rock camp, catfiish whiskey, the burning hotels, professional juice, goodwin

"the name of this band...is rock camp." so said fort worth academy of music co-founder / rock camp instructor lee allen, by way of introducing his charges as they hit the stage on the patio at fonky fred's last sat'day. this was the first time i'd seen 'em, since i missed their axis extravaganza the end of the summer and we don't have cable, so i haven't been able to see chris connelly's rock camp documentary. "[that] was a real emotional event," said rock camp-meister lee. "i was in tears seeing all the ppl that were there. then dave and i were running around backstage, laughing like maniacs." (the "dave" in question is fwam co-founder dave karnes, who had to leave before saturday's show to play at a wedding in glen rose.)

while the turnout might have been less than at axis, the rock campers -- three girls, four boys, all of 'em between 10 and 15, from the look of 'em -- did a mighty fine job on material ranging from weezer to ac/dc (including one toon they hadn't rehearsed, according to lee, and managed to pull of credibly). at least they sounded lots better 'n the bands i was in when i was in high school. sure, there was a little chaos factor, but that was mitigated by lee's animated direction from out front, using, um, many of the same techniques he uses with the wednesday night jammers at the wreck room (he has a degree in conducting, after all). big plus: they looked fabulous. my sweetie was there taking pics and declared them "adorable." they were also thankfully free of stage-kid brattitood. when she told her fave, the little mohawked bassplayer in the ramones t-shirt, that if music didn't work out for him, he could have a career as a male model, he exclaimed "like zoolander!" in his typical 10-yr-old kid's voice. only time things kinda fell apart was when lee suggested they play a blues, which is like a foreign language to most ppl born after 1990. they did hokay as long as he was flashing them the "I! IV! V!"'s from up front, but when the bassplayer decided to turn his back on his conductor, the spaceship stopped responding to external control, as the four gtrists and keyboardist stumbled in different directions in search of a key. common knowledge, it seems, ain't that common.

"actually," goodwin bassplayer matt hembree quipped, "it wasn't unlike lots of the jams i've been in." the goodwin guys, who were booked at the moon that night, were added to the bill at fred's as a sumthin'-sumthin's extra for the rock camp kids -- prolly because, as damien stewart sez, "tony [diaz] and matt would play for free in yr backyard if you asked them to." unfortunately, it seems that lee and dave failed to instruct the campers in some of the finer points of gig etiquette -- e.g., if you wanna get booked back, it's not a bad idea to stick around and see the headliner, so that maybe yr crowd will stick around, too. then again, i suppose that isn't applicable when "yr crowd" is yr parents and other family mbrs who might have other fish to fry, but i observed the coupla rock camp kids who hung around for goodwin learning some object lessons in how to rawk, their eyes glued to matt and evil dictator gomez' hands throughout the set. watch 'n' learn, boyzzz: less _is_ more, and you get more power from precision than you do from sheer velocity.

that point was amply illustrated a little later, when my sweetie and i stopped back at fred's to drop off a cd-r's worth of rock camp pixxx for camp-meister lee to put on the fwam website. catfish whiskey was playing, and i was reminded of blues singer vernon garrett's dictum when i briefly played in his band a coupla yrs back. anytime i played a riddim gtr part, he'd say, "no! no! _simplify_ it! then, when all the parts fit together, that's where the _funk_ comes from!" the little bit of catfish whiskey i heard was cluttered, shambolic, and not groovin', and the singer's extremely forced laryngeal constrictions made _my_ throat hurt. (the next sound you hear will be vocal nodules forming.) on a more constructive note, i would just say: pare it back, fellas. let the grooves _breathe_. and _listen_ to each other. and for godsakes, sing from yr diaphragm, not from yr throat.

