nola, icicle & the kid, honchie
after the last few days, writing bullshit about music should be the furthest thing from my mind. the suffering in the wake of hurricane katrina and the inadequate federal response to this emergency has got me thinking lots about 'meercuh and the dynamic of race and class here. could blather a lot about that, i suppose, but nawlins mayor ray nagin and rapper kanye west have spoken so much more eloquently than i could ever hope to.
anyway, had a nice surprise visit today from my middle dtr, recently flown the nest, and (a little later on) her boyfriend. after dinner, we all headed over to the little wreck room to hear icicle & the kid along with the headliners, last-minute add honchie. when we got there, a couple of minutes into icicle & the kid's second song, the audience was mostly friends 'n' family, but that soon changed. sure, there were plenty of veterans of old fort worth cats days at the hop, tootsie's, and zero's new wave lounge, but there were plenty of other folks, too (including those dancers from the jam this past week, still dancing, along with several other ppl i'd never seen in the wreck before) -- always a good thing.
even more so because icicle & the kid _to' it up_, and this after maybe a decade between performances, one rehearsal, and a warm-up gig at fred's thursday night. john "johnny icicle" seibman, david "kid" daniel, and eric martin played rock'n'roll the way it's supposed to be played -- with joyous abandon. no self-conscious posing here, only proof positive that maybe rawk ain't just a young man's game (just ask chuck berry, or keef richards -- um, y'know, the guy who's gonna play johnny depp's father in the new pirates of the caribbean flick). that's not to say there was no grandstanding, it's just that when kid daniel moves from his signature splay-legged stance to a full mc5 backbend, there's nothing fake about it -- this is just the way the cat acts when he's feeling the spirit, and has a roomful of silly-ass dancing mofos in front of him to egg him on.
seibman still has the same battered jazzmaster he was playing in '79 (which he bought in '70, when he was 20 -- he's got more than a few rings around his trunk). watching him standing there transported, eyes shut, spinning out nothing but good reverb-laden freddie king goes surfin' gtr, you can feel the connection between these guys and the fort worth teen scene crews, all the way back to when mac curtis and the galbraith brothers rode their rockabilly rocket all the way from weatherford to the brooklyn paramount. these days, seibman doesn't even play anymore, he says -- "i just want it to be _fun_, and with these guys, we know how we are; i know what a nutball [kid] is." (he also says their old fort worth cats bandmate mike neal is "doing a karaoke one-man-band thing out in azle -- the same thing he was doing when i met him.")
here's hoping it won't be another ten years before kid daniel makes his way up from corpus christi to play with these guys again.
i hadn't seen honchie since, um, prolly sxsw 2004, and their show has only gotten more hilariously entertaining, plus they have a buttload of new material which should see release on shiny silver disc by thanksgiving or thereabouts. chuck stephenson remains the best natural physical comic i've ever seen onstage, while doug krause's between-songs patter has gotten even more unctuous. none of the shtick would work if it wasn't smartly conceived and well-played, and it is -- no fooling, these guys _rip_. can't wait to hear the new discage.
the thing that sticks in my mind most, though, is the last song icicle & the kid played: the old jay & the americans hit from the kennedy years, "only in america." ironic? _you_ decide.
anyway, had a nice surprise visit today from my middle dtr, recently flown the nest, and (a little later on) her boyfriend. after dinner, we all headed over to the little wreck room to hear icicle & the kid along with the headliners, last-minute add honchie. when we got there, a couple of minutes into icicle & the kid's second song, the audience was mostly friends 'n' family, but that soon changed. sure, there were plenty of veterans of old fort worth cats days at the hop, tootsie's, and zero's new wave lounge, but there were plenty of other folks, too (including those dancers from the jam this past week, still dancing, along with several other ppl i'd never seen in the wreck before) -- always a good thing.
even more so because icicle & the kid _to' it up_, and this after maybe a decade between performances, one rehearsal, and a warm-up gig at fred's thursday night. john "johnny icicle" seibman, david "kid" daniel, and eric martin played rock'n'roll the way it's supposed to be played -- with joyous abandon. no self-conscious posing here, only proof positive that maybe rawk ain't just a young man's game (just ask chuck berry, or keef richards -- um, y'know, the guy who's gonna play johnny depp's father in the new pirates of the caribbean flick). that's not to say there was no grandstanding, it's just that when kid daniel moves from his signature splay-legged stance to a full mc5 backbend, there's nothing fake about it -- this is just the way the cat acts when he's feeling the spirit, and has a roomful of silly-ass dancing mofos in front of him to egg him on.
seibman still has the same battered jazzmaster he was playing in '79 (which he bought in '70, when he was 20 -- he's got more than a few rings around his trunk). watching him standing there transported, eyes shut, spinning out nothing but good reverb-laden freddie king goes surfin' gtr, you can feel the connection between these guys and the fort worth teen scene crews, all the way back to when mac curtis and the galbraith brothers rode their rockabilly rocket all the way from weatherford to the brooklyn paramount. these days, seibman doesn't even play anymore, he says -- "i just want it to be _fun_, and with these guys, we know how we are; i know what a nutball [kid] is." (he also says their old fort worth cats bandmate mike neal is "doing a karaoke one-man-band thing out in azle -- the same thing he was doing when i met him.")
here's hoping it won't be another ten years before kid daniel makes his way up from corpus christi to play with these guys again.
i hadn't seen honchie since, um, prolly sxsw 2004, and their show has only gotten more hilariously entertaining, plus they have a buttload of new material which should see release on shiny silver disc by thanksgiving or thereabouts. chuck stephenson remains the best natural physical comic i've ever seen onstage, while doug krause's between-songs patter has gotten even more unctuous. none of the shtick would work if it wasn't smartly conceived and well-played, and it is -- no fooling, these guys _rip_. can't wait to hear the new discage.
the thing that sticks in my mind most, though, is the last song icicle & the kid played: the old jay & the americans hit from the kennedy years, "only in america." ironic? _you_ decide.
posted by stashdauber at 1:31 AM
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