Live, bare bottomed, and over in five minutes

By Will York

THE LAST TIME Cock E.S.P. played San Francisco was June 2, 2000, at the now-defunct Clit Stop on Howard Street. Back then it was harder for weird bands to find places to play in the city, and as a result, the Clit Stop – one of the few alternatives at the time – tended to be overgenerous with its booking, often featuring six acts in one night.

On top of that, its bills were really diverse, often to the point of confusion – it was common to see a free jazz group, a noise rock band, some Mills College-schooled electronic improv ensemble, and a costumed performance artist or three in the space of one long, exhausting night.

I can't remember who else played with Cock E.S.P., but do I know that it was late and that, by the time they took the stage, the guys in the band (or at least one of them) reeked of alcohol. They began their set with guest member Rat Bastard blowing a sustained, unbearably high-pitched saxophone note through a guitar amp. Within seconds half of the people there were rushing out of the room with their fingers in their ears and horrified looks on their faces, and Clit Stop audiences weren't easy to shock.

Meanwhile, the rest of the crowd slowly inched forward, eyeing the band with the same kind of morbid disbelief that causes people to stare at car crashes and other disasters.

What happened next was a blur. I know one of the other two guys besides Rat Bastard was sprawled out on top of a stop sign – which he proceeded to hump and convulse upon aggressively, amplifying it all with the contact microphones on his fingers – while the third member was doing something with an amplifier and possibly a guitar. Within a minute, they were all piled up on top of one another, wrestling in the middle of the room like degenerate preteen siblings, causing half of their equipment to come unplugged, and somehow also tearing their gaudy, reflective silver-foil backdrop off the wall. Additionally, I got a generous glance of one of the guys' butt cracks during the chaos; this obviously wasn't planned, but he didn't seem very concerned with pulling his sweatpants back up.

It was a complete mess, and it was all over in five minutes, which for them is – or at least was – a normal set length. (They supposedly once drove 16 hours nonstop in order to play a set that lasted 27 seconds; since then, they've apparently revamped their approach and are a little less immediately destructive.) Clearly, they were having an on night, and the cumulative effect was somewhere between repellent, hilarious, and just plain ridiculously stupid.

That evening, Cock E.S.P. also ruined the whole old-school "noise" genre, in my mind, by taking it to its most (il)logical extreme and leaving no room for others to take things any further. Now what are they going to do for an encore?