we stopped by the lil wreck room to hear the debut of the burning hotels, the band that occasional wednesday night jam participant wyatt drums for. and i'll say this for those guys: for their first-ever gig, they had a _great_ turnout. (these are some boys with wide social networks that know how to use 'em.) and i liked the fact that they started out their set with wyatt bashing out a beat before the other cats took the stage. the music wasn't really my bag, tho -- kinda '80s brit-referential, with broad whiteguy voxxx and punk-strumming gtr buried under layers of electro f/x. that and the preponderance of berry street ppl with that backwards-haircut thang going on led us to cut out before our first drinks were drained and head over to, um, berry street for some fuzzy's tacos and goodwin.

walking into the moon, we were hit right between the eyes by a coupla crop-headed cats attired like something out of "sprockets" on snl, doing extremely stylized movements to blaring electro-clash racket. the tall one was wearing a green turtleneck and brown sweater vest over plaid pants, a perpetual expression of studied insouciance on his mug. the little one with the false moustache was dressed all in grey and did a nice line in mechanoid dance moves. then the tall one picked up an electric gtr (one of those line 6 jobbies with no pickups that runs directly into an f/x processor) and started spinning off lines of frippertonic / santana-esque / dimeolic complexity. the music evolved into an extended suite or mix that hurled fragments of classic rock hits (led zep, queen) into a swirling vortex of shifting time signatures and classical-influenced chord structures. there were no mics onstage; between songs, a synthetic voice output device made announcements and introductions. whatthefuuuck?!?!? one thing's fer sure: there was no looking away from these guys, no going to the can or ordering drinks or whatevah as long as they were up. besides "sprockets," the proximate models were the comic-creepy mael brothers from sparks, or a pair of nathan browns doing the music and cheerleading shticks simultaneously. an operational definition of "quirky," a living example of "style-over-substance," only once you recover from the initial shock, the substance is pretty amazing. it was...professional juice.

professional juice is the brainchild of cory helms, who plays bass in the chemistry set (and apparently composes their wiseass e-mails), and with rahim quazi. cory's a monstrously talented gtrist, bassist, keyboardist, composer, and synth programmer, but he presents his stuff in a way that's easily (and perhaps best) appreciated on the level of pure entertainment. his partner in crime, thad, has dance moves that bring to mind a hyperactive 10-yr-old i once saw at a wedding. i'd seen them do their act at the wreck room months ago, when it was less evolved than it is currently, and been mildly amused, but this time, it seemed like the most original thing i've seen on the boards in a yr. they have a coupla demo e.p.'s that you can cop from cory for a five spot apiece, but their goal is to release a studio-recorded full-length. i can't wait to hear it.

speaking of which, goodwin is _this_ close to having their sophomore cd ready to go, and from the two sets they played at the moon, i'd say they're also approaching a new pinnacle of performing prowess. (funny what spending a few months on a recording project will do for ya.) tony diaz 'splained it this way: "on the first album, a lot of the songs had been developed with nathan [brown] on drums, before damien joined. this time, it's all damien." because i suck, i can't recall the name of the toon they used to close both their afternoon show at fred's and their first set at the moon, but it's an anthem of epic proportions, sure to take its place next to "march" and "weight" in the goodwin canon. same goes for "revelation of revolution," which features tony in full cry and looking for all the world as if he's been watching old vids of the who or something, except he's stolen all of townshend's moves instead of daltrey's, an indicator of good taste, i s'pose. the dreaded "telekenesis vs. indifference," which is almost prog-like in spots, has come a long way from its earliest live airings, when it left some devoted fans scratching their heads, while "two again" plays to all goodwin's signature strengths. even the revived bindle-ismo of "trading up" doesn't sound out of place, showcasing the, um, _mellower_ side of tony 'n' matt. more than half of their live show is now new (read: unreleased) stuff, and as a unit, they're sounding more assured and playing much harder than they were at a similar stage in the first album's evolution. all of which leads one to the conclusion that the new alb should be a corker.

btw, on the same night all of this was going down, the reverend horton heat, the flametrick subs, and high school caesar were heating up the axis with psychobilly madness, while the brokers, sally majestic, and rudy vasquez jr. were cooling down the black dog with reggae, ska, and dub. as robert ealey usedta say, "you don't get this everywhere!"