I was going through my LastFM profile stats the other day, comparing my actual top 10 played artists / bands / songs of ‘08 with my list of Top 10 records of 2008 (more on that at a later date), and aside from the band I’m in (which is the most listened-to in my collection simply because LastFM’s scrobbler is on while I practice with the music in iTunes), The Jesus Lizard is the number one artist in my playlist. So it should come as no surprise that, when the quartet recently announced a reunion show and subsequent tour dates, I pretty much jizzed in my pants.

I’m generally the type of asshole music fan who looks at all reunion tours with an extremely jaundiced eye — more often than not, I see washed out rock stars whose mailbox money is no longer covering the expensive lifestyles they developed.

But not this time.

I think I can safely presume that The Lizard was never in it for the money. I mean, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were the best selling band in the Touch & Go catalog, but I highly doubt that that back catalog sales of their records is keeping them neck-deep in penthouse apartments, naked supermodels and Learjets. The second to last time I saw ‘em, right around the time Shot was released in 1996, at the height of their popularity, they played at Bottom Of The Hill in SF. Great venue. Very small venue.

In November, The Jesus Lizard announced a reunion for the All Tomorrow’s Parties in London in May ‘09, and have confirmed that they’re in the process of setting up other US dates to run through the summer and fall of ‘09. To commemorate, Touch & Go, label home to the bulk of the Lizard’s catalog, will be remastering and rereleasing the band’s first four albums — Head, Goat, Liar and Down — with Bob Weston and original engineer Steve Albini overseeing the project.

Personally, I think The Jesus Lizard is among the best rock bands of the 1990s, if not all time, and as a bass player, Lizard bassist David Wm. Sims has been a huge influence on my playing style (and is commemorated as such in the masthead graphic of this blog, up there in between Muhammad Ali and Charles Bukowski). So, needless to say (again), I’m as giddy as a proverbial schoolgirl for the possibility that I’ll be able to see them play live at least one more time, and I’ll be watching for tour dates when they’re announced.

Keep with all the Lizard news here. And just for fun, here are a few clips…

“Nub”:

“Seasick”:

“Thumper”:

“Seasick” again. In this one, Yow takes a bottle to the head, pulls his shit together, congratulates the dick who threw the bottle, and gets back to work:

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 21st, 2008 at 12:29 pm and is filed under Music, Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.