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Duck and Cover
by Cripsy Duck 1-23-01
(printed in C-VILLE Vol.13, No. 5)
TERRRI ALLARD - RAY AND ROSCOE
NAKED PURITANS - WISHER
MALI MASTERS - ACOUSTIC SYNDICATE
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1/16/01 64 magazine invited me to Richmond for their first year anniversary celebration, and I figured "what the hell...," so I drove down to rub some elbows with the folks at the slick Virginia upstart. The party was in the heart of the state capitol downtown, in the lobby of the huge, modern lobby of the SunTrust bank. I was innappropriately underdressed, but the place was stocked with well-dressed literary folks schmoozing and posing for corny pictures while Terri Allard played a set of her sweet acoustic Americana/folk stuff, with Gary Green blowing some lovely harmonica through the proceedings. Allard's is one of several acts included on 64's first year anniversary CD, a compilation of some of Virginia's more important musical moments put together by none other than Don Harrison, the man who used to write a column not so dissimilar this for the C-Ville Weekly and who later went on to edit the short-lived central-Va. music rag, Grip. The CD has some juicy stuff on it, including live tracks from Bruce Hornsby and the Dave Matthews Band (featuring Victor Wooten on bass-- badass), but the gems are the obscurities ranging from the Swinging Machine's lost psychedelia track to Roy Hall and The Blue Ridge Entertainers' brilliant but bizarre fusion of "Bill Bailey" and a Dr. Pepper commercial. I soaked up as much of their free liquor as my own shame would permit before heading back to Charlottesville's Blue Moon Diner. Ray and Roscoe had also sent me an invitation to their gig requesting I come and give them bad press. Easy enough. I don't know which one is which, but Ray and Roscoe are pseudonyms for Rod Coles and another cat named Eli, who's last name escaped me, and who seemed to be the driving force behind the gig. Rod Coles is one of Charlottesville's most versatile utility drummers, most recently providing beats for David Sickmen's Beau Prie project, but he also writes and performs on the guitar. His stuff bore, I thought, a striking resemblance to Sickmen's own-- dreamy and whimsical pop played from the hip pocket with only a small whiff of pretension, and though he claims to have no interest in performing "solo acoustic," it's obvious he's put some time into the work. Eli apparently has some indie-rock creds I'm unfamiliar with, another talented soul "compromising" his art for the obscurity of life in C-Ville. He rolled through lovely self-indulgent folk-core and some other semi-revelatory super-mellow closet pop, and all was well.
1/19/01
I'd heard some decent demo stuff from Wisher, so I made plans to check them out at the Outback Lodge. Seminal cling-ons the Naked Puritans were onstage when I got there, and, damn! They sounded kick ass! Far more impressive than their show at Fridays After Five last season, the Outback Lodge added just enough spatial compression and garage-vibe to make their almost-retro power-punk alt/pop smorgasborg come across like a friendly but well-delivered boot to the chest. Jammin'.
Wisher-- formerly the Parasols-- were chocked full of suprises. From their own somewhat glammy psychedeli-pop, to the shredding jam spaces they teased at periodically, to their litany of oddball covers (among them, Bowie's "Starman," Zappa's "San Berdino," and an epic "Stayin' Alive" into "Another Brick in the Wall (pt. 2)" sequence), they had enough uncommon maneuvers to keep them always interesting. Definitely a cut above your average rock squad.
1/20/01
Cheik Hamala Diabate is a respected Malinese griot who spends a fair amount of time in our area working with musicians interested in the music of W. Africa and the banjo's ties to that region. He often performs with a troupe of locals, several of whom were on hand for Saturday's show, but as a special bonus, he'd been encouraged to assemble a crew of real "Mali Masters." Diabate sings and plays guitar, but his main instrument is the "goni," an African instrument thought to be a predecessor to the American banjo that one person described as resembling a loaf of bread with a broom handle jabbed in it. Funny-looking, maybe, but very cool sounding, the goni's bright dance was nicely woven with the sounds of the kora (a large gourd-bodied African harp plucked with the thumbs), and the two instruments were happily driven by a very tasty and powereful djembe player. The Malinese and Senegalese grooves were infectious, and audience members were inspired to honor the musicians in African fashion-- by showering them with money. (And I thought they only did that to rock critics.)
Afterwards I rolled to Starr Hill for a dazzling show by the Acoustic Syndicate. More fun with traditionally acoustic instruments, the Syndicate draws inspiration from the Appalachian tradition with their banjo/acoustic guitar front-end and piercing bluegrass vocal timbres, but fuse it handily to a very upbeat hard-core jazz/rock rhythm section. They are rock solid and even a little frighteningly intense, and they proffered a splendid array of interesting covers, ranging from a Larry Keel tune they've turned into a fusionoid romp to Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" which burst suddenly into a freight-train bluegrass cover of Neil Young' "Powderfinger." The crowd howled between tunes like it was some sort of pagan festival, and I had to concur, it was one of the best shows up on the Hill yet.
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