Reliving My Youth With Ministry and Nitzer Ebb

Last night I got to relive my youth. My wife and I went to see a concert of a couple of my favorite bands of all time: Nitzer Ebb and Ministry.

Although I have seen both bands at least 10 times, I have never seen them play together. In addition, Ministry (who at this point is really only lead singer Al Jourgensen from the original lineup) dedicated the whole set to playing the entire 1983 Album With Sympathy and a few songs from 1986's Twitch. I was 15 in 1986 when I first discovered Twitch and then went back to find With Sympathy. For those of you who are as old as I am, you may remember a song from With Sympathy without even knowing you were listening to what would eventually become the most influential Industrial band of all time.

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Do you remember Old Style Dry? Me neither. But I'll never forget that song. It was one of my favorites in high school. I could not believe I actually got to hear it live last night!

It might not sound like a big deal that a band would be playing a 45 year old album, but believe me this was. When Ministry was first formed, they had a very unique idea. Sell out first and then, after they could afford their own equipment, they could make the aggressive Industrial music they truly loved. They even sported fake British accents in their lighter, new wave sounding early albums. By the time I was old enough to start seeing them in concert. Al had sworn off performing any of their earlier "sell out" material. For many years, this didn't phase me as I was far more interested in 1988s Land of Rape and Honey, 1989s The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste (which may be my favorite album of all time) and 1992s Psalm 69. So the first half dozen times I saw them play, I was set. I jumped in the pit, let out some aggression… and eventually tore my ACL slamming to the song Thieves.

But then the band started to drift apart and Al Jourgensen decided to go full on thrash metal. On several occasions, I decided to try and see if they would play any old stuff only to be disappointed by the wave of speed metal. So even though the albums are over 40 years old, this was the first time I was able to see them performed live… even if it wasn't the entire original band. Luckily for me, much of the music is electronic so it was really hard to tell.

And then there is Nitzer Ebb. After some reflection, they may be the most fun band I have ever seen. They truly understand how to please their fans. I have seen them at least 10 times and they never play games with the fans' hearts (they just want us to lift them up). They have so many incredible Industrial songs dating back to 1987s That Total Age.

Did I hear you wanted an encore? Well so did we last night and we got an incredible surprise. Many of the Industrial band members in the 80s and 90s had all sorts of side projects. They would come together to form a new band for a song or two. Sometimes they stuck around and made an entire album. Probably the most famous of these is Pigface which is a Frankenstein's monster of who's who in the Industrial world. But my favorite is The Revolting Cocks. ("What do they call themselves? the Revolting Cocks. Ohhh dogg.")

The group was founded by Richard 23 and Luc Van Acker with Al Jourgensen as their producer. They later added a guy named Chris Connely. Well last night, the show ended with Chris Connely joining the band to play the Revolting Cocks cover of Rod Stewart's "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?" According to the video I took of the show, apparently I do think they are sexy because I was screaming that repeatedly (even though I don't remember doing that)..

I don't think any other audience on the tour will be as lucky as we were last night.

So what old band do you wish you could see? If they could play a whole album, what would it be?