Sometimes the rigors of everyday life can throw a person into sensory overload.  We all have times when a physical or mental escape is not only a dream, its a necessity!  Isn’t it good to know that there is the world of music to escape to?  So many roads you can take in the rock n world, and each one leads you to a different landscape or texture to ease into when work, school, bills, problems have crowded you out of the dimension you normally live in. 

As I share my travels in the rock n world with you today, I invite you to walk with me through a portal into another world.  The native American Indians discovered a portal to the spirit world many generations ago.  The preparation of a cactus plant called "peyote" is a powerful hallucinogenic that was used for sacred ceremonies to assist the user in communicating with ancestors in the spirit world.  What if I told you it is still possible to cross those boundaries without use of this ancient tool?  Oh yes, there is a new tool here in the rock n world, and it’s name is Korn!

Standing before the stage I drink in the strange combination of sheer red fabric, chandeliers and dark iron firepots that adorn it.  It is clear that Korn has been expecting us and have taken every care to make the journey an interesting one.  They take the stage to perform a set list of songs that were selected by their fans.  Five from their self titled first album, five from "Life Is Peachy," five from "Follow The Leader," and five or more from their new album, "Issues."  This is in keeping with the band’s policy of staying close to their fans, who also provided the artwork on the "Issues" CD. 

To the strains of Head and Monkey’s crunching metal guitar riffs, playing unconventional intervals in unconventional tunings, Jonathan Davis paces the round stage in a floor length black robe like a caged animal, firing the emotional salvos of "It’s Gonna Go Away" at the fans who are crowded intimately around him.  The audience seems to get swept off in the emotionally cleansing ritual as they scream and pump their fists in the air like a lynch mob.  Jonathan then sings "4U," a twisted love song that defies convention yet again.  Fieldy struts up and down the stage like a young boy with a wonderful toy he wants to show off.  He holds his bass in front of him like a washboard and hammers at the strings in short, choppy strikes.  David is lightening fast on the drum kit, as a tiny boy with giant earphone hearing protectors sits on the steps of his drum riser, banging on the stairs with man size drum sticks. 

As quickly as they arrived, the band is gone and we are looking instead at large screens above the stage.  The roving camera takes us into the underbelly of the venue, where we see Fred Durst and the boys of Limp Bizkit hanging out and partying in the dressing rooms with Mark Wahlberg.  I am so surprised to see them that I almost forget that we were just in the midst of a musical tidal wave.  Then, as if I have sipped from the cup of peyote, I hear bagpipes playing in the distance.  They seem to be calling me over the rolling Scottish highlands to a place where my ancestors lived.  Jonathan Davis appears from beneath the stage wearing a Scottish kilt, playing the haunting "Dead" on the pipes as he is lifted on a platform to a nauseating height above the stage.  His face is solemn, with no trace of the rage he barked out only minutes before.

As if to push us even further into the hallucination of the night, a carousel of bizarre alien beings in straight jackets descend from the ceiling in a nightmarish carnival of sights and sounds.  I hear Jonathan singing in a beautiful tenor voice, then a maniacal whisper that turns into the primordial screams of ancestors that have been dead for thousands of years.  Just as I begin to fear that I will never find my way back to the here and now, I hear Jonathan again, tugging on my mind and throwing a life preserver into the bottomless depths of the spirit world.  I can’t resist the call of "Lets Get This Party Started."  This is the year 2000 after all, and I’m in a stadium with thousands of happy people.  I never really went anywhere, did I?

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