John Olson
John Olson’s Top Five Wolf Parties of the Year
1: Cafe Electric Sau Paulo Brazil / April = Craziest Wolf show of the year/ after doing a totally strange big deal gig with Fennez to the rad SP maniacs, our hosts Gui and Edwardo took us to their small DJ bar the next night for an eve of kidney killing drinks. Shows in Brazil get an import tax of like 60% and imported CDs get the same severe treatment. So this group of brothers and this Gui freak worked on scoring non-taxed new music into Sau Paulo and have parties every Monday at this cafe to play the jams for the locals. After saving enough dough they get to do one gig every 6 months ...so the Wolf Brew Crew was lucky enuff to get chosen. Anyhow - we are at this killer cafe getting totally railed and hanging with some of the most killer peeps ever.... one of the Wolf Boyz notice there is a two random amps in the corner so we track down the owner and ask him if we can bust a set....the dude is super stoked and everyone starts texting their crew and in the time it takes for us to jet back to the hotel and grab the nuclear warhead wolf gear the place is packed to the rafters and everyone is freaking out...circa 4am...and as we are getting ready to destroy...Gui says "Wait two minutes - Damo Suzuki will be here".... So we hang tight until Doctor Mutter enters and bust into a furious hell on earth set with the bar going balls out inzane. Hearing the SP maniac chanting "Kill Kill Kill" during the break of Stabbed In the Face makes me want to break a fucking chair across Roach’s back just thinking of it...... the only town to have a mall of all things Heavy Metal. Amazing.....
2. New Years Eve/Wolf Practice Terror Tank = Started the New Year off right. Not a Wolf gig but the boyz were there (minus Nepal Dillo) and it was intense!! Eleven fights happened, DJ Roach playing speedmetal through a set up of Gorilla amps, glass, blood, noize. Death KCOMM, Hive Mind, Workbench, Burning Sess Core, 16 Bitch Pile UP, and fucking rare gig by sound murderer Kevin Drumm who brought his own massive PA and fryed the damn thing = killer party/ line up!!!. Raw night - huge cement room was a sound hell pit-after the next day the scene looked like some Law & Order CSI shit. The next big gig at the place was the amazing Hair Police/Wooden Wand/Dead Machines tour start - no violence, but an acid-effected Sick Heath drove his moms VW Rabbit into a fence......hah!
3. City Center, Torrino Italy Summer Fucking Weird Gig Alert totally = After total busting our balls from a string of intense Italy gigs (complete with fucked up Athens Techno fest gig where the airlines “lost” my normal glasses / so had to wear prescription shades for the rest of the tour total rocker-dork style) our main man Enriq wouldn’t tell us details about our last Italy gig. We roll there and he says “Meet City Center at 5” so I roll down there solo and see Nate talking to a group of dudes in hard hats in the middle of town at the bottom of a deep construction site. I crawl down there and see there is huge blue Alien creatures with bird beaks everywhere holding flames and shit. Damn ... this is gonna be weird. As we meet the dude who is doing this ‘art project’ - turns out we are doing sound for a huge city art project and at sundown - we play along to his movie isolated in the middle of the construction site, total city center…with our sound projected throughout the town via intense PA. Turns out during the dig to make a parking lot city center the workers found mass amounts of bones and things from ages ago and the city wanted to hide the fact that it was a special historical zone. So as we set up ... people are yelling at us in Italian and when we ask what they are saying the crew says “ah..... terrible...don't worry about it” - the artist guy takes us to an amazing dinner and the sun goes down so it time to play - as we roll out to the eyes and ears of the city = one of the dudes working / who tells me later he played guitar in Negazione = says “play well, the mayors wife is here”...fuck.... So with ultra intense sound and blue Aliens and dead city center = we do a total sparse metal scrape dog pitch brain drain ectoplasm inzane jam for 40 minutes. Fucking ruled ... after we meet everyone and grab some brews and I throw Connelly into a fountain. Weird night man....ruled!! Lost the recording of it as well ... impossible to explain and lost forever....
4. Coachella LA Spring = Started the day off right circa beer baptism 10am and freaking out with Justin and the LA crew. Had no idea what to expect from this fucking gig. We roll there and me and the Conman end up almost fighting half the workers cause the place is so confusing. After we park we roll to the check in trailer, open the door and the first person we see is Danny Devito, he ask Roach if he can use his cell phone and Roach says “Hey- I like this guy- he’s funny”...weird... We finally find out backstage trailer full with Coors light and free shoes ... we set up camp outside our trailer which is flanked by Black Star (who were headlining the whole fest) and New Order. We let ‘em know Michigan is in the house leave Coors cans everywhere and generally just look fucking weird. The Black Star crew keeps looking at us all freaked out like we won some kind of sweepstakes or something. Roach takes his shirt off and proceeds to grip two 24 cases of Heineken and carry them around caveman style. Yeah we don’t fit in here. 70, 000 people total. We play dead last on our stage right when NIN is jamming so on the quiet Wolf parts you can hear "Head like a Hole" ... funny shit... Romero heard some kids that thought we were Prodigy...funny.... Every Wolf member got total waysted so on the drive back to LA everyone passed out immediately ... weird day man...
5. Pittsburgh, PA - Dec = Last Wolf gig of the year and it ruled. After many attempts - the Conman was able to get Joe Roemer of Marconympha to come out and hang. Ruled...dude is a legend, no one’s like the man.... started off by yelling at cars, knew every drug hooker on the block by name- “Sandra wants to blow me for a dime bag but I ‘dunno... I’ll give a joint for sure,” brought two coolers of brew of all kinds/ no two were same...like he went to the party store and grabbed all the singles he could find...fucking amazing. Met up with the Wolf boys at this show cause the Graveyards were on tour as well and ruled to see Roemer hanging with Ben and Hans ... the night ended with Joe playing my electronics and vocals and him picking kids up by their coats and throwing ‘em around. Roemer’s parting goodbye to me and Ben Hell was “Big noise, big feet - monster cock. Do the math." Killer way to end a killer year.