Type O Negative / Dust to Dust Live Review

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TYPE OF NEGATIVE / DUST TO DUST
The Trocadero Theatre; Philadelphia, PA; 10/31/01

Philadelphia has this sick love of Halloween. We always have and I suppose that we always will but driving around Philadelphia in October you see just as many decorations as you would during Christmas. With that prerequisite, Philadelphia also gets treated every year to the haunting talents of Type O Negative on the very night. Type O has called Philly home on Halloween for six years running and this year they brought along the musical might of Dust to Dust.

Getting to the venue was simple this time around. Type O was playing at the Trocadero, one of my favorites located smack dab at the gates of China Town. When I got there things were running smoothly and it was about 15 minutes before Dust to Dust went on. The crowd was not nearly as spectacularly dressed as I would have presumed. When I went to the first Halloween Type O show there were people in all sorts of get ups, and that in and of itself was worth the price of admission. This year there were a few notables though, starting with a Kud Mudvayne look-alike, some chick that was dressed in ... well, I am not sure what to call it ... but she looked like a leftover member from Gwar, and a pretty sweet duo of a belly dancer and a fairy.

Dust to Dust hit the stage to a good old-fashioned Philadelphia opener welcome of, "you fucking suck." Gotta love Philly! Dust to Dust was busted out in clear masks with drummer Steve in this hysterical loony looking mask.

But you have to give these guys credit for playing with anything on their heads in the obscene heat of a club and stage lights. They played some jams from their self-titled album including "Mr. Doe," "Submission," "New Low," "Breathe," and personal favorite "If I was God." In typical Philly fashion, the heckling never stopped but the guys maintained and went through their set of kick ass songs from a kick ass album.

    Of course, they left the stage and the crowd started buzzing for the infamous Type O. I have not seen Type O in about four years so this was supposed to be a treat for me. But I have to be nothing less then honest. After watching half of their set, I understood why the line, "Don't mistake lack of talent for genius" appeals to them.

    I still have no problems with the old jams from "Origin of the Feces," "October Rust," or "Bloody Kisses," but I am really not into the new material circa "World Coming Down." As expected, they played for the most part from the "World Coming Down" catalog but they also decided to throw in some sort of Russian theme. Pete Steele came out with a Russian military jacket of some sort with army fatigue pants. With that Type O Negative opened with "Back in the USSR." Yes, you read correct, my rockers, that was the interesting song they opened with. Whatever.

    But the fun with Pete Steele was not over yet; he proceeded to bitch about the microphone stand being broken because it must have been made in "Pakistan." You know something about that just seems entirely irrelevant and uncool, especially coming from a dude from New York that runs around talking with a fake Transylvanian accent dressed in Russian army fatigues.

    At this point I had one of my infamous epiphanies that Type O Negative really has a bunch of us, me including, fooled. These guys are really just an out of control circus act that I think put things together just to see how much they can actually get away with in front of a bunch of mindless zombies.

I am all for entertainment being entertainment at its core, but Type O fans were taking this all so seriously and erupting into loud spurts of applause when Steele made his pathetic attempts at jokes.

So I stayed around, through the infamous toilet paper fight, and I can tell you that at least that was a riot. Type O closed out the show with "Black No. 1" and I enjoyed hearing it even though at that point my whole impression of the Type O I used to watch in high school and college was shot to shit.

I rocketed the toilet paper rolls to the best of my ability until we finally got booted off stage by the poor miserable fucks that had to clean it all up. I got told that I threw like a girl more then once. Jeez, do you really think so? You sure were observant buddy and got pegged in the head with incoming rolls on a few occasions.

All in all it was a cool night considering and I got out of the place with a new respect and appreciation for Dust to Dust's live show. I cannot wait for them to come back to Philly so I can check them out again.

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