Cripsy Duck's view from Charlottesville - 5.1.01

The season's first Fridays After Five was getting underway downtown and there I was at home, dutifully preparing to depart, when the phone rang. (curses!) It was my old foil and partner in grime, Tubesock, with news that Junior Brown would be performing mid-evening in the U.Va Amphitheater-- for free.

The fates don't often emote with such startling clarity. Tubesock's fortuitous arrival almost invariably predicates a bout of serious drunkeness, but the unprecedented free-ness of an evening outdoors with the mang with the twang, the cat with the hat, the real deal and his guit-steel-- Mr. Junior Brown-- well, that sounded like an invincible party plan indeed.

Shamefully, promotion for the event was minimal-- I hadn't heard about it at all-- and attendance lagged accordingly. This for Junior Brown, a guy who recently packed and reportedly rocked Starr Hill at twenty bucks a head and has since signed on to open a few July shows for Dave Matthews Band. Logic suggests that if a few more people had known, they may well have stacked Ôem in.

What did I care? I was in hog heaven. Free Big Jim's barbecue, beautiful coeds everywhere, Junior Brown making crazy contortions while his old-school minimalist rockabilly band belted out the C, R&B (that's country, rhythm and blues), looking oddly out of place in their suits-- like contestants at a Grand Ol' Opry open stage in the sixties or maybe guests on the Smothers Brothers show or something. It was friggin' beautiful.

Even funnier were us oddballs gathered closest to the stage: a smattering of tatooed rockabilly fetishists and wierdos addicted to Brown's buttery baritone voice crooning monumental trucker classics like "You're Wanted By The Police and My Wife Thinks You're Dead" being regularly diced up by the trademark double-neck guit-steel tornadoes Junior furiously and frequently unleashes-- some of the most intense country stunt guitar playing of our time set against some of the silliest songsmithy since Hee Haw. It's a match made in hell-bent heaven. Evel Knivel, William Warfield, Stan Freeburg, Hank Williams (--all three of 'em), Dick Dale and Don Ho. That's Junior Brown. Some kind of all-fired-up twisted genius sillybilly gentleman. Something like that.

By the time I stumbled into Trax that night, I was unnervingly sober, Tubesock had wandered off to pursue his own misadventures, and the Jazz Mandolin Project had already taken the stage for a set of their mando-wrought aerober-rock, er... jazz. I, however, was geared up for some Squirrel Nut Zippers. No steep ticket (which I thankfully was not required to posess-- thanks Trax!) was gonna stop me from getting silly with the Carolinian retro caravan that zips so notoriously.

The Jazz Mandolin Project rocks strong and eloquent, but they're not my favorite of the current crop of touring jam bands. The mandolin/upright bass/drum trio comes up with some good-to-really-groovy stuff-- and I appreciate it all-- but I keep thinking I want to hear different spices in it-- especially percussively. Maybe I'm being a prick. (Be straight with me... am I a prick?)

The Squirrel Nut Zippers are quite simply the only cool thing that happened during the infamously winced at "swing revival" of the twentieth century's final throes. Some other guys with nice suits cut a couple of snazzy tracks that perk when played, but other than that... blah, blah, blah... white people needed an excuse to venerate long dead dance moves and skinheads with suits and horn sections seemed to do the trick.

The Zippers-- though commonly clumped in with said silliness-- are a good bit more grassroots and grungy--their medicine show/cabaret vibe informed by a curious penchant for ancient and forgotten popular music idioms, combined with a predeliction for kitsch and kook that makes them naturally exude the reek of war-time union tour buses. Tacky retro regurgitation buffed to silly Fuller-Brush-brilliance through the stalwart collaboration of several key instigators, among them Tom Maxwell who has since left the band and was missed at Trax.

But the Zippers always were a multi-headed Medusa, and at Trax they delivered the appropriately nutty hard/chewy molasses candy treat that is their treatise in fine style with a fattened horn section and a strong succession of their divine cartoon orchestrations. Starting and ending with a marching procession through the audience (who can resist?) the squirrelly bastards charmed us all.

And I'm sorry, if Katherine Whalen's Billy Hollid-ized vocals, Cleaver-era movie star wardrobe and Marilyn Monroe shimmy and wink doesn't make you a rabid fanatic (like the wasted bald-head goateed backwoods fool who couldn't contain himself all night at her feet, worshipping her like the last remaining hula statue at the luau), the sheer joy of hearing songs sung about what a badass Grandpa was should do the trick. They even closed with a cover of the Ramones' "I Want You Around," in honor of head Ramone Joey's recent passing. How cool is that?

Pretty damn cool. I was still in gear so I rolled over to the Pudhouse where the Elderly were doing their peak brand of power punk. The Elderly are the bee's knees, but what happened next was unprecedented: a short set with the Hillbilly Werewolf injected into the band, making it a reunion of sorts since the Werewolf made off with the Elderly's original drummer long ago. The new combo-- Guitarzan, I think they called it-- was like a pumped-up Elderly on crack with Hillbilly's singer fronting the montage. Me like.

--Cripsy Duck

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