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Totally Forked
by Cripsy Duck
7-10-00
(printed in C-VILLE Vol.12, No.29)

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"America is the only
nation in history which
miraculously has gone
directly from barbarism
to degeneration without
the usual interval
of civilization."
Georges Clemenceau
featuring:
Donkey Punch - 2 Skinnee J's
Sandip Burman, John Wubbenhorst & Bhajan Sapori
Cactus Patch

Geez. What happened this week? Lessee...

Oh, the fourth of July. I stayed home.

Now, before you accuse me of being insufficiently American, you should know that I watched the proceedings on T.V., so I'm not some kind of commie or nothin'. (...yet)

Live from the Mall in Washington D.C., Ray Charles sang a heartwrenching "America the Beautiful" (Saint Ray is now 258 years old, of course) before the television was taken over by forty-seven different renditions of that American classic, the 1812 Overture, complete with real cannons firing on cue from forty-seven different "All-American" locations-- none of them really all that inspiring. I couldn't decide whether to puke or cry. America the spewtiful.

Of course, that's not all that happened this week. I crawled. I swear I did. Went places and stuff.

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Wednesday (July 5th) I rolled down to Tokyo Rose to catch a bunch of punks but-- being a veritable fount of fashionable lateness-- I missed all of the early acts, including the Frownies, who were reportedly well worth seeing. When I finally descended into the Rose's ochre abyss, things were just firing up for Donkey Punch.

From what I could gather, suburban legend defines a "donkey punch" as some kind of heinously crude junior high kind of sexual domination maneuver. I won't describe it here but it sounds callous. Not to mention cold-blooded. And not funny.

Donkey Punch, the band, lived down to the name. "Cheap punk rock for suburbanites." The place was, in fact, filled with suburbanites. It was kind of eerie.

End of story.
Fascinating, huh?

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O.K. So, the following night I rolled out to Trax for 2 Skinnee J's bonus suburban funk detonation.

What the fork? Those motherforkers are crazy. I'd talk trash about 'em but I'd hate to have somebody tell me to fork off or to go fork myself. Let's just say, it was forked. Totally forked.

many sailor j's
I do have to talk a little trash about 2 Skinnee J's because, despite my preoccupation with cutlery, I noticed that they sounded all mid-rangey. (That's "crappy" to me and you.) Apparently, their soundguy wasn't having much luck achieving sonic definition in Trax's hangar-like interior, so the band came off all muddy and tin-canny. It's a common problem.

This did not slow the J's assault one iota. I can't say when I've seen a Charlottesville crowd more juiced. The band burst on stage all decked out in matching sailor suits (with flames and their special "J" names embroidered on 'em), and the Trax audience just "came all over itself," for lack of a better description, leaping up and down to their suburban hip-hop, rap and jamercise package. (I don't know why they put me in mind of suburbia-- the whole thing just has that white-boy "funk from the 'burbs" vibe about it.)

They were silly as hell and pretty forkin' cool. For a bunch of pigforkers.

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The following night... are you still with me? Snap out of it! I've got IMPORTANT NEWS!

I was lying, I don't have important news. Made you look.

The following night I headed up to the New Dance Space to visit with Sandip Burman, the Indian tabla player I was raving about a few weeks back. He's been cruising the world, jamming with Bela Fleck and Victor Wooten and God and everybody.

musical samadhi
Guess what? He's still really forking awesome. (Or was that 2 Skinnee J's...) This time not only was he accompanied by bansuri (bamboo flute) player John Wubbenhorst (listen for John's flute on Sanjay Mishra's Blue Incantation-- coincidentally Jerry Garcia's last recording sessions before his death in 1995.), but he also brought another authentic Injun (can I say that?) with him, a gifted santoor (Indian hammer dulcimer) player, Pandit Bhajan Sopori.

All Indian classical music has its origins in that country's complex vocal traditions, full of flowing note bends and subtle but integral articulations. These sounds are difficult to accomplish on a fixed-string instrument such as the hammer dulcimer, but Sopori overcomes this obstacle by scraping the hammers along the strings, creating sizzling soaring note effects, and sliding the hammer from string to string to recreate melodic nuances.

The music was just short of miraculous. Burman and Sopori have a natural fondness for performing together evidenced by their beaming faces during the raga's punctuating hesitations.

(Burman and Wubbenhorst were also reviewed on 6-5-00)

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watch for thorns
Afterwards I figured "what the hell?" so I rolled down to Tokyo Rose for some Holiday Inn and Cactus Patch. Still a devotee to the trend of tardiness, I was too late to catch the Innsters, but I did run into Gate Pratt, of all people.

Something of an icon to better living through Charlottesville slack, gate is back in town after a hiatus so we'll probably be hearing from his "joy of folk rock" band the Come On Children soon.

Cactus Patch made a decent effort for the empty room. The emaciated audience consisted of the other band, the bartender, the clubowner, the soundguy, the obligatory drunk at the bar, one woman spectator and a very silly Duck. Sad but true.

They're a pretty good little suburban alt/pop group with a slightly Morrissey-flavored lead singer (no, I didn't lick him)-- somewhere between T. Rex and Hootie and the Blowfish. There you will find the Cactus Patch. There they will groove you. Bring friends. And fork yourself.

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