totally bucked

Saturday dawned a glorious gloomy gray, and to Schuyler (that's Skyler to you and me) we did roam. Buckfest is held on Buck's land, and if the food trucks ever stop coming to suburbia, I think that Buck's land is where I'd like to be: right on the river, way back in the woods, down by where they keep Heaven. The place was set up to accomodate some camping and a decent-size party. A stage had been wedged beneath some trees with one corner on a little hill and the others on tree stumps. A generator purred away in the background. The setting was right for a good little party. Several generations of happy campers milled about and poked at the food table, grilling corn and animal carcases. A small pack of domesticated canines frolicked happily. The Glass Babies got up and played a set of their stuff, warming up the only partially buzzed afternoon crowd. They're a spiffy little band that lays out some tight uptempo swing mixed with curious covers, fronted by a chick with a killer voice. Between tunes she'd say stuff like "Get Bucked up, everybody! It's Buckfest!" To which we would all cheer rabidly, of course.

After the Glass Babies came a young upstart bluegrass band, the Four-Piece Flat Top Orchestra-- all five of them-- doing that doodangle that makes your knees go hither and thither and makes it okay to exclaim "Yeehaw" really loud. They had some fun and a dog bit a puppy and a guy began comissioning me for my pipe, which caused me to get a little droopy-- if you gather my meaning-- and eventually the hour approached for me and Joey to do our thing, which we did. Somebody gave me a little tiny mushroom (I thought it was a shitake, I swear.) which intensified things slightly. We had our 45 minutes of fun in the spotlight (actually, I think we played for an hour and a half-- it just seemed like 45 minutes to me) and I proceeded to pass out on the moist ground next to the bonfire.

Here's a little rough press for you:

Last Days of May - Radiant Black Mind

The newest offering from former Dream Syndicate axeman Karl Precoda is an all-you-can-eat psychedelic breakfast banquet served ala carte with a strange trip omelette. After migrating to Virginia a few years back, Precoda hooked up with Fire Sermon's Tom Howard, the man that many local musicians might rememeber as Heinz Musitronics' former electronics repair guru, and convinced him to put his energy into a fiery fusionoid band with a one-hundred percent trial-and-error modus operandi. The Last Days of May were born, a platform for Precoda to "go for the long bomb" with his schitzoid wah, squeeze-and-peel meltdown guitar style. Recorded primarily live in the studio, Radiant Black Mind is a sometimes spooky, eyebrow-raising soundtrack for a deserted space station, ambient (like the maestro, Brian Eno) at points and driving like a liquid steamroller at others. This is not psychedelia for hippy-freaks, this is psychedelia for industrialists and apocolypse fetishists. Featuring current and former (in that order) Baaba Seth percussionists Leonard Wishart and James Ralston, this one should be in your rack of strange day tunage.

Koester - oh! turpentine

Former Punchdrunk frontman Steve Koester (pronounced "kester") rolled through town last week, but I first caught him a couple months back with a cast of pitch-a-tent records artists (including head-cheese David Lowery) for one of Lauren Hoffman's Shut Up and Listen showcases. He played a variation on spooky subdued squeak rock, and I dug it pretty good. His new disc, recorded at Lowery's now notorious Sound of Music Studios in Richmond, is a refreshingly spacey underhanded psychedelic pop surprise chocked full of subtly lush studio wizardry and lovely lo-fi ornamentation. Led along by Koester's sentimental visions and quirky renderings, oh! turpentine comes off like a lazy vacation in a strangly beautiful dreamland. With opium. Tranced-out Lennon "Imagine"-era piano drone backdrops hypnotize lollipop choruses on "Sweet Wheels of Summertime." Morphine-mouthed Harley bottom bass and thump drumming drive sweeping orchestral mists from the passages of "Sweet Liquor Finale." "The Winter Only Lasts So Long" makes me wonder if Koester and Peter Greisar don't drink the same wine or something. The album warms up to a nice glow on "Seven Mile Affair," a lovely cough syrupy Petty thing with ambient Eno angel choirs. All in all, a very cool record.
-C.D.
cripsyduck@mindspring.com