PEEPING TOM!!!! Aaaaahhhh!!

Peeping Tom - Neighborhood Spaceman (7-23-06)
Alright, I've got a video on here. This is good.
So on July 23 went to see Peeping Tom open for Gnarls Barkley at the Avalon, and my Mike Patton obsession is reaching alarming levels. The man works for every cent he makes, soaking his shirt all the way through and placing his neck at serious risk of injury with violent head thrusts.

Went with my friend May (Radiohead Superfan #1), who again procured tickets for us. She took a video of Patton singing another PT song, Don't Even Trip, and it is faaaar superior to the one on here (in large part because of my background screeches), but for some reason hers wouldn't upload to YouTube (it's a QuickTime file, don't understand). However, this was the show we attended, and the song they're playing is one of my favorites on the album.

As far as I'm concerned, Peeping Tom totally stole the show from Gnarls Barkley, at least for me because during the latter's set Mike Patton was standing right next to me and I was busy staring in complete, pathetic starstruckness not saying anything. Finally May tapped him on the shoulder and said she wanted to introduce me to him because if not I might explode. Patton was incredibly cool and I fucking hugged him but I always feel a bit silly making small talk with celebrities, especially ones I care about, because I feel like they think I'm a groupie. Plus, what am I gonna do with that experience (other than blog about it)? It's not like we talked about anything groundbreaking -- in fact the main topic I recall us discussing was the weather. Patton is cool, but I just don't know the guy, and it's not gonna happen at 2 a.m. after one of his shows in Hollywood. The only thing it could be is some lame groupie experience. Nonetheless later there was a more serious foray into groupiedom that involved some after-show stuff which I shan't divulge, and the next day some hanging out at PT's hotel. It was much less scandalous than it sounds, and I couldn't get over feeling loserish for doing it. But whatever.

What this all comes down to is that the coolest part of the night was the show. All of the hard songs on the album were a lot more fun live when you could jump to them with other excitables. It was so high energy Patton even attempted a stage dive. It was, like so many other things that night, a bit pathetic, because people didn't seem quite into helping him crowd surf, and for about 10 seconds afterward I couldn't take him seriously. Is the day of the stage dive over, is it on hiatus, or is the Gnarls Barkley crowd just the wrong one to try it on? Big questions.