Idolator
The blurry Isaac Brock photo above was taken during Sunday night's Modest Mouse show in Sioux Falls, S.D., during which Brock engaged in some knifeplay, according to the Argus Leader's blog:
After wrestling with his guitar and guitar strap, Brock threw his six-string off his body and began uncoiling the microphone cord wrapped around the mic stand in front of him. After spazzing out while singing some quasi-decipherable vocals, Brock stepped back in a frenzy and sliced his chest.
Watching from in front of the opposite side of the stage - but with a clear view of Brock's body - I wasn't close enough to exactly determine what he was doing. But it appeared he had some sort of object in his hand that he used to make two swift cuts on his torso.
Immediately after the frantic moves, the band's bearded stage hand/sound guy/roadie seated to Brock's left jumped on stage and grappled with Brock, making sure the singer's arms couldn't reach his body for further harm. Brock then cooled down a bit, embraced the stage hand and they talked in each other's ears for a second before each released the other and Brock returned to the mic. It all happened in about 10 to 15 seconds.
After the incident, Brock's white T-shirt had two clear slices on its front with blood stains building around the cuts (check out the fuzzy photo posted above, with one of the slices in clear view). Yet, he didn't miss a song and played through several more of the band's tunes before breaking for an encore.
It was odd on several levels - odd that Brock flipped out like a manic Iggy Pop; odd that the band's other five members didn't seem to notice or care about it; odd that most of the 1,600 audience members didn't notice or react to the bloodletting.
A reader noted that this incident wasn't too out of line for Brock, who he referred to as "an inherently odd individual who has a knack for pulling bizarre stunts," but this sort of Zorro play seems to jump from "bizarre" to "G.G. Allin-like." Maybe he was just showing the crowd how he felt after watching that Ford ad on American Idol the other night?
Modest Mouse Live: A Bloody Mess? [Link: Music and Entertainment in the Sioux Empire]
Comments
How emo of him!
Isaac and His Stooges
I willing to bet it was a legitimate stress-induced thing. When I did their show in NYC I was completely disgusted with the level of absurdity that had come to surround this one-time 'indie' band. The entire show consisted of one of their 4 or 5 techs taking turns scrambling into the monitor booth to desperately scream at the monitor engineer whatever minor whim their respective musician had communicated to them. Seriously, the level of intensity and desperation was nuts. The band was treated by their extensive entourage (and conducted themselves) as rockstar gods - everyone falling over each other to get them whatever they wanted. The band literally had a tech whose only job was to crouch behind one of the two drummers for the duration of the show and hand him a shaker when the song called for it. I often feel like that level of production is ridiculous and that it must take an emotional and creative toll on a musician to be treated in such a way.
I look forward to Brock doing something creative with his poop later in this tour.
Johnny Marr is probably secretly cutting himself for hooking up with this set o' dorks.
o snap, nickeddy
brock has taken a vacation to emo village, where he drinks tall glasses of tears and dines on safety pins and soot.
Well, we all need someone we can bleed on...
Johnny Marr is probably secretly cutting himself for hooking up with this set o' dorks.
And secretly reconsidering the notion of a Smiths reunion. Morrissey must be positively sufferable compared to Isaac Brock.
Come to think of it, perhaps he was paying tribute to Costes, who apparently scared the shit out of Rapid City recently.
As far as Modest Mouse is concerned...they are very contraversial as a team...as far as lead man Isaac Brock is concerned, a deep routed issue. What most people do not realize is that the cutting incident that took place at Ramkota...Sioux Falls, is NOT the first time Isaac displayed his cutting frenzy. He did this before, in Oklahoma, during a concert in which he actually asked the crowd for a "knife"...when handed a knife from a fan, he dragged the blade across his foreaem 2-3 times before tossing it back into the crowd. I do not believe he is trying to "kill himself"...it may not be an act however, it could be some type of release or even a cry out for those who feel the same...but I think it is more so of an addiction, which needs medical theory and attention...but the MODEST ROCKS, whether or not there is blood.
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