Isaac Brock Unleashes His Inner Swashbuckler

The blurry Isaac Brock photo above was taken during Sunday night’s Modest Mouse show in Sioux Falls, S.D., during which Brock engaged in some knifeplay, according to the Argus Leader‘s blog:

After wrestling with his guitar and guitar strap, Brock threw his six-string off his body and began uncoiling the microphone cord wrapped around the mic stand in front of him. After spazzing out while singing some quasi-decipherable vocals, Brock stepped back in a frenzy and sliced his chest.

Watching from in front of the opposite side of the stage – but with a clear view of Brock’s body – I wasn’t close enough to exactly determine what he was doing. But it appeared he had some sort of object in his hand that he used to make two swift cuts on his torso.

Immediately after the frantic moves, the band’s bearded stage hand/sound guy/roadie seated to Brock’s left jumped on stage and grappled with Brock, making sure the singer’s arms couldn’t reach his body for further harm. Brock then cooled down a bit, embraced the stage hand and they talked in each other’s ears for a second before each released the other and Brock returned to the mic. It all happened in about 10 to 15 seconds.

After the incident, Brock’s white T-shirt had two clear slices on its front with blood stains building around the cuts (check out the fuzzy photo posted above, with one of the slices in clear view). Yet, he didn’t miss a song and played through several more of the band’s tunes before breaking for an encore.

It was odd on several levels – odd that Brock flipped out like a manic Iggy Pop; odd that the band’s other five members didn’t seem to notice or care about it; odd that most of the 1,600 audience members didn’t notice or react to the bloodletting.

A reader noted that this incident wasn’t too out of line for Brock, who he referred to as “an inherently odd individual who has a knack for pulling bizarre stunts,” but this sort of Zorro play seems to jump from “bizarre” to “G.G. Allin-like.” Maybe he was just showing the crowd how he felt after watching that Ford ad on American Idol the other night?

Modest Mouse Live: A Bloody Mess? [Link: Music and Entertainment in the Sioux Empire]