The crowd was packed with sloshing beers and the stage was all set up and one lone individual (that may have been Ray Charles' long lost sibling) sat behind a Frankenstein keyboard, and with a flourish of his nimble digits produced a series of hollowed out trills that began spiraling & blossoming from the amps in building steppes of further intricacy until a satisfying apotheosis of resonance reached a deep plateau reverberating the columns and walls. Glasses of beer on various tables began slightly vibrating, expanding ripples like right outta Jurassic Park, and that's when I knew we were in for a Tyrannosaurus Rex of a funked-out rock show. After this extended intro on the synthesizer (brought to the packed & chattering crowd by the Maestro Bernie Worrell), I thought to myself "Rick Wakeman, sit yer ass down," and Buckethead strode out on stage with his signature Kentucky Fried Chicken Bucket on his head and long black hair, he moved like a marionette and immediately began stenciling out sporadic, intricate digital bleeps from the strings of his electric guitar with a series of impossibly quick and mechanized riffs, at which point BRAIN took the seat behind his drumset cockpit and released bursts of syncopation on his tomtoms with effortless gestures of his wrists, and the Man of the Hour w/the Psychedelic Power took stage right and kicked off the night with an impossibly dexterous attack on his phat coiled strings and now, the Colonel and his Bucket O' Bernie Brains launched in Full Force from their stacks, peaking their crescendo so the crowd felt it in all the way in the back. I had been anticipating PRAXIMUS, and that's just what we got--or maybe better yet, PRIMAX FUNKADELIC so it's a good most everyone was stoned out of their gourd one way or another because the carnival atmosphere funhouse of FUNK reached such heights of dizzying spunk there were no holds barred as the pits flat out erupted and all sense of complacency was suddenly disrupted. I mean let's get real for a second here, we were a soul-slapped choir, witness to the power fusion melodynamics of Les Claypool, Buckethead, Brain, and the legendary Bernie Worrell, anyone with a quarter-brain shoulda known well the night would rival a party thrown by old Saint Nick in Hell. Les had even stated in the paper that day that the set would be a freakshow directed by Tobe Hooper w/a soundtrack by Danny Elfman on a bad acid trip(!)... Well it was more like a pulp hybrid musical as envisioned by George Lucas and Stanley Kubrick, as Buckethead riffed on Star Wars and Darth Vader themes elicited from his ceaseless noodling along with excerpts from 2001: A Space Odyssey and Willy Wonka, and at one point, Claypool came back out onstage in a monkey mask and played a slapstick parody of the Naked Ape on an upright homemade whammy-stick bass, bending that funk right in our face, slappin' out notes with the bow of a fiddle, sowin' wild oats in a psychedelic riddle with his goggles and safari hat Les taught us all a lesson that we will not forget, that the Colonel's newest outfit is the tightest fitted yet. With Bernie on the synth-ivories worrying them so well laying down some wicked grooves to weave us in a spell while the Brain behind the battery syncopated rather well in fact he fired off percussive frills with such inventive fills the moshing started up again from the drum solo alone, and Claypool started rhythms that became so damn insane the crowd around me right up front became a hurricane of swirling spinning bodies in a spastic tribal dance with plastic beer mugs held on high and spilling on my pants and before I even knew it my brain was in a trance so there was really nothing to it but to just get out and prance amidst the mob, like a pack of jumping beans the FunK was so outrageous it shook the very beams and teleported everyone beyond their wildest dreams in a delirium quite contagious. Let it never be said or led into your head that C2B3 is a novelty cuz they're the real deal instead & if you're thinking of going to this show but change your mind you deserve some serious whoopin' on that lazy ass behind, so best take my advice on this most serious matter: beg buy borrow or steal so you too can be a witness to this crew & their Mad Hatter.
