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More Wine?
by Cripsy Duck
6-26-00
(printed in C-VILLE Vol.12, No.27)

"It has always been
my dream to have
sex with the hottest
chick in the room."
- Cripsy Duck

featuring:
The Kathryn Caine Band - Navel - Nathan and the Zydeco Cha-Chas

June 21-- I couldn't help but feel a little sorry for Kathryn Caine. There she was at Michael's Bistro-- super sweet mountain warble and all-- laying down her original americana recipe while her band-- heavy-hitting former members of Indecision and the Unified Funk Theory-- rocked out behind her. It was a good show. They played well. She sang great. I drank a glass of wine.

I think my pity stemmed from what I was seeing as "inappropriate arena."

raising caine
Kathryn's good. Really good. She writes solid tunes that cross happily into rock territory. She has a beautiful country voice with all the right influences and plenty of lovely backwoods tremolo and yodely cracks. She's pretty. With the right management (and, of course, amazing good luck) her band could be a real contender on alt/country radio.

But here she was, sweetening up a drunkenly appreciative college-type crowd with her country girl charm for a Wednesday night at Michaels' Bistro. Not that the Bistro sucks. It's just that the people who would likely be inclined to buy tunes like hers by the tens of thousands aren't generally found at Michael's Bistro quaffing microbrews out of pint glasses on Wednesday nights. They are found in greasy bars in Nashville, Tn. and Lawrence, Ks. and Louisville, Ky. drinking Budweiser (on special) out of pinched pilsner glasses, getting a nice, smelly mid-week drunk on in some crappy joint with a broken CD jukebox. But rest assured, if a well-promoted Kathryn Caine Band was coming to the local honky tonk or better yet, outdoor amphitheater, these same people would be all over it.

Which brings us to an important point I've been meaning to make in this column for some time: If you play music and you live in or around Charlottesville and you think you want to get serious, LEAVE NOW. Pack up your band and get out of Dodge.

Well... you don't have to actually move away, but you absolutely must play out of town (and I mean far out of town) to achieve any real success. Unless, of course, you're Vernon Fischer. (Vernon is a table-roving classical guitarist who earns a nice living playing requests for dinner crowds at local country clubs-- a cool gig but probably not what you had in mind when you told your high school girlfriend you wanted to be a rock star.)

Industry people refer to Charlottesville as a secondary market. They are being nice. Charlottesville is a tertiary market. Moves have been made to improve our status with the larger artists-- the construction of the Charlottesville Performing Arts Center, for one thing-- but with our limited population and lack of decent large venues, we're not exactly attracting the white-hot fire of the music industry.

there may be fuzz
You're gonna need more than this to go worldwide with your art. If you want to make it in the big leagues, you've got to go where the people are. And that means quit your day job. Tell 'em the Duck sent you.

Friday night I migrated to Trax to catch a band I've long wondered about, a bizarre event calling itself Navel. Picture, if you will, 100 or so people (mostly high school girls!) gathered in the darkened Trax interior slowly filling with fog machine fog while the opening dialog from Queen's Flash Gordon soundtrack plays through the P.A. Imagine two girls in silver space suits with battery powered rayguns posting themselves on top of the speakers like sentinels. Sense your curious repulsion as the "FLASH, oh-Ah-ah-- he'll save every one of us!" is rudely cut off for the band's entrance. Behold their uniforms: red tank tops with black lightening bolts and black trousers. The drummer pauses to do a double "satan" (or are those "longhorns?") before mounting his mighty kit. A bubble machine is clicked on. (So far I've counted at least $700.00 worth of non-musical props tied up in this thing.) The band launches into what they do-- a funk and metal fusion rock thing. Sumpin' like Living Color or King's X.

Musically, they are almost good. A little dated. But I'm laughing. Out loud. I can't believe it. I can't figure out if they are serious or not. Their songs aren't humorous but the band is cracking me up. The bass player is licking his bass and throwing "satans" to the crowd. They remind me of Spinal Tap on comic books. I flee the place like vanquished evil.

somebody get up!
Saturday I rolled to the Nelson County Summer Festival, which totally rocked and I can't quite tell you why because there was a lot of wine tasting involved. (I think that stuff has alcohol in it.) But I do remember a few things: It took place in the front yard of a huge and slightly run down mansion. (The place is about due for one of those nice $10,000.00 paint jobs.) Summertime Barbecue was set up on one side of the performance area, bathing the audience in the bitter stink of charred flesh. (I'll eat meat, but this was disgusting-- like partying in a crematorium.) On the other side of the performance area was a smoothie hut, so all the acoustic acts could enjoy some nice blender accompaniment. Not the best planning, logistic-wise, but those two problems could be easily fixed, and the entertainment was primo. It peaked out with some irresistible cajun dance grooves from Nathan and the Zydeco Cha-Chas. The wine soaked crowd went nuts. I went home and passed out.

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