The Indians Called Him "Maize"

Last night caught Corn Mo opening for Diamondsnake, the faux (or is it?) metal supergroup with Phil from Tragedy and Moby, from Moby. Corn Mo's originally from Denton, TX, where he got locally famous squeezing out accordion covers of classic rock and metal stalwarts -- I once saw him perform "Living on a Prayer" at the Texas State Fair. In 1996, my friend Jake hired him to contribute to a compilation of punk covers of TV theme songs, for which he chose "Charles in Charge"; Corn Mo moved up here a few years later, and now has perfected a grandiose, part Queen/part Meatloaf act that takes prog to lunatic extremes with songs based on Jules Vernes' "The Purchase of the North Pole" and the movie Time Cop. (If only Van Damme had traveled back to 1976, maybe Neil Peart would have dedicated 2112 to him instead of Ayn Rand, and I wouldn't feel so fucking twisted about listening to it.)

So there were these two jackasses in the crowd who didn't seem to be there for either band. They mainly just heckled and hit on girls, but got rejected brutally on both fronts, especially on the heckling. At one point, they whispered to each other, then blurted out "Go Meatloaf!" like giggling schoolgirls screwing with the nerdy chick during her student council president speech. Corn Mo vaguely looks like Meatloaf, also plays the piano & keyboards, and his arrangements have a Jim Steinman-esque build. Everybody knew there was some Meatloaf going on, and they were loving it -- so these fucknutses might as well have been yelling "Nicholson!" at Christian Slater during Heathers.

Then later they yelled "Piano Man!", at which point Corn Mo took notice: "Hey, you guys really suck at heckling. If you're gonna yell something, don't go with Billy Joel. Go with ELP. Or Yes. Or Rick Wakeman. Don't you know Billy Joel isn't prog?"

The guys appeared nonplussed. Then Phil joined Corn Mo for a shrieking rendition of "Hava Nagila Monster", and Corn Mo pointed right at them during the more threatening parts of the song, when the Hava Nagila Monster is flat-out ready to kill some motherfuckers.

At this point, the guys actually left the show. Charles was still in charge.