"Please forgive me for not being sexy,"  Tairrie B. sings, inflecting the words with a charge against any forgiveness you have to offer.  I'm thinking of this line while in the dressing room at the Troubadour.  My Ruin is preparing for their U.S. debut.  They are a band with fanatical followers in Europe, fans who trail them into bathrooms, reach out to touch the hem of their leather pants and swoon at their presence.  Kerrrang! magazine reports them as hitting strong on the European alternative charts with the single, "Beauty Fiend" from the new album A Prayer Under Pressure of Violent Anguish.  But this is the United States. Things are calmer for My Ruin here.  Maybe not for much longer, but for the time being as it is.
"Please forgive me for not being sexy," I am still thinking, watching the ritualized process of make up application and hair styling the female members of My Ruin are undergoing before the show.  Tairrie transforms her eyes until they stare out from an abscess of red and black.  
"I do this too calm down," she says.  I guess the devil is in the details, fine lines of penciled in color focusing her attention. Make up application as meditation.  That's what I'm seeing.  Mick Murphy, the guitar player for the band, takes a different approach to calming down, he melts into a cushioned chair, eyes closed shut against the voices in the dressing room, waiting.  
Tairrie gets everybody around working.  Since I'm a big pile of beer soaked meat, I'm soon being given a lesson on the dynamics of camcorder operation and put in charge of documenting the show.  I wonder if there is a conflict of journalistic integrity here.  I am the reporter, here to give my true opinion of the band's performance to the public, and now I’m faced with working for them.  I think, "What would that little creep in Almost Famous do?"  I take the camcorder.  This way I have a purpose and will have to retain a level of sobriety significant enough to operate the heavy machinery placed in my hands.  Normally, I wind up on my knees in a puddle of urine, puking in, on, around a toilet as the band I'm supposed to be reviewing hits the stage.  Later, all I can write about are the vague bass sensations I received through the men's room walls in my alcoholic delirium.  Sometimes it's through the women's room walls, but then I'm usually blacked out and just make up a show for you to read about.  Journalistic integrity?  What is it?  It's time for the show to start, time for me to take my place in front of the stage and begin the shooting of my masterpiece de resistance, the debut of My Ruin in the America's that I call: The Incredible Far Out Adventure Behind the Lens of a Camera by a Journalist Known as Rick!
Through the view finder, I zoom in on an internally lit statue of the Virgin Mary perched atop the P.A.  Stepping back and tilting down, there's Meghan Mattox, bass slung over her shoulder, standing ready for the onset of the show.  Panning across the stage, I pause on Yael behind the drum kit.  Yael so tiny behind the drum set that dwarfs her.  Far stage right, Mick Murphy readies himself, breathing deep and clenching his fists.  The crowd starts to make strange sounds, and guessing why, I rapid pan and zoom in stage right where Tairrie emerges, cowboy hat on her head, long strides to center stage.  She pulls the microphone to her lips and in a husky voice that reminds me of the voice of my chain smoking aunt who got stabbed in the throat when she was initializing divorce proceedings with her husband who had parts of his brain removed due to damage caused by working in sewers all his life (strange air in those sewers, baby. Strange air).  Anyway, Tairrie says, in that voice, "Last night I had a dream..." and soon enough a thick doomy riff fills the air and the show is on the road.  The crowd is instantly bobbing heads and playfully frolicking the way kids do in the pit.  They’re so cute.  I capture them on video so they exist.  Then I turn back to the stage. Mick plays at the guitar, holding it out parallel to his body, and running his hand up and down the neck like a man deprived of masturbation for years on end due to a fungal infestation between the digits of both hands.  (This too may or may not have happened to my homicidal uncle)  He's on that guitar, tightly plucking away, dive bombing high notes into the low crunch of the riff war below.  He looks bigger than the whole damn stage like he could eat it all up.  Tairrie's strong presence halts Mick from chewing up the stage and spitting it out upon the crowd.  She steps forward to the stage's edge, croons to the moon faced youths and the crater faced elders, equally appealing to both.  She shrieks, "Watch me bleed," and I zoom in on her face looking for blood.  Then I find the effects button.  I turn the stage black and white and go for the obligatory close-up of hands on strings.  I capture Meghan bashing out a marble heavy bass line, dread locks obscure her face as I tilt up.  Tairrie falls to the stage and screams out the lyrics from her place on the floor, writhing in the agony of the words, "Stick it to me!  I know you want to," that are compounded by the slow beat of bass and drums off set against the rhythm of the vocals.  Tairrie stands, and I follow her up with the camera, solarizing the view, then soaking the stage in crimson, I zoom past Tairrie and onto the drummer, brown locks sweat plastered to her face bearing the mark of concentrated intensity.  I run from stage left to stage right and back and forth, capturing falls, leaps, and the wide variety of rock postures.
Before the show began I was talking to a fellow whom I don't remember much about.  He was your usual Hollywoodized chap, piercings, tattoos, you know?  Cool because he takes so much time making sure he is cool.  He asks me what I do which has the tone of wanting to know just what the fuck am I doing here anyway.  I tell him I'm on assignment for a magazine based out of San Diego.  He seems satisfied.  Later during the show, I'm going in for a close-up on Meghan's face so I can quickly pan and tilt down to center stage where Tairrie is on her knees, head back, screaming heavenward.  This shot requires me to scramble onto the stage, on my knees, which are very sensitive knees and it hurts but I'm enduring the pain for art, okay?  And I get my damn shot, sorely backing off the stage like an aged fat man, and there's that fellow I was talking to before the show.
"That kind of shit might fly in San Diego, but you can't crawl up on the stage in front of other people here!" he yells at me.
Hot Damn!  That pisses me and my wounded knees off!  I shriek at him, furiously, "First of all I'm not from San Diego!  I'm from Wisconsin you fashion monger fuck!  Secondly, this is Tairrie’s fucking camera!"  He apologizes demurely and I kick him in the nuts.  
Before I know it the show is over.  The U.S. debut of My Ruin has came and went, and, boys and girls, it felt big and it came big, like volumes.  As Tairrie B said, "I've got demons inside me and sometimes they need to speak."  They got out on that stage and spoke up a freaking storm.  Damn, those demons are loud.