A couple weeks ago, I went to see Primus at Ruth Eckerd Hall with my boys David and Dan. Yes. Me: the woman who regularly shouts out Wu-tang! Wu-tang! apropos of nothing. I knew nothing about the Primus: nothing about its members or even how many there were, not even what kind of music they played. But I love my boys and their white-guy guitar jam sessions (mostly Bon Jovi’s “Dead or Alive”), even their occasional need for death metal. And David told me Primus was going to do some kind of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory thing in the middle of the show.
Sold.
I’m pretty sure the contact high hit me before we got out of the car to stand at Will Call. There were people in costumes: colored knee socks, weird hats that looked like a British lady’s fascinator gone real wrong. All kinds of wigs. There was a white guy with dreads nappier than I’ve even seen on any black guy. Wig? Nope.
I love live music, so when the band stepped on stage, I screamed like one of those girls captured in Michael Jackson concert footage — the ones who yelled, sobbed, passed out. Despite the buzz from the air and multiple drinks, I was super alert, bobbing my head back and forth like I was listening to some new rapper’s mixtape. I chair danced. “Southbound Pachyderm” was my shit.
Most people around me were doing something like herkie, jumping with their legs spread, bending their knees, arms flailing. Looked like fun, but my sense of rhythm didn’t agree.
Then the Oompa-Loompas scared the hell out of me.
When they did their supposed-to-be-synchronized squats for the last time (they must have been buzzed, too) and exited the stage, I got all up in my groove again.
Primus wasn’t my first foray into music I shouldn’t like, if you believe in genre-related stereotypes, like how white people below the Mason-Dixon go wild for Toby Keith, or how all black people play Marvin Gaye when it’s time to get it on, because Barry White isn’t quite sexy enough. As a teenager, I wanted to be Matt Sorum, the drummer from Guns N’ Roses. As an adult, I put Metallica’s “Wherever I May Roam” first on a breakup playlist.
The concert on that hazed-up November night proved to be one of those times when I didn’t feel like the odd woman out. Admittedly, I often like feeling that way, for some reason I haven’t quite processed yet. Maybe it’s the inherent attention, good or bad. Twisted, I know. But sometimes I’ll go into a South Tampa bar and be like, “Hey. Why are there other black people here?” At Ruth Eckerd, I was part of the crowd and no one cared.
Right now, in the heinously racist country we live in, I really welcome these moments. If I dip into the vodka tonight and get my herk on to some recently downloaded Primus, I’m just being, wishing for a mosh pit, a muddy one, like at Bonnaroo or something. Somewhere where everyone is caked in earth, where people purposefully run into one another, bouncing off somebody’s shoulder and coming back to ricochet for the love of the pulse — bonding.
Sometimes, the rhythm is going to get you.