Henry Rollins, Exene
Onstage Henry Rollins looks too perfect, as if he’s been digitally enhanced by some west-coast art director: dimpled chin, high cheekbones, intense eyes, major eyebrows, angular haircut, muscular neck. And his body–shirt stretched tight across his broad shoulders and pronounced pectorals–glides with the eerie fluidity of a computer-generated character.
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Last Sunday night at the Vic, Rollins performed a single 80-minute piece and never seemed to come up for air. He just plowed through, stark-white manuscript clenched in his hand, only occasionally stressing words for effect: “Anywhere you hang yourself is home.” Behind him a band–a drummer and saxophonist, who also doubled on violin–played mildly dissonant jazz.
What we get now is LA Man, toned and coiffed and looking so unnatural he could pass for an airbrushed photo.
But Exene Cervenkova really made the evening. Former lyricist and vocalist for the seminal, recently dissolved LA punk band X, Cervenkova performs her poetry with disarming ease, speaking directly to the audience as she recounts her many adventures during and after the punk era. Her work is not particularly polished, nor is it very literary–she definitely doesn’t write like someone who’s read a lot of poetry. Yet she makes up for all that with a gutsy power–at times she out-rages Warden–and an openness that makes even her minor pieces riveting, like the short little angry thing she dashed off in 1980 after she caught her husband, fellow X member John Doe, with another woman.
