Ty Segall “Freedom’s Goblin” 2018. Drag City Records. Ty absolutely destroyed last night at his Mad Planet show here in Milwaukee. Heavily fuzzed shredding guitars and ass-shaking funky rhythms had the sold-out, intimate crowd non-stop grooving, mosh-pitting, body-surfing, stage diving and drenched in sweat. I managed to secure a spot that was practically onstage, so close to Ty that if I was an asshole fan I could have reached out and grabbed him.

We also managed to score a very limited edition show poster created by local artist and WMSE DJ Von Munz.

The Bed Band and Solid Freex opened for Segall. I’ll write more about Solid Freex (Madison, WI) in another post as we picked up their newly-released cassette. The Bed Band – “band” – was one guy who shambled up onto the stage while pulling a lightweight flannel over his head to make a mask, plopping a pair of glasses on where I assume his eyes were. He then, ahem, sang along to pre-recorded music (Joe theorized it was recorded while he was actually in bed) while wandering around the stage, picking up pieces of cardboard that were roughly cut and decorated to look like mini mountain peaks. Super weird. Performance art? Dunno. From Santa Fe, he’s touring with Segall currently. I have no idea what songs he performed but for an idea of the style, click here.

Segall’s set was raucous with very few of the slower numbers off of Freedom’s Goblin. The dude next to me grabbed a set list (which may or may not be accurate) and let me do a quick shot of it.

The set was about as long as his latest album (a double LP of 17 songs) and he played a couple of my top picks from Freedom’s Goblin: “Fanny Dog,” the classic hard rocking “She” and the fantastically funky fuzzed cover of Hot Chocolate’s “Every 1′s a Winner.” I’m pretty sure the same dude who grabbed the setlist shot this video of Ty’s “Every 1’s a Winner” because that’s how close we both were to the stage.

Other tracks I love are “Despoiler of Cadaver” which reminds me of a weird mashup of Trio’s “Da Da Da” and 70′s sequined AM disco gold, the anti-gun violence garagey-punked “Shoot You Up,” and “5 Ft. Tall” (that last one ‘cos that’s my height). At the encore Ty sat down, a bit bewildered, behind the keyboards and the band started ripping into a butchered version of Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water,” before switching back to their standard instruments. Throughout the entire show it was a delight to watch the band’s faces; they clearly loved playing together, laughing and smiling during each song.