Rollins 2.0

If angry, nihilistic punk rock grew up and broke away from its anti-social niche of non-conformity and joined the trendy attire wearing, coffee klatch gossiping, restaurant hopping, Whole Foods shopping, globe trotting, book inhaling world of current ‘It-ness,’ we would get something that looks and sounds a lot like the post-Black Flag/Rollins Band Henry Rollins. Ever the contrarian, Henry 2.0 channels his rage and indignation into keen observations about every type of conceivable pet-peevish thing that irks the hell out of him. Henry admits that he is an angry man but says his urge to rip apart every stupid thing he hates with colorful words and sentences also motivates him to keep living, travelling, reading, learning, seeing, smelling, eating, tasting, touching and breathing. In “Uncut from NYC” (2006) Rollins takes us on a tour of the Trans Siberian Railway, he delineates and laments the humanoid creatures popping up across America which he calls Wal-Martians, and he fires hard-edged insults at the republicans and the Bush administration. Rollins delivers his insights unfiltered, they are as raw and free as the thoughts in his head, and this is what makes his spoken-word performances so funny and entertaining to watch. We all have ideas and images in our head that are blunt, immature, or vague, but decorum requires that we dress them up, make them less obvious, and inflate or trim them before we let our mouths utter them. But a good stand-up comic will fire away in a stream of consciousness style and let all the grotesque and obvious things that we all think on a daily basis fly out of her and fill up the air with reassuring reason. Rollins’ smart and unabashed quick-wittedness makes him very adept at this, and he brings his experience as a punk rock musician to the stage in the form of his huffing and puffing body language (I swear, at least once while watching this DVD I seriously thought HenRollins was going to hyperventilate and pass out). Henry Rollins says what we all know we know but are too afraid to say for fear of looking like simpletons, and if you disagree with him it is only because the truth hurts.

“Henry Rollins: Uncut from NYC” does not contain the comic’s best material, but he still delivers his commentaries in the usual Rollins-esque style of entertainingly angst-fueled, exasperated-at-all-the-weak-minded-stupidity-and-bullshit-of-the-world-ness. Buy it today or get it as a gift for that special open-mindedly angry person in your life.