If I could stick my pen in my heart And spill it all over the stage Would it satisfy ya, would it slide on by ya Would you think the boy is strange? Ain't he strange?

— Mick Jagger, "It's Only Rock and Roll (But I Like It)"

Despite the all-day rains on a recent May Saturday, a sold-out crowd of more than 8,000 people welcomed modern rockers Blue October back home to Houston. To judge from both the quantity of fans and the quality of their adoration, it would seem as if the drop-off in the band's popularity from 2006, when the band's album Foiled sold more than one million copies, to today (Approaching Normal, their most recent album, sold only around 10 percent as many copies) had never happened. They were raucous and hanging on lead singer Justin Furstenfeld's every word.

And he had a lot on his mind. During the encore to the show, just before performing a suicide lament from early in his career called "Black Orchid," he launched into a two-minute tirade about, well, me.

The diatribe was captured on YouTube. Furstenfeld, who has long proclaimed his own mentally ill status to his fans, is alone at center stage, the stage lights bright and zeroed in tightly on his Mohawked head.   

"There's a writer named John Lomax," Furstenfeld begins.

"I know that guy," a man yells in the audience.

"He writes for the Houston Press," Furstenfeld continues.

A woman — maybe several — screams drunken salutes to the paper, unaware where Furstenfeld was taking this.

"I was supposed to do an interview with him today, because we've been doing this tour..."

"But he's a prick!" a man shouts in the audience. Scattered jeers come from the Blue Meanies, as Blue October fans call themselves.

"Hold on real quick, hold on," Furstenfeld gently continues, shielding his eyes from the hot lights, a platinum-selling rock star with utter mastery over his flock — the largest ever to come to see him. "We've been doing this tour on suicide prevention. We went up to Capitol Hill to talk to them about how every year 30,000 Americans die of suicide and we need to try to figure out a way to talk about it. We need to figure out a way to help."

Cheers go up from the Blue Meanies.

"So I have this interview set up with this guy named John Lomax."

"John Lo-Max," he repeats very slowly, letting his contempt drip from every syllable.

"And the first thing he says is, 'I don't believe you're mentally ill. You need to bring a prescription bottle to the interview to prove it to me.'"

Eight thousand Blue Meanies erupt in boos, jeers and catcalls.

"He's a prick!" another guy can be heard to holler over the din. Furstenfeld is back on the mike. "I'm like, 'First of all —'" A woman cackles. "Hold up...I'm like, 'First of all, fuck you!'"

Harsh laughter and a lusty cheer.

"'And second of all, the reason we have 30,000 folks dying of suicide every year is because of ignorant fucks like you!'"

Another huge cheer greets the announcement that I have caused 30,000 deaths.

"'If I have to explain and prove myself to you, dumbass, why the fuck would I be here?'" Furstenfeld snarls.

The crowd goes nuts, but what does that even mean?

"I'm pissed off," Furstenfeld continues. "Because seriously there's a lot of people that I've lost" — he's waving his arm around over his head, pointing and gesticulating — "there's a lot of people that you've lost, and this fuck had a chance to help a lot of people, and he didn't. And I just needed to say something about it, so thank you for letting me talk."

Huge cheers.

"And fuck you, John Lomax."
_____________________

How did it come to this? I asked a question and wham? How dare I?

Well, as Furstenfeld said, it really did start with a simple request to see proof of his mental illness. And while a request like that might not be polite dinner-party repartee, it is pretty much standard operating procedure for a reporter, especially when the subject makes as much of his allegedly shaky mental health as Furstenfeld does.

And boy does he ever make hay out of that. He performs his rare solo gigs as "5591," which he says was his patient number when he was a mental patient in the 1990s, and his dramatic lyrics are peppered with references to suicide and prescription meds. While he often acknowledges his music's messianic powers, he also says his songs are tragically insufficient to offer their author much relief from his agonies. "If I have saved others, I don't know what to say," he once uttered. "But if I can do that for them, why the fuck can't I do that for myself?"