5/9/07
Obliterate Plague, Beyond This Flesh, IBEX THRONE
Well, the suppurating DarkneSS & black power of evil was in full effect Friday October 1st @ Burt's Tiki Lounge - (1 of the Top 20 "dive bars" in America!) - my friends in THE OBLITERATE PLAGUE set the stage for chAos with an unrelenting set of pure focused mayhem, everyone got loosened up & drunk & ready to roar, then BEYOND THIS FLESH played and by that time the mosh up front was in full effect, beer bottles & all, and finally the night's pitch black headliners in IBEX THRONE took the stage and that's when the real chaos erupted: they began about 5 minutes before last call, so the bartender was all pissy and there was these punks from ENDLESS STRUGGLE in the bar who didn't like the looks of Lord Dying, one of Ibex's guitarists, nor his skinhead appearance or questionable tattoos, so suddenly the bartender is suckerpunching LD in the back of the neck, this kid from Endless Struggle smacks my friend Pat from the PAGAN DEAD upside the head with a beer bottle, and the riot was on! Everything went from fun drunken moshing to going-for-the-throat rage and chaos, as more people added to the clusterfuck and next thing you know, fights were breakin out left and right, a few of us got wise and headed out the door, and moments later the knot of rioters spilled out onto the sidewalk, I unlocked my bike just in the nick of time to avoid it getting flattened undert the wackoes, and suddenly 2 cops are there chasin' Casey also from PAGAN DEAD, who looks kinda like Danzig and he was sprintin ahead of these 2 rookies who didn't even know how to run right, they came straight at me and Casey ditches to the left leaving one cop skidding off and the other one takin a hard ass spill to the concrete -- his cellphone goes clattering away -- and then my friend Tony is facing off this other cop, right in his face threatening to split it wide open!, that cop was like a deer in the headlights -- Tony is one hard motherfucker -- and right then the cop who took the spill got up and started callin for backup, so more of us began headin outta there, I kinda swooped wide on my bike and stayed on the periphery just to make sure all my friends were accounted for and not getting their skulls cracked open. Meanwhile Ibex & Obliterate are haulin their amps & gear outta there, I pass by the front and look inside and there is broken glass, bottles, busted chairs, and blood all over the floor and walls -- the place was wrecked -- so I took off on my bicycle and headed over to Ibex's recording studio & met up with the guys in the band, helped em unload their gear, and we kept on drinkin and partying in their soundproofed studio until 4 in the mornin, at which point I caught a ride out to Midvale, where the rest of the blackmetal freaks and rockers were hangin, along with Pagan Pat who received homemade stitches from our own Vanessa, he was swearin to god that he was going to personally hunt down every last member of ENDLESS STRUGGLE and kill them the next day. Well Burt's had advertised kickin' off "October Madness" with Obliterate Plague + Ibex Throne, and a night of real black metal is precisely what they got, total destruction and anarchy, it was a freakin riot. Needless to say, that show has already gone down in history here as their greatest show yet, cross one more bar off the list where they can play, man there aren't that many bars left in this city! \m/
Thylacine, Lord Beherit, OBLITERATE PLAGUE
Saw the destined-for-the-hall-of-fame Underground Death Metal show @ Burt's Tiki Lounge featuring Thylacine (locals I never heard of) + LORD BEHERIT (my friends LD, Azelcraz, Rocker, & Russell, most of em from Ibex Throne), and Headliners THE OBLITERATE PLAGUE, homegrown Cthulhuian Black Death Metal of Dessicating Infernal Blasphemic Hategrind. My friend Tony (of Anima Nera & Taught By Birds) played the scorching brimstone lead guitar, while Berzerker helmed the front mic + guitar, bringing down the house into a sadistic fury of wailing, screeching bedlam and drunken anarchy. Man was it ever the best -- we all got so freaKing drunk, I had to call in the next day. I'm telling you this show will live on in the Memory of Underground shows for Time Immemorial. Obliterate Plague did a razorsharp, pummeling cover of TORMENTED by the one & only SLAYER, and that nearly brought down the house right there. Fucking Sweet Evil Bliss.