Intrinsic Action "Metro 86"New T-shirt, Hoody and ToteThe first Intrinsic Action show was on December 10, 1986, at Cabaret Metro, in Chicago. We were on a bill with the bands Unit 731 and White China. I first saw Unit 731 open for Whitehouse, in 1984, at The Cubby Bear, and he (Paul) was a good fit. White China had an ex-member of Ministry, if I remember correctly, and they were more in that vein. The show was part of a regular Wednesday night budget-price series that was sponsored by the radio station WXRT and that was typically well-attended. We had a great crowd that night, too.
At the time of this show, we had already released our demo in 1984 and our self-titled full-length in 1985, and we were about to release Intrinsic Action "II." We were definitely anxious to dip our toes into the live arena.
The choice of the Gustave Moreau image was based on my growing interest in this symbolist artist. I had graduated that spring from The School of the Art Institute and I was working as a curatorial assistant in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the museum. I only remember The Art Institute having a small number of works on paper by the artist, but they had long and prominently displayed the large dark painting, "Hercules and the Lernaean Hydra," which I regularly went to look at. When a curator at the museum found out how much I liked the artist, she gave me a copy of the fantastic catalog from the Kunsthaus Zürich show that had been published earlier in 1986. Shortly before our show, Pamela and I had been in NYC, and we saw the Metropolitan Museum of Art's "Oedipus and the Sphinx," which became another favorite of mine. A related influence was Symbolist literature, which I had been increasingly enjoying, after encountering the reading lists published in The Industrial Culture Handbook, which I read when it was published in 1983. I was already familiar with some of the big names, particularly the major French authors and certain of their Russian influences, but the Handbook got me to delve deeper into writers like Lautréamont, and especially Huysmans.
After one of our practices, leading up to our first show, we (Pamela, Peter Margasak [my cousin, who briefly played guitar with us], and I) decided to go for a drink. There was a biker bar nearby, in Edgewater, called Deadwood Dave's Wild West Saloon. There were usually choppers parked out front, including one that had saddlebags with impressively long fringe that dragged on the ground. After walking in, we went up to the bar and we ordered drinks. I remember, specifically, that I ordered a weissbier. The bartender put my bottle and the appropriate tall glass in front of me and I proceeded to quickly pour the beer, which resulted in a volcano of foam and a wet mess on the bar. The bartender saw this and made eye-contact with me. I thought I was fucked. He walked over, pulled out a bar towel, and wiped up my beer, saying, "I see we've got a little spilly over here." Okay, not bad. Just a little friendly humiliation.
About the show. I will tell you that we prepared a video to be played on the numerous monitors around the venue and on the two 12-foot by 12-foot screens that we requested be pulled up on either side of us on the stage. These screens were used to project videos during Video Metro nights. What we showed ran the gamut of objectionable and inspirational material... sex, violence, German scat films, S&M, Pentecostal Christian snake handlers, Alice Cooper and his snake, Led Zeppelin in all their glory... and more. Not only was the owner of Cabaret Metro very unhappy with us... but the museum curator who gave me the Moreau catalog attended, and she was extremely upset by our performance. Our working relationship and friendship was negatively affected... something I'd have to get used to, making this type of music. Still, the venue asked us back the following month, to open for Wiseblood, under the agreement that we wouldn't show those video nasties. Well, we managed to get a friend to "handle" the projection in the sound booth and - yes - we did it again. We were banned from playing Cabaret Metro until the following year, as our punishment.
I just added this new design to our Threadless store, and it's available as a T-shirt and as a hoody in a full range of men's and women's sizes. Tote bags are also available. https://bloodyminded.threadless.com/designs/intrinsic-action-metro-86Intrinsic Action:Bandcamp
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