Best Indoor Concert of the Year

In the days just before the 2004 presidential election, a sense of possibility and hope still prevailed. Shortly after the opening of Fort Lauderdale's new über-club Revolution, which single-handedly resurrected downtown's rock cred, Canadian industrial powerhouse Skinny Puppy treated a packed house to a punishing audio-visual onslaught that left no doubt what political platform it advocated. Highlights of the Puppy theater of pain included singer Nivek Ogre donning a gas mask and spewing its contents (green Jell-O) on the crowd; masked doppelgängers of Bush and Cheney receiving just desserts; a man in a keyboard-cage pumping out insanely inhuman sounds; and video-screen imagery that all but equated Dubya's reign with the Third Reich. Only a week later, we were disappointed by the results of another disastrous Election Day. But our ears were still ringing.