by RAF KATIGBAK

Two years ago, armed with a laptop and a stage presence that could only be described as “that guy in accounting having an epileptic seizure,” Jason Forrest (aka Donna Summer) came to Montreal a crusader, flying the middle finger in the face of conventional dance-music purists. His weapon of choice: hyperactive, processed beats that melded metal riffs, power ballads, ’80s schmaltz and arena-rock drums into antagonistic, dry-humping, digital rock ’n’ roll fury. The problem was, heads weren’t ready.

Yes, that fateful June night at Metropolis, the former D&D gamer rolled the 20-sided die in front of 3,000 people, and came up snake eyes. But as they say, you can never keep an electronic producer with ties to the Russian bootleg black market and a penchant for Foreigner down, and now Forrest is back with a vengeance, armed with an even better album (the perfectly titled Shamelessly Exciting) and a live set that promises to turn Zoobizarre into a powder keg of sweaty, beer-soaked pelvic thrusts.

Mirror: What’s changed since your last show in Montreal?

Jason Forrest: What show? I don’t recall ever playing a show in Montreal—

M: Ha, wow. It’s really been the bane of your existence.

JF: It’s pretty much the show that won’t die. I mean, I’ve played 350 shows in my career so far, and it’s the only show I still talk about two years later.

M: So what does that say to you?

JF: Mostly that everybody can’t always love you. The thing is, there were 3,000 people there, and I think 1,000 of those people were really going apeshit, and maybe the other 1,500 were the exact opposite, and maybe there were 500 that could have either took it or left it. I basically didn’t do anything different than any other show—I always tell stupid jokes and I’m always out of control and always loud and that’s just who I am. If people are gonna be offended by an obvious, pre-calculated stupid joke like, “Are we in Toronto? Fuck no, we’re in Montreal!”—which is just like rock 101 stuff—if you’re gonna be a graphic designer that’s gonna be offended by that, I’m sorry, you need to go out and stop masturbating. I saw an interview with Iggy Pop, people gave him death threats on his first tour, people hated him, loathed him even. But then a lot of people who really hated him at first realized he touched something in them. They came back and became big fans. I don’t know if that’s what’s in store for me but—

M: Maybe you just gotta roll around on broken glass.

JF: Yeah, this time it’ll be a straight-up bloodfest.

M: Have you ever thought of adding GWAR-style theatrics to your show?

JF: I did this show in Amsterdam with these performance artists that got really crazy, and I bit the inside of my lip—an old thing that wrestlers do—to make it bleed a lot. There was blood everywhere and people got freaked out. I don’t really do that so often, because if you start doing crazy shit like getting naked and rubbing meat all over yourself every night, then it just becomes like, oh, it’s the guy that shoves meat up his ass. I want to be unusual and decadent, but I don’t want to be a freak show. Like the GG Allin thing—there’s no way back.

M: Yeah, and if you stop, then people think you’re not keeping it real.

JF: Yeah, imagine like, [Austrian “actionist” artist] Hermann Nitsch—Oh, you’re not sitting in a pool of your own blood for six hours. You sellout! Cunt!

With Tim Hecker and Intercom at zoobizarre
on Friday, March 31, 8:30 p.m., $10

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