Porno For Pyros - August 18, 1993 - Nautica Stage, Cleveland, OH

Date: August 18, 1993
Location: Nautica Stage, Cleveland, OH
Recorded: Audio
Status: Confirmed
Type: Concert
Lineup: Perry Farrell
Stephen Perkins
Martyn Lenoble
Peter DiStefano
Artwork:
 

Setlist:

Orgasm
Sadness
Meija
Bad Shit
Tonight
Cursed Male
Cursed Female
Pets
Dominator
Blood Rag
Packin' .25
Black Girlfriend
Porno For Pyros

Show Information:

Mercury Rev opened.

Thanks go out to 'kingsvikes' for the 2nd ticket scan.

For the scanned article and ad: the ad came from Scene Magazine dated August 12-18, 1993. The review came from Scene Magazine dated August 26-September 1, 1993.

Plain Dealer, The (Cleveland, OH)
August 13, 1993

MEET PORNO FOR PYROS
Author: MICHAEL NORMAN PLAIN DEALER MUSIC CRITIC

When: 8 p.m. Wednesday.

Where: Nautica Stage in The Flats. The main entrance is located just north ofthe Powerhouse on the west bank of The Flats.

Tickets: $17 advance, $19 day of show. Available at all Ticketmaster locations or the gate day of show. Ticketmaster phone charge, 241-5555.

No, they don't set fire to things or have sex on stage:

The group was founded in March of 1992 by Perry Farrell, former lead singer of the Los Angeles glam-punk band Jane's Addiction. Farrell is perhaps better known today as the founder of Lollapalooza, the alternative music and weirdness festival that just finished its third run this summer concert season. Jane's Addiction broke up after headlining the first Lollapalooza in 1991. Porno for Pyros played several dates on the Lollapalloza '92 tour and released its self-titled debut album in April of this year.

The lineup: Farrell on lead vocals, Stephen Perkins (also from Jane's Addiction) on drums, Martyn Le Noble (formerly of Theolonius Monster) on bass and Peter DiStefano (Farrell's surfing buddy) on guitars.

Question most frequently asked of band members: What does the name mean?

Answer: Nothing. Farrell got the idea when he found a fireworks flier while leafing through a magazine advertising S&M videos.

Porno for Pyros tunes you may have heard on the radio:

The city's commercial modern rock station, WENZ-FM/107.9, plays "Pets," an exotic, bass-driven little ditty about Martians who save the Earth by making all those destructive little humans into house pets. You also might have heard "Cursed Female," a dark take on poverty and violence against women.

They had a wild time making the album, but: The real fireworks reportedly started when Farrell tried to take a photograph for the album cover. He made a sculpture featuring a devilish little dude riding into orbit on a toy rocket. The idea was to light the thing and take a few pictures. He managed to snap three before the contraption exploded and set his house on fire. Sounds like press hype to us, but the folks at Shattered, Farrell's public relations company, insist it's true.

Plain Dealer, The (Cleveland, OH)
August 20, 1993
PORNO FOR PYROS

PORNO FILLS OUT MUSIC BILL WITH SIDESHOW
Author: MICHAEL NORMAN PLAIN DEALER MUSIC CRITIC

One of the more unusual highlights of Lollapalooza 1992 was the Jim Rose Circus Sideshow, a carnival-style house of freaks starring the needle-happy likes of Mr. Lifto and the Torture King.

Lollapalooza organizer Perry Farrell must have gotten a big kick out of Rose's cast of wacky mutants because he's employing some of the same carny tricks as he takes his new band, Porno for Pyros, around the country for the first time.

The Porno for Pyros concert at Nautica Stage Wednesday night was part freakshow, part peep show, with a cast of characters that included a 7-foot-tall hermaphrodite, a fire-eating dominatrix and a pair of high-wire strippers.

Two exotic dancers clad in bikini underwear and pasties simulated intercourse and oral sex. The hermaphrodite pretended to urinate on fans with a balloon. A demented clown pulled his pants down and mooned the crowd as he performed a bizarre dance that involved cutting or painting various parts of his body.

Gov. George Voinovich definitely would not have approved.

The rap group H-Town may have been able to irritate the prudish few at the Ohio State Fair. But next to Porno for Pyros, their act comes off like an episode from the "The Wonderful World of Disney."

There was a little music to go along with all the weirdness, however. A very little music.

Farrell and his bandmates guitarist Peter DiStefano, bassist Martyn Le Noble and drummer Stephen Perkins were on stage barely an hour, rushing through a 13-song set of tunes drawn largely from their self-titled debut album on Warner Bros. Records.

What Porno for Pyros did play sounded pretty good. Farrell's spooky voice is one of the most unique in rock, echoing from his vocal chords as if it were funnelled through its own, hellish, internal distortion box. And the band lays down a trippy, funky groove that is part rock, part thrash and part post-modern psychedelica.

Musical highlights included renditions of "Pets," an exotic, bass-driven little ditty about Martians who save the Earth by making humans into house pets; and "Cursed Female," a dark take on poverty and violence against women that provided the backdrop for several of the onstage sex simulations.

Mercury Rev, a New York alternative rock sextet which played some dates on the Lollapalooza second stage this summer, opened the show with a lame 45-minute set of noisy neo-psychedelica (think acid grunge) from their last two albums, "Yerself is Steam" and "Boces."

They do have one thing going for them, however. They are the only underground rock band I know of that features a flutist as one of its primary players. Her name is Suzanne Thorpe and she gets more solo time on stage than either of Mercury Rev's two guitarists.