Not Even Mugged...

So, I didn’t die. And I owe Hoboken an apology. It was well lit, smelled good and was in no way scary or intimidating. My fault.

The same can’t be said for Be Your Own Pet.

They played Maxwell’s, a hole in a hole coffee shop/bar with an adjoining back room stage that reminded me of the cellar in Silence of the Lambs.

Dank. Dimly lit. Strings of lights tacked to the walls. A dump.

No One & The Somebodies and The King Left opened for BYOP. I thought it would be great if from now on, all of us at these shows could vote whether or not we wanted to hear the opening acts.

Like a show of hands. Majority rules, you play the crappy songs we don’t know, bark your garbled lyrics and numb us with your fuzzed out amps and keyed up drum mics.

Blah.

Anyway, BYOP ate our faces off. Jemina Pearl Abegg, donning a Disneyland kid’s tee and a black felt skirt, brought the pain early and often.

Backed by her band of male miscreants, Abegg thrashed, flailed, kicked and whipped through “Bicycle, Bicycle, You Are My Bicycle”, “Adventure” and “We Will Vacation, You Can Be My Parasol.”

She’s the star. She’s like 5’2”, lean, with striking platinum blond hair and a disarmingly cute speaking voice. And she will eat your first-born and punch you in the balls.

BYOP rarely announces the names of the songs they play. They don’t give a shit when people jump up on stage and freak out; no bodyguards, no security, they even let around twenty people pogo all over their instruments in the middle of a song.

They debuted a ton of new material from their forthcoming LP, Get Awkward, which drops March 18, sometimes to the chagrin of the frothy-mouthed faithful. Abegg let everyone know they’d be closing with a pair of new songs. A couple people booed. She told us to funk ourselves, seared back our skulls for about seven minutes, then exploded a pipebomb in our faces with “Bunk Trunk Skunk”, the nastiest of the nasty.

Yummy.