Mindless Self Indulgence – Live (March, 26th, 2009)

The lights slowly dimmed, the house music suddenly stopped and the chants of “MSI! MSI!” were replaced with cheers as the members of Mindless Self Indulgence slowly took their respective spots on the stage. The first few chords ripped through the speakers and Jimmy Urine climbed out from the back of the stage, over the drum set and appeared with a handheld mic and stand ready to weave the crowd into a frenzy; and weave he did, turning Thursday night’s show into not only the most chaotic show of the year thus far but one of the more chaotic shows I’ve seen, period.

Jimmy Urine lead the night’s freak show with spastic rants on the state of pop culture. Every break between song was filled with miniature rants attacking pop bands (Girlicious and Pussycat Dolls got the worst of it), Hot Topics, models and more. But unlike so many of these rants, Urine was able to make them comical in his own sadistic manner something which transferred over to stage presence as he swaggered around the stage like a younger, crazed, punk version of Mick Jagger. He jogged, jumped, danced and continually engaged the crowd – enticing them with a striptease and pulling a group of girls on stage to sing a song.

Urine flew around the stage, spitting out his lyrics at breakneck speed backed up by the industrial metal beats and thunderous drumming of Kitty. Nowhere else have I seen a singer put a miniature mic stand down his pants and sing from it. Nor have I seen a singer slip the mic into their suit jacket and sing from there and I’ve never seen someone lay across three bass drums and have a little nap, politely telling everyone else to screw off; but Urine did all that in one night and had the crowd eating up his antics.

Focusing mainly on their newest album, IF, Mindless Self Indulgence played half the tracks from the album including Never Wanted to Dance, Evening Wear, Lights Out, Issues, Mastermind, On It and Bomb This Track. They also touched on some hit singles like Stupid MF, Straight to Video andShut Me Up. Their sound was great, even with a substitute bass player (which was unfortunate because I’ve heard that Lyn-Z is quite a sight to see live). To cap off their set, Jimmy Urine step on top of the front monitor to mouth along with a recorded version of “Now Business Like Show Business.”

He jumped off, left the stage and despite chants for one more song never returned. The night was done, they had brought their chaotic sound and presence to West Edmonton Mall and created a miniature riot within it, a feat which officially kicked off the spring touring season in Edmonton.