May 3, 1999

London Camden Dingwalls

He yaks effortlessly and hilariously about everything from the absurdity of blaming school shootings on "the gothic movement", the obscenity of [B]Blair[/B] and [a]Clinton[/a]'s war ("killing Third

The vicious rumour of the last five years has been that Hank - muscle-bolstered, beetle-browed and as butch as a barrel of bulls' balls - is in fact a player of the pink oboe. The new rumour is that Hank's got God. Big time. He's even supposed to have phoned up the many thousands of folk he's chinned, dissed, or otherwise pissed off over the years and apologised. Like a girl! No, really.

And so it is that we sit with the God-bothering-bullshitometer on our spindly knees as hunky Hank effortlessly prowls the stage like a growth-hormone-gobbling tyrannosaurus rex and yaks effortlessly and hilariously about everything from the absurdity of blaming school shootings on "the gothic movement", the obscenity of Blair and Clinton's war ("killing Third World people for Nike") and, um, how he always imagines Jesus talking like Bootsy Collins and looking like the guitarist out of Alice In Chains.

Hold on! Did somebody say JESUS!?! Yup. Hank's in preacher mode tonight, schizoidally trying to combine Mr Christ's 'turn-the-other-cheek' schtick with his more familiar Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now 'exterminate the brutes' persona. And the result is, frankly, a tad daft but utterly fascinating.

On the down side there's too much 'what-I-did-on-my-holidays' bollocks and, for God's sake, won't someone incredibly brave pleeeeeease have a word with him about the increasingly embarrassing chartered-accountant's trousers he's taken to wearing?

Never mind. Mere quibbles. Henry Rollins is God. Official.