GearBits

The Intensity of Henry Rollins

I spent last evening at Bogarts, Cincinnati's famed venue for live performance variety. On the card was "Henry Rollins: The Spoken Word Tour". And that is all. Because, you see, nothing else could fit.

If you are familiar with Henry in this setting, you know what I saw and heard: an interesting, shocking, thought provoking, profane, intelligent, funny, opinionated, cynical, informative, take on things current by one of the hardest rockers who has ever rocked coming at you in one long, unbroken stream of thought. And it was good.

Aside from that, I was truly amazed by something. Slightly after 8pm, Henry walked onto stage dressed in green chinos and an olive drab t-shirt. The only clue that he was the rocker that he is were the bulging biceps and the mosaic of tattoos on this arms. He wrapped the mic cord around his left hand, put his left foot in front of his right in a sporting stance and began to speak at his machine gun clip. And there he remained for 2 hours and 45 minutes never taking a breath or a sip of water and only moving to illustrate some point he was making. Sadly I had to leave at that point to rescue our baby sitter and for all I know Henry may still be on stage. For this I apologize Henry (if you are reading this) because you put on a heck of show and deserved the standing O that was surely coming or will be coming.