Henry Rollins, Tonight at the House of Blues

Henry Rollins always seems to me to be pretty much a love-or-hate thing, and I’ll freely admit that I fall pretty much on the “love” side of the line. The guy drives my wife nuts — she’s thinks he’s a self-important idiot, and yeah, I can get how she thinks that — but dammit, I find him ridiculously entertaining.

Not the music, so much, I’m afraid; the Rollins Band’s always fe lt like warmed-over, not-heavy-enough metal with hardcore vocals, and it was pretty much just “meh” to me. The spoken-word stuff, however, was a major component of my post-collegiate years. Rollins freaking defined my life, at one point, to the extent that I’d quote him annoyingly to anybody & everybody. He was the first Beat Poet (of sorts) I ever truly got into, combining the humorous anecdotes of a smartass comic with the streetwise punk ethic you’d expect from the ex-frontman for Black Flag.

And live, trust me, he is pretty mesmerizing. I saw him perform a decade or so ago at Numbers, and it was funny, endearing, weird, and sarcastically smart, all at the same time. Granted, it’s been a while, but I’m guess he hasn’t changed his shtick that much…

At any rate, he’s playing tonight, Tuesday, February 23rd, up at the House of Blues in downtown — it’s bound to be a bit less intimate than the Numbers show I saw, but I’m betting it’ll still be good.

In the meantime, here’s some of his stuff; the MP3s are somewhat older, and yeah, they’re a little dated, but they still crack me up. I just wish I could find his Ronnie James Dio “Devil Woman” routine somewhere… Here goes:

Henry Rollins – “Airplanes” (The Boxed Life)
Henry Rollins – “Brazil” (Think Tank)

And here’re a few videos, for good measure: