What he did was this: three-quarters of the way through a completely incredible set of shout-along chorus punk numbers that made me believe for half an hour that the universe is benevolent and that punk rock really is going to save us all, he launched all of a sudden in one of his super-manic monologues, differing strains of which had introduced a fair percentage of his songs. This one went like this -- I’m writing from memory, but the moment feels burned into my brain: “Now I understand a lot of you like heavy metal!” (He pronounced it very deliberately: “met-tal.”) “But we don’t like the heavy met-tal! OK? Heavy met-tal is not good. We play punk rock music, and all of you should just stop listening to heavy met-tal, because --” And so on. He drew this out forever, and a fog machine began sending fog-swirls and then fog-billows out onto the stage, rising up around little Nardwuar’s ankles, and the lights dimmed and two spotlights caught Nardwuar and a very muscular figure with no shirt and leather cross-straps entering from stage left. Nardwuar is at this point turned to face stage right, practically facing the wings, and it’s roaringly obvious to the now ecstatic crowd that the whole thing is staged: it’s schtick. It’s really, really good schtick. As we in the audience apprehend the truly gargantuan size of the figure who’s grabbed a wow-what-a-coincidence extra microphone on the stage, Nardwuar becomes crazed (OK, more crazed), and then the figure says in a booming voice: