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Par-tay
by Cripsy Duck
6-19-00
(printed in C-VILLE Vol.12, No.26)

"To dance beneath
the diamond sky
with one hand
waving free..."
- Bob Dylan

featuring:
Jazz Poets Society - Elvis - Crowd Control - V8 Pussy - Lust - Hillbilly Werewolf

maxing poetic
Richmond's
Jazz Poets Society had been making themselves scarce around Duckville, er... Charlottesville, so Wednesday, June 14th's Michael's Bistro show came as a welcome opportunity to reaquaint myself with their soul and rap performance art.

Now, for some time Wednesday night has been bluegrass night at Michael's Bistro & Taphouse. Walker's Run or another of the faithful local twang generating old time posses play, and a healthy contingent of college bluegrass fans (read: Phish heads) turn up, making it a happening jam with lots of happy freaks. Said freaks tend to get really drunk and the band usually goes home well payed with their choice of either the money collected at the door or a cut of the bar's sales after 10:00-- sometimes a fairly fat sum. It's a scene. But the Bistro, being so close to the University and the Greek party community that lurks thereabouts, is subject to strange winds and whims from that fickle source, so that every now and then a Sunday can be a big night, or alternately, an otherwise busy night might suddenly die at 11:30.

The Jazz Poets have a gravity all their own and were therefore generating a different dilemma. Bluegrass or not, the place was packed by 11:00 and disappointed people were being turned away at the door. I barely managed to jive my way past the doorman, sensing paranoid visions of expensive fire code violations slowly beginning to seep under the protective edges of his bouncer psyche. He was getting nervous, and frankly, so was I. I found a place to cower in the back of the overstuffed room and settled in for some serious grooves.

The Jazz Poets Society should get some credit for actually deserving the respectability that their wonderfully pretentious name seems to demand. They are, like a low-key Hollywood epic featuring Robin Williams, heralded, hilarious and hard to resist. Backed by a solid but not too flashy R&funk&B combo, their two-man rhyme-and-harmonize front-end crew provides four fists full of free-form entertainment, an eye-opening jive a minute, and enough lyrical sensibility to send you back to your college coffeeshop for croissants.

Java germinated the Jazz Poets. A byproduct of an open mike night poetry experiment, they quickly manifested the fundamental properties of great entertainment: energy, sincerity, intelligence and commitment. Like a refreshing return to the original beat-era bongo-and-rant philosophy, they rap "with" the audience just as much as they sermonize and eulogize, providing a very interactive sort of soul hip-hop funky folk artform. Hilarious and poignant sequences are acted out, audience member are assigned cameo roles, news flashes show up in lyrics and deep addictive funk grooves are woven through the works. They are inspiring.

hunka burnin' something
Thursday night found me lost in Belmont again, chasing down a nutty costume party at the Pudhouse. The Pudhouse, where you can feel free to feel freely and no one will judge you for your lack of good judgment. The Pudhouse, whose doors are open for very alternative alternatives to local rock hooplah, or the lack thereof. Ah,... the Pudhouse.

I have no idea who or what the Pudhouse is, I'm just glad the cops didn't shut it down. They probably should have. By the end of the night, the party-- whose costume theme was "Carrie" the movie-- had devolved into a messy moshpit of paint-covered fruitcakes slipping around half-naked in the slowly dissolving but definitely distorted din. It was like a real party in there.

The festivities got started with some Elvis impersonating. (You know James from the White Spot? -- That guy.) Sheets with tombstones painted on them hung from the walls. Bare colored bulbs gave off a creepy glow. There were already thirty or so people standing there oblivious-- like zombie mendicants at some disturbed altar, twitching to the badly distorted Elvis tracks cranking through the P.A. You'd tap somebody's shoulder to get through and they'd look at you like you'd spoken Swahili or something.

The first band up was a fluke, a throwback to somebody's badly warped high school punk rock experience calling itself Crowd Control. C. C. was so obnoxious, annoying, wretched, pathetic, disturbed, maladjusted and ridiculous --mostly on purpose-- that I think they actually broke through into a truly bent form of rare genius.

not wussies... pussies
Elvis was impersonated again (there oughta be a law...), and then
V8 Pussy took over the show for some solid rock spookabilly silliness, providing firmament for the rest of the party to spring from. Atlanta's surf rock super freaks Lust followed, foolishly inviting the audience closer to them. The now twisted and deranged crowd flooded the stage area, moshing up and into them, mindlessly turning mic stands into potentially dangerous tooth-removal devices. "You guys are really freaks!" proclaimed the bass player. -- This from a band fronted by two sailor suit-wearing women, looking like low rent WWII porno pinups, asking audience members to strip down and put on the Elvis panties they've brought with them for special ceremonies. It was all getting to be too much. I hung around for a tune of Hillbilly Werewolf, another punkabilly meets Boris Karloff concept rock project, but left when the singer insisted they repeat the first tune now that he'd figured out how to turn on the reverb for "Elvis" effects. Who noticed?

-Cripsy Duck
cripsyduck@mindspring.com

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