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On The Nature of Psychedelia
Humble Sacrifice at the Outback Lodge - Sept. 7, 1999

SET 1: Summertime, The Way I Recall - Slippin' - DJ Jam - Help Myself With You - Rain Come Down - Langston Hughes - Colors - Singer - Standing On The Block - Gypsy
SET 2: Ghost Dance - Burial - One Tree - Climbing - Hold On To Love

Psychedelic rock is an old tree with roots that go as far back as, well, Mark Twain, I suppose. Gestated way back when smart people didn't give a f%*# and rebirthed in the 60's, this loveable (or despicable, to some) art form can be found anywhere drug culture wasn't completely squashed by national paranoia . (i.e., everywhere) Not that psychedelia is the only venue for the progeny of the free thinkers - much modern art would likely be included - but PSYCHEDELIA was supposed to STAND for it. That and the true doctrine of love as preached by the great sages and rishis, but that's another story....

In the modern world we find a lot of bands that are built on the concept of "just play SOMETHING." "Make something up, you know, we'll jam...." And frankly, it's bloody beautiful. Nowhere before psychedelia had this been done in mainstream music. (well, O.K., yea, JAZZ, where they got the idea, but bear with me...) Now it is the norm. Where once you had formula, now you have informality. And everybody's doin' it. It's gotta be so fresh it sounds like you thought it up in your garage, which you probably did. We owe much of this to the Beatles and the "Psychedelic Re-Evolution." Though psychedelic music was a flash in the pan that turned day-glow and stupid real quick, a few bands carried on the essential spirit (Don't touch it, it's concentrated EVIL!), evolving an ideal of improvisation amidst a certain chaotic harmony. The list is long, but Santana, Grateful Dead, P-Funk and the Allman Brothers, and their descendant cohorts Widespread Panic and Phish immediately come to mind. They are all bands that rely on high (not a pun) musicianship amidst a fluid rhythm section always in motion. Stylistically, they are all distinct. From country to blues to bluegrass to jazz to funk to Zappa to reggae to rock to ballad to blindness, sometimes all in the same tune. Pretty tough music to desribe. I refer to them, lovingly, as freaks.

Tuesday night Humble Sacrifice brought their variation on modern psychedelia to the Outback Lodge, C-Ville's tried-and-true rock venue. Their show was replete with rolling percussion (3 drummers!) as the stickmen danced from kit to kit adding different textures with a shaker here, a conga there, a tambourine like this - a nice effect that makes for some deep grooves, infecting the dancers with that "Dead-dance" - all elbows, hips and ankles. The melody instruments are a bass (a phat one, deftly controlled and pushed to the edge), a guitar and a flute. The guitar player sings and plays rhythm with some nice soloing interspersed here and there. The flutist rolls in and out of the groove, occasionally stepping up to deftly blow his nose off. The singers sound great, weaving harmony yells with classic solo passages. At the end of the night, their cohort Brianna steps up and the vocals kick into high gear with a smokin' "Hold on to Love."

There's a fair amount of funk to these guys. It provides that "white-man-can-jump" thing that makes you move and calls back to early 60's dance grooves, not relenting until the sweat surfaces and then collapsing into another irresistible groove. It's dance-oriented music that's all about the jam. Humble Sacrifice is like that. Real cool jam songs that sort of open up in front of you. Nice changes that slip from style to style, keeping the dancers moving. Massive crescendos that suddenly disappear leaving simple grooves that slowly turn into new tunes. Quite a treat, really.

The show this Tuesday wasn't heavily attended, which is a shame, because this kind of stuff gets much more intense the more crowd you throw at it. (Doesn't most music?) The few dozen people there enjoyed the jams and applauded in appreciation. The dancing people danced. I drank a milk and nodded my dumb head to the rhythms, smiling a goofy smile. The caliber of local bands seems to have kicked up a notch, hasn't it? Especially around the Outback, where they have a real stage and P.A. Look! There's even a real SOUNDMAN. You don't see many of those around Charlottesville. The boys from Wheeling did a good job. So did the opening band, May Haze, out of Orange, Va. Maybe Jerry's not so dead after all.

Humble Sacrifice plays every Tuesday at the Outback Lodge.

Cripsy Duck likes ALL music. If you're having an event you'd like me to check out, e-mail me at cripsyduck@mindspring.com

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