The Power of Salad & Milkshakes

In most live-performance DVDs, there are no audience members. Sure, there's the audience, this one huge mass of indistinguishable entities, roaring as one in the unseen darkness, but we never get to see them; we only fed vague glimpses of the lawn, never close-ups of the blades of grass.

Thanks be, then, that The Power of Salad & Milkshakes is not most live-performance DVDs. Cut from a particularly punk-rock cloth, it follows the Rhode Island-based noise-rock act Lightning Bolt on a strictly underground tour, in which the band plays an array of warehouses, dives, and, um, kitchens in various towns both large and backwater.

The production, no-budget as it is, takes its inspiration from Lightning Bolt themselves. The duo —drummer/vocalist Brian Chippendale and bassist Brian Gibson— are famous for their "guerilla gig" mode of performance, in which they set up on the floor of venues, in the middle of the crowd, and play (really loudly) amongst the rank and file.

Playing in and amongst the crowd, Lightning Bolt draw as much attention to the audience as to themselves. Watching The Power of Salad & Milkshakes, you spend as much time watching the people at the shows —the nervous nerd, the crazed wildman, the hopeless drunk, the guy with dreads, the poseur— as you do the performers themselves.

Plenty of bands like to claim they're breaking down the boundaries between band and crowd, Lightning Bolt are living the dream. Down on the same level, those playing and those watching are peers; everyone a part of this one thing.

That sense of genuine collectivism doesn't completely translate to video-tape, but it almost does. Which, to bring back that familiar refrain, is so much better than every high budget concert spectacular in which the spirit of live-performance is almost always leeched away.

Directors Nick Noe and Peter Glantz plant themselves right up close to the band, jostling elbows with eager front-rowers for prime position. Trying to record live sound of a loud band can be an onerous endeavor, and Lightning Bolt are, if nothing else, loud. Yet, they're so loud —the pummeling, intensely rhythmic workouts run through custom-made amplification— that it fits with the "guerilla movie" spirit of The Power of Salad & Milkshakes.

With camera right by the amps, Lightning Bolt's walls of sound become so voluminous that they grow saturated; the lens literally rattling, at times, as the air is pushed by the massive soundwaves emanating from Chippendale and Gibson's overdriven set-up. When the jams fuzz out into indistinction, it matches the feeling of an up-close live-show, where you feel the sound physically more than you pick out details precisely.

Scattered throughout the Lightning Bolt live-footage is goofing around type footage; though the genuine oddness of Chippendale (who talks of how much he smells, of putting a pet rabbit out of its misery, and seems to dodge every regular rock-interview inquiry) makes this feel not cliché.

For anyone wanting to learn all about Lightning Bolt —who they are, when they formed, where they fit into the greater scheme of music— there's little to see here; no factual on-screen text, talking heads testimonials, or any kind of fashioned 'narrative.'

Yet, whether or not you know or like Lightning Bolt doesn't actually really matter when it comes to The Power of Salad & Milkshakes. The flick is an honest portrait of a band tripping through the DIY touring circuit, pouring their hearts whether they're playing a 'proper' show in front of hundreds or a gig in someone's kitchen in front of ten house-party weirdos.

And, oh, look at those wonderful weirdos. There's the inarticulate fat guy who organized the show in Lubbock, Texas, the crazy-eyed drunk dude who wants Chippendale to "sign his cock," and the earnest young kid down the front at Shreveport, I think, who looks like he's about to weep. As much as the band on this DVD's virtual marquee, these regular folk are the stars of the show.

Studio: Load Records
Release Date: June 28, 2002