King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard & Joey & Timmy & the full moon & a sea of melted faces, next to an international airport
By NICK TAVARES
STATIC and FEEDBACK Editor
It’s been not quite two days after the fact as I write this. But I’m going to cut to the chase now:
I may have to start marking my life as “Time Before First Seeing King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard,” and “Time After First Seeing King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard.”
My thoughts have been running laps in the hours since King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard took the stage at Suffolk Downs in East Boston, threw down the hammer and walked away. While a full moon burned in the distance and planes kept landing behind us at Logan Airport, these guys put on a show that was stunning from front to back. And what follows is how I’m going to try to translate all this in print.
My concert stalwart Bruce and I strolled into Suffolk Downs after waiting out most of the rain in the parking lot, ready for whatever might be in store. We’d been listening to random albums in the car, with none of the stuff really sounding like the other stuff. Which is what we were looking for. This band can apparently do anything. How does that all mesh on stage?
Just as we got through security and the turnstiles, the lights dropped and they were off and running. The fabled synth table I’d read about was already out, with the entire band huddled around producing beats and grooves and whoops and sporadic bursts of noise in a way that was practically hypnotizing. And 20 minutes of this electronica bliss immediately dropped into the retro hip-hop of “The Grim Reaper” with shocking ease, complete with flute backing and just the most vicious percussion possible. What follows this? Thrash metal, of course. Heavy, nasty riffs flying out with a fury and with real meaning and purpose.
I felt like I had vertigo at this point. I was floored. I don’t understand how a band could do this much this quickly and this convincingly. Somehow, none of it feels like a bit or a gag, the way it can when, say, [REDACTED FAMOUS JAM BAND] tries the same kind of thing. This is not a joke, it’s as real as a heart attack and damn near as impactful.
The versatility is, frankly, off the charts. And the musicianship of all six members is almost confounding. I found myself slack-jawed more than once while watching drummer Michael Cavanaugh run like he was powered off an engine, tossing in triplets and runs all while maintaining these furious beats for extended stretches that had me sympathetically exhausted. Or Stu Mackenzie, jumping from guitar to flute to any number of bits of electronic gear with total fluency. Or Ambrose Kenny-Smith, who can break out bars and then lay down some nasty blues harp whenever necessary. Watching all of them do their thing — their many things — is dizzying.
I knew they could go in any number of directions going into this night, of course. I’m not versed in all 26 studio albums or all the singles or all the bootlegs, but I have a few (among them, the latest Flight b741, I’m In Your Mind Fuzz, Omnium Gatherum, K.G., L.W. and Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava) that I felt comfortable with. But their body of work is so voluminous as to be intimidating to a newcomer, or at least it has been to me. But I’ve liked everything I’ve heard and I wanted to see them for some time. And I was going to go in not worrying about song names or setlists. I just wanted these guys to melt my face.
And good lord, did they do that. Every twist and turn felt like a portal to some new, undiscovered territory. The odd moments when I recognized a song were almost jarring, but they played them all with such abandon and absolutely zero reverence for what some might feel they “should” have done. They just play, and they try to play everything. That they can pull it off with such ease is absolutely stunning.
I’ve never seen a show or a band like this. After crossing that threshold into my forties, I didn’t think I’d just stumble onto another band who could do that. And I've never seen one who could do all this. Now I’m not sure I’ll recover, to be honest. I’m not sure I’d want to, either.
Finally, we need to talk about Timmy and Joey. Right after “Supercell” and the aforementioned first blast of metal, guitarist Joey Walker spotted Timmy with a sign near the front, noting that his friend Joey had died in an avalanche this past February, was a huge fan of the band and, to honor his memory, could Timmy join the band and play guitar on Joey’s favorite song, “Perihelion?”
After reading the sign aloud, Walker responded with an immediate affirmative: “That sounds pretty fucking good. Let’s do that.” And with that, Timmy was on stage, the crowd was chanting Joey’s name, Timmy thanked the band and reminded everyone to love the people in their lives, “because these moments don’t last forever.”
And then they shredded. I mean, my god, after barely a moment’s hesitation, Timmy tore into the intro of “Perihelion” and drove that demon through everyone’s face. Chants of “Joey! Joey! Joey!” kept ringing sporadically for the rest of the night. Timmy, the crowd and the band all rose to the moment and surpassed any expectation.
One thing all my favorite bands share is this weird sense of undying community. The best bands create their own worlds in which to exist, with bizarre shorthand and vocabulary germinating through the fanbase and back to the band, who take that sense of belonging and give it back to the crowd, and so on and so forth. I’ve been to a lot of shows with a lot of touching, heartfelt moments, but I’ve never seen anything quite like this.
The immediate instinct to say “yes” to the opportunity, and the faith the band had that, if this guy thinks he can play the guitar part, then fuck it, let’s do this, strap a Flying V on this dude and let’s go ... I don’t think any other band at this level would do that.
King Gizzard did, though. This band can apparently do anything, and so can their fans. And now I’m counting the days until I can witness them do it again.
E-mail Nick Tavares at nick@staticandfeedback.com