At last night’s Ministry concert at Chicago’s Riviera Theatre—for the first time in 15 years—Chris Connelly re-joined Al Jourgensen on stage reprising his vocals for “So What”, the classic track featured on Ministry’s 1989 album The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste.
Watch Jourgensen make the announcement in the clip below, streamed via Ministry’s official Facebook page:
“We’re going to bring up an old friends of our from like 15, 16, 17 years ago. A person I hold very near and dear to my heart, who’s going to help us sing a song called ‘So What.’ His name is Chris Connelly!”
Scottish born and now Chicago based Connelly sang on and toured with Ministry for that album into the early 1990s before parting ways with Jourgensen. During that tenure he memorably performed “So What” on top of a chain link fence on the 1990 live video/record In Case You Didn’t Feel Like Showing Up.
“I take a very dim view of my past.” said Connelly later, in a 2007 interview looking back at his time working with Jourgensen, which was not portrayed kindly in his book Concrete, Bulletproof, Invisible And Fried: My Life As A Revolting Cock,
Connelly was also a member of industrial groups Revolting Cocks and Pigface in the late ’80s and early ’90s (and last fall joined a reunited RevCo lineup and toured with Front Line Assembly).
*The article had originally stated that it had been 25 years since Connelly had performed “So What” with Ministry, however, one of our readers pointed out that the last time was in fact April 22nd, 2003 at the Old Vic Theatre in Chicago, where Connelly came on stage and performed both “Thieves” and “So What”, leaving Jourgensen “free to stage dive repeatedly”.
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