Dale Bozzio and her long blond mane still have some ardent fans. They had to be ardent to sit through her snit at Anaheim's Shack on Saturday night. Her band, Dale Bozzio's Missing Persons (they're known as such because she's the only original Missing Person in the group), came on just after midnight. Bozzio's voice sounded terrible: her songs aren't easy to sing, and she won't bow to middle age and rearrange them in a lower key. Plus, she had “a cold,” which presumably is why she seemed so out of it. But Bozzio blamed her fitful croaks on the sound quality and kept interrupting the lyrics to gesture at the sound guy and say: “Can I have more drums? I can't hear the drums!” By the fourth song, her hit “Words” (“What are words for?/When no one listens anymore?”), she shut down completely. She sang half a line and then stopped, said something to the sound guy, stopped, tried to find the beat again, sang half a line, and stopped. Then she started screaming: “What the fuck is wrong with you? I'm not gonna get a sore throat because you won't get off your ass! Do you want to be replaced? Do you? Do your fucking job!” The sound guy and I just wanted her to do her fucking job-be a professional instead of a spoiled brat. Forty-five minutes into the hourlong set, Bozzio left the stage for 10 minutes. Her young band carried on manfully, licking their guitars after their solos. Bozzio returned for two final songs with her hair tied in a knot on top of her head. I guess the “costume change” was the reason she needed a break. Her hair came down again immediately. The whole thing was like watching every episode of VH1's Behind the Music: bright young band makes it big too soon; succumbs to “a cold”; and either blows itself up, reunites to huge popular love, or does a tour of small bars. Everyone winds up washed-up, old and alone. Bozzio is a twat. I liked the Shack, though. It's a bit meat-market-y, but there's no wait to get a pool table, and it's spacious. The people who work there are real nice, too. Earlier that evening, at Chain Reaction, the Burnin' Groove drummer had regaled me with shrewish Bozzio impressions. (He's not only really funny, but he also looks like Chris Isaak. Mmmm.) Seems Bozzio was at Club 369 in Fullerton a few years back, screaming shrilly at the sound guys there that her “drummer is the drummer for Extreme! He does not go through a sound check and then move his drums for anyone! This is the drummer for Extreme!” Result: drummers for every other band had to play at the front of the stage so that Bozzio's Very Important Drummer wouldn't have to move his drum kit. I wouldn't have liked Burnin' Groove so much if they weren't so darn sexy (their set at Chain Reaction-formerly Public Storage Coffee Lounge-was very yell-y), but they are, so it's a moot point. Darn that Greg Laurie! Protesters outside his Harvest Crusade at Edison International Field were shouting that Laurie is a false prophet. We were heartened until we took their tract and discovered, sadly, that Laurie is just too tolerant! He is involved with the Promise Keepers, and the good folk from God's Word Fellowship (the ones outing Laurie as a LIAR!) say the Promise Keepers give credence to Catholic worship. “Catholic worship is false Christian worship and leads to hell,” states their tract titled “Beware of Greg Laurie.” “The Christ of Catholicism is a false Christ. . . . To embrace Catholics (and therefore Catholicism) as brothers in Christ is to embrace a religion that is demonic and leading millions to eternal torment.” That was our first human contact at the Crusade. Our second came when a man behind us said: “Gotta be a little bit pushy, girls. We don't want to get separated!” And then five blond urchins shoved me and my 4-year-old into a wall. The third came after a nice usher accidentally sat us in some seats that had been vacated. A man with barbed-wire tats and a blond beard began screaming. “This is bullshit!” he yelled at the nice usher, who was apologizing sincerely. “A guy can't go to the bathroom? A guy brings his family to a place, and you just give away his seats?” The usher apologized again. “What the hell do you mean you're sorry? How can you say you're sorry? What kind of bullshit is that?” Then security came. Then he came back again. “I brought my family here,” he said. “What are you gonna do about it? This is bullshit!” I think someone needs to accept Jesus into his heart as his lord and savior! Or maybe he just needed a hug.The bands-Friday was Youth Jam night-were pretty spazzy. They were perfect, wholesome specimens of Aryans on Parade, with little scruffs of goatees for street cred. The last good Christian band was Mr. Mister. These bands did a lot of Running Around the Field for Jay-sus while the camera guys sprinted after them because after all, that's what you do when you're high on Christ. The whole thing-and we approve of religion; you won't hear us calling Jesus Freaks “cultists” unless we're provoked-smacked of a medicine show. It just felt so packaged, rather than spontaneously joyful. What Would Jesus Do? We went home and smoked some crack. Before the Harvest Crusade shindig (and, to belabor the point, I really find the idea of “harvesting souls” creepy), photographer Jack Gould and I stopped by the public viewing for the corpse of dead lunatic Harold Ezell. While my boy and I waited outside by the car, our fearless photographer went in to sneak a snap of the dead man in his casket. Personally, I found the assignment in poor taste. But then, Proposition 187 was in poor taste, too. As were Ezell's comments about “deep-frying” illegal aliens. Not a nice man! Gould, looking terribly conspicuous in his shorts and matted hair, came moseying out of the funeral chapel, so I figured there was no rush as I slowly made my way from the lawn to the car. Suddenly, five huge men came running out. “Excuse me! Excuse me!” the first one shouted. “What were you doing in there?” Jack was already in the car, but I was still buckling my baby up as the big off-duty-cop-lookin' one shoved past me through the passenger door and grabbed Jack's wallet so he couldn't drive off. After a lot of arguing, Jack retrieved his camera from the trunk and gave it to the goons. They gleefully ripped the film out. “There are other cameras in there,” one guy noticed, but they sadly didn't follow through. “Have a nice day,” they told us-and they didn't mean it one bit. I was really sorry I hadn't been in the car ready to go. What kind of getaway driver am I? Jack didn't care. He'd given them a camera with an empty roll of film in it, and the dead lunatic photos were safe (see one on page 11). Good Jack
