Brendon Small from Dethklok and Galaktikon on His Favorite Festival Experience
Today, MetalSucks is pleased as punch to be launching a new series, “My Favorite…”, in which (like the title doesn’t give it away) metal luminaries will discuss some of their most beloved albums, performances, and experiences. In honor of Galaktikon’s live debut at WestFest 8 (get tickets here!) on March 3, we’re thrilled to have the great Brendon Small pen our debut installment. Below, read all about Small’s favorite festival experience. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do!
So Dethklok’s headlining the Mayhem fest a couple years ago and we have all day to kill and I have a lot of goofball pals coming to hang out. They’re all meeting me at the beer garden place, so I meet them and plan to walk them backstage. As I meet them I get recognized, which is rare because I work in animation and nobody really knows what I look like, so I can roam around the audience easily. So, a very nice kid in his early 20’s who looks like he’s been drinking in the sun and moshing in one of the dirt pits comes up to me and says he likes the show and the music and gives me some very nice compliments and I say “thank you”. I mean it and I shake his hand and go because I’m going to walk my friends back stage.
We get to the security guard and he asks me how many are with me (because I have an ‘all access’ pass and my friends don’t- as long as they’re with me, it’s no problem). Then the security asks me if ‘that guy’ is with me and I turn and see the kid covered in dirt that I just met- and I thought for a moment, I don’t know this guy but he seems nice enough. “Sure, he’s with me,” I say. You know? Maybe he’ll be low key and have fun and make some friends or whatever, right?
An hour or so passes by and I’m with my friends drinking water in the shade because it’s fucking hot as microwaved dog balls and a huge security guard parts the crowd, and dangling below him in some kind of a sleeper hold is the kid! The security guards asks, “This guy with you?” The kid has a perplexed look on his face and says, “Brendon! Help a guy out,” or something like that. He affected a tone to imply that we might have known each other for years. The security guard asks again, “This guy with you?” and I said, “Well I guess, I mean…” And the security guard tells the kid, “Alright you’re outta here.” He picks up the kid in a contorted pose and slams him through the crowd of people bumping the kid’s head and body parts on a bunch of stuff like in a Marx brothers movie. I think because I hesitated the security guard read my mind and just knew. About five minutes later the security guard comes back with the kid bumping his head and dragging his limp dirt covered body back through the crowd and grumbles, “Couldn’t get out that way…” knocking the kid on everything in his path, garbage cans, a bench, a wall, etc. It was incredibly fucking funny, but for the kid it truly sucked a boil laden cock of a demon.
I don’t know what he did to get caught but I guess the moral is: If you sneak backstage, keep a low profile. Don’t go rooting around in other band’s beer and go into their dressing rooms and stuff. Act like you’ve been there before and maybe you won’t get caught.
Anyway, about a year and a half later, Dethklok is playing a show (during our Dethalbum III tour) and security passes me a note. It’s from the kid! He apologized for embarrassing me (he didn’t), though I did get a good story out of it. Hey Kid, if you’re reading this, I got the note and I hope your head is okay, don’t drink in the sun you crazy goofbag!
THE END.
ALSO!!!! HERE’S A SHAMELESS PLUG!!!! Come see me play my record Brendon Small’s GALAKTIKON live for the first time at the ROXY in Hollywood, CA on March 3rd at WestFest 8: A Concert to Benefit the Wes Wehmiller Endowed Scholarship at Berklee College Of Music!!!
I’m playing with some of the best musicians in LA and we’ll have live four-part guitar harmonies! How often do you get to see that? Please come, it’s going to rule!
