sweating, with sore heads and raw throats, the last bit of feedback still ringing in our ears.

There was a moment, a couple of beats, where people looked around at each other as if to ask, ‘was that real?’.

A moment of disbelief, the collective realisation that we’d just seen the best gig we’d probably ever see.

A gig that might have ruined all future gigs.

Then the breeze came in, the dust came up and the moment passed.

Off we went, on shaky legs, to get a drink and maybe a quick rest before the next stage.

At The Drive In broke up seven weeks later.

This video from the Sydney show goes some of the way to capturing the electricity of the set, the chaotic energy of this gig.