Throughout his regular spoken word performances, I’d wager he needs a new tongue after every other sentence. Roadies come bounding across the stage, I dare say, decked out in black shirts and trousers so as we can only see the disembodied balding heads hovering eerily about the monitors, soldering the new muscles into place mid-syllable, racing off then into the wings with the spent articles clutched in the paws like jellied eels.
Facts, figures, names dropped and kicked senseless and tossed to the crowd, myths debunked, fresh myths woven…
Like a man possessed he goes, the droll, oft-times incredibly sarcastic delivery masking only slightly the torrent of information each beautifully phrased quip might hold.
Sadly, the audience, most likely, have only got, at most, two ears per head, which is at least eight shy of the ten you’d need to take it all in. Thank God, then, that Alternative Tentacles have long been releasing live albums recorded at these particular performances, and so a fella can pause it a time here and there, can think, muse, take notes, allow himself a bitter laugh without fearing it’ll be at the expense of something altogether astounding coming right after the funny thing.
The most recent of these albums, an epic three-disc (or three-psalm) affair by the name of In The Grip Of Official Treason, consists of recordings made at various American venues from 2004 to 2006, the shebang kicking off with an awe-inspiring harangue captured at a Punk Voter / Rock Against Bush extravaganza in 2004.
Characteristically shy and wary of stoking any controversy at all, Jello’s been on stage for no more than 30 seconds before he’s announcing, with the veins audibly erupting ‘neath the skin of his neck, that “Nobody has done more to disrespect and exploit the innocent people who died on September 11th and piss on their graves than George Bush.”
Cheers and hollers from the audience.
“If you know anybody who’s in the military or thinking of joining up, and you care about them, now would be a really good time to tell them to get the fuck out of there as quick as they can.”
Further cheers and hollers.
By the end of the 24-and-a-bit minutes Jello spends wrestling with the microphone, they’ve been cheering and hollering with such zeal and passion that a fella finds himself pitying both whoever took the stage thereafter, and whoever has to clean the site at the end of the evening - throats choked out faces litter the grounds, a fella can reasonably assume, surely to God.
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