Ice T

Ice T (SFX, Dublin)

“Body Count’s in the house!/Body Count’s in the house!” And indeed it was so!. The walls were heaving and the roof was nowhere to be seen as Body Count’s big black boots crunched over the rhythm. They had riffs as big as continents and enough attitude to flood the world. And in the centre of all this, master of ceremonies, Ice T.

There is no cooler, slicker, smoother and better shit-talking master than Ice T. And there was no stranger place for him to be than conducting a trash/heavy metal audience. There were Metallica and Iron Maiden and Megadeth heads in abundance. And they were here to cheer a totally Black band as it invaded and conquered what is basically an exclusively White music.

Body Count do the business. Ok, it’s a limited arena, but they’ve got the riffs and they can play well past the speed limits. Ice T plays the audience better than anyone I’ve seen. He coaxes and teases, flaunts and plays it rough. And he manages to get away with giving long lectures on racial harmony, and still sounding as cool as hell.

He stands up on the speakers for the encore and says, “Ladies and gentlemen, please stand for the national anthem.” Then Ernie C weighs in with that riff as ‘Cop Killer’ rolls out. And then, after all that, he goes and brings out his two-year-old son to wave and slap hands with the crowd.

What a bunch of contradictions? Yeah, sure. But Ice T is such a master of cool and ceremony that he could have probably brought out the Head of the Garda Síochána to wave to the crowd and got away with it — probably.

But this is the strange thing about Ice T. You never know exactly when he’s dealing shit or facts. He moves from politician to actor with Reaganist ease. He sings ‘Cop Killer’ on stage and played a cop on film. He’s always talking about the gangster lifestyle but although it all seems so flash, when you listen closely to his many gangster lyrics, like ‘Bowels Of The Devil’, you get the message as loud as you need: “They got me locked up in the fuckin’ penitentiary/Bowels of the devil/Let me tell you what the motherfucka eats/Its stomach’s filled with lost souls/Guts made out of steel and concrete.”

Ice T was brilliant. He was a giant sonic release from turkeys and pudding and nagging relatives. He was never what you expected. At times, he was not what you wanted. But he was always what you needed.

He was this giant, unpredictable storm of flash-flood style and hurricane energy. He was in the house!

• Gerry McGovern