Last Wednesday, I was fortunate enough to see Henry Rollins in his (do not say the words) Spoken Word performance 'Provoked'. To say that I was in awe is somewhat of an understatement. Rollins has such a wealth of material to draw on with a ration of 25% research Vs 90% experience, yes that is not a typo. He reads, he questions, he hops on a plane and goes to Pakistan, you know - little things like that. From walking onstage he did not stop - I mean did NOT stop his passionate, intense, yet Celtic-knot weave of dialogue which had me at times wondering "Where the hell is he going with this tangent?!" only to have him tie it into 3 point he's made 5, 8, and 15 minutes ago. The man is a consummate narrator and let's be honest, any artist who takes the time to spend 15 minutes on why he loves coming here (26 times at this current count) and congratulating us on ousting "George W Bush's ass-vacuum" and what it can mean to have the Prime Minister of our country chastise the Chinese about Tibet ("...in fucking Mandarin!!") has my vote for instant citizenship offer. I think he breathed during his show, I know he had a gulp of water or two. He moulded the audience from the cultural cringe of John Howard and George W Bush, through shock at his school life and some of his parental upbringing, astonishment at his audacity to just go off and visit Chechnya and Iran because he didn't want to be told what he should believe about those places, laughter at his geeky-fanboyisms in meeting Iggy Pop and his days breathing back-hair with Black Flag, through his visits to South African AIDS clinics and his bittersweet stand-in stint with The Rutts (his favourite band in the whole universe - check them out) at their farewell concert in the UK (by their request I might add). Of course this only paints broad strokes as to the content of his show - and if he comes here to once again sit and have an intimate chat with another 400 people, I recommend that you maim someone to get a ticket.