It was really Korn on the Pier, Pier 17 at South Street Seaport to be exact. A free show (only 30 minutes, you get what you pay for…) several hundred of people came out for… The sun was baking and the water bottles were flying (a real airborne fight of Poland Spring water bottles broke out at one point before show!) and when Korn finally took the stage the fans went crazy and the mosh pit followed suit!
I had never seen Korn before. The five-piece band played a good, tight and aggressive show made of walls of guitar, the oh so characteristic distorted bass sound that pretty much defines their sound, machine(gun)-precision drumming, occasional keyboard drones and the screaming voice of the front man wearing an Irish kilt, drinking out of a goblet and holding on to his uber-cool cast aluminum microphone stand designed by my favorite artist: the Swiss H.R. Giger (hint hint: Alien). The sound of Korn live is aided by an albino background screamer+percussion player and second guitar player (gotta stack the bricks for that wall of guitars!).
I never really bothered to pay attention to their lyrics (admittedly it is a little hard sometimes…) but I think this was the first time in my life as a straight guy that I’ve heard so many people at once screaming the words “Suck my Dick and Fucking Like It!” …so I looked up the lyrics to this “Faget” song and I still can’t really figure out for sure if they are a bunch of homophobic racists or if they are trying to sing against discrimination… I sure hope it’s the former cause I saw a lot of people in tight leather pants at the show! ;-)
The other words that really stood out loud were “Are You Ready?” which marked the beginning of a short-lived but absolutely insane and massive head-banging, body-slamming, crowd-surfing, leg-overturning, sure-to-be-injury-provoking mosh pit slam-dance (I recall my days at the punk shows in Italy!). “Are You Ready?” concluded the short show but by then everyone was satisfied ’cause Korn made sure to play all of their hits and of course introduce their new album “Evolution” (out today).
I checked the show out from the Pier 17 restaurant stairs where I had a good general overview of it all… I think the only bad thing about that particular spot were these obnoxious tourists who fueled an argument with every bystander who stood in their line of sight while they were comfortably sitting at a table expecting everyone to be out of their way so they could enjoy the show seated. They claimed a whole entire balcony for themselves and even had the balls to block it off to other people who could have seen the show from there without even interfering with them… Allegedly the restaurant charged them $30 for those seats (which I am not sure is really a legal thing to do at a free show…). Shame on them and the restaurant!
