New Year's evil
Maybe it's just us, but it seems like very few people are ready to party like its 1999 one last time on New Year's Eve. After scanning the club listings, New Year's Eve just looks like another night -- the same lineup of bands at the same places. And serving champagne at midnight doesn't make it special. If most hip-hop videos are to be believed, champagne is as commonplace as water and a shiny fleet of Mercedes and BMWs. In comparison, last year's New Year's Eve festivities had much more of a feeling of pre-millennial tension. For example, at Bar of Soap, during a set by the now-defunct Meat Helmets, one audience member started a one-man mosh pit with such a vengeance that he ended up getting his ass kicked by various members of the band, the crowd, and random bystanders -- repeatedly. Never has such a high tolerance for pain and alcohol been observed in one man. And even after he was finally subdued, he started the process all over again once the Gospel Swingers started playing.
But by now, it seems like the novelty of a new millennium has worn off, and it's not that surprising. Who wasn't sick of hearing Prince's "1999" two weeks into this January? And that doesn't even include the general public's almost compulsive need to make Y2K puns, the stream of movies and TV shows with end-of-the-world plots, and other such nonsense. About two months ago, we realized we were no longer Y2K compatible.
But if December 31 really is the night the lights go out in Georgia, there aren't that many gigs that we'd like to go out at. Really, if you saw us in the audience at Pimpadelic's performance at Trees, you'd know that the world was, in fact, already upon us. The same could be said for frat-rat Pat Green's appearance at Gypsy Tea Room or Mind Crime at Galaxy Club. We don't want to spend our last day on earth with Queensryche, much less a shoddy tribute to that band.
And where would you rather be on New Year's Eve: at Curtain Club watching Slow Roosevelt, Soak, Grand Street Cryers, and various others, or at Club Clearview with Bowling for Soup, Flickerstick, and Sugarbomb? Someone explain to us what the difference is. If nothing else, the Toadies' gig at Deep Ellum Live, with Doosu and Pinkston, stands out by comparison. But we probably won't be there either. We've already got a date with a pair of night-vision goggles and our grandmother's Winchester. Let's be careful out there.
