Then My Ruin came on. I remember them starting with ‘Preacher’ and everyone going crazy. Tairrie was beautiful, changing clothes and wigs every few songs and prowling the stage with a menacing grace that could only she could pull off. Meghan was introduced by Tairrie as ‘the only woman in rock I’m afraid of’ and Melanie and Lance were hugged to death.
During ‘My Beautiful Flower’, Tairrie ripped up the flowers from her mic stand, throwing them into the crowd, and finished the song with her middle finger raised and fumed ‘fuck him – that motherfucker NEVER loved me’.
Then came ‘Stoopid’. “This is the hardest part of the show for me” said Tairrie, on the verge of tears. She then explained to a muted audience about Lynn Strait, her friend and member of Snot who was killed in a car crash. One heartless heckler shouted ‘do you think we give a fuck?’ which prompted Tairrie to get more upset, but angry, and a livid Lance to try to get down and hit the mouthy shit but Tairrie calmed him down, and explained “THIS ISN’T ROCKSTAR BULLSHIT. THIS IS REAL.” Completely in tears, Tairrie looked upwards, made the sign of the cross and mouthed ‘this is for you, I love you’.
They finished on a vocal duet with Tairrie and Paul from Breed 77 with ‘Sick With It’. Tairrie grabbed the star-struck singer and proclaimed him ‘a great talent’ and then giving her thanks, Melanie raised Tairries arms in the air in the sign of victory, and Tairrie said with somewhat upset disbelief “and they said I couldn’t do this”.
She did more than prove them wrong.
This was the first time I had seen ‘My Ruin’ and I can honestly say it was the best gig of my LIFE. Breed 77 were excellent, even though Paul humiliated me by saying “I want all of you lazy fuckers at the back to jump.. EVEN YOU!!!”, staring at me, but I stared him out. Ruby Cruiser were AWFUL, but with lyrics like ‘hey Samuel, take yours hands off my lemon tree’ you can’t really expect to accumulate many fans. Tairrie livened things up though, by coming out and telling us how crap SHE thought they were too.