225BatonRouge.com - Blogs

Friday night was a superb way to start out 2007’s live music calendar. Four widely divergent local bands took over the Spanish Moon, each offering their own facet of the local music scene. First, Secret Annexe emerged with a clutch of new songs and a tighter, more focused sound. I’ve always been impressed how this band, which often swells to 7 people on stage, keeps things in check, but they’ve tightened their Fleetwood-Mac-meets-Icicle-Works-in-a-mushroom-patch sound.

Slobot is another band that keeps evolving, moving further away from their B-52’s/K Records cuteness, and onto wilder terrain. I was a fan of the earlier, cuddlier Slobot, but change is good. Musicians are not customer service providers, or not yet anyway.

Dimestore Troubadours brought their backwoods blues carnival death rattle next. The sepia tone of the banjo and accordion mixed nicely with their gruff idiom. Their songs are like finding daguerreotypes in the crawlspace, offering up a conduit to an unknown spooky past when the long dead are brought to light. The indebtedness they have to fellow blues surrealist Tom Waits is inescapable in the band’s delivery, but then almost every band sounds like someone else before them, and Tom Waits has furrowed a pretty weird path to follow. It’s great gritty stuff, definitely a little moonshine needed in the reservoir. It also bears mentioning that DT drummer Creighton Durrant and banjoist Brian Kees are formidable bar trivia competitors. I would like to see, (and this should not be viewed as a short-coming or indictment of Dimestore Troubadours) and maybe this exists and I haven’t seen it, some cross-pollination with this kind of dust-filled noir-garage and local blues musicians, generating something truly wild.

Finishing up the bill was local funk outfit The Black Box (my first time seeing these guys). Now, I like some funk and can accept that there are some limiting parameters in this genre, but like in just about all music, I really like it when things start to sound dangerous, like screws are being shaken loose. You can get this in exquisite doses with funk, as the horns and bass nudge the band ever closer to the precipice, pulling back at the last second, but I didn’t really get that from The Black Box. They were good, better than average but I never got that sense of danger in them. A woman at the bar remarked about the fact that “the black box” is what records your last words as the plane goes down. But, what’s in a name? It's really not much of a complaint when the funk band at the end of a music-packed evening failed to set a meltdown in action. They offered a great dessert to a full meal of the local music scene; one that I hope is a portent of things to come for 2007.

Here we are, now entertain us

Thursday, January 11: The House Harkonnen, Jack Fate and ConCoCtion are at North Gate Tavern. Another Big Machine is at the Varsity Theatre. Canvas Red is at The Caterie.

Friday, January 12: Rudy Richard is at Phil Brady’s. Starscream's Revenge, Stanger than Angels and 7 Deadly Sins are at North Gate Tavern. Fleur De Tease: Live Burlesque Show is at Spanish Moon. Otherwise is at The Caterie. Ten 13 Concept, Sticky Bandits, Downtown Fiasco and Death to Juliet are at The Darkroom.

Saturday, January 13: The Way High Men are at Spanish Moon. Common Curtis performs two shows at The Caterie (all ages at 5 p.m. and 18-plus at 10 p.m.). A Cup Of Tea and Tuesday's Debut are at North Gate Tavern. Death Before Dishonor, First Blood, Dead Hearts and Bloodlined Calligraphy are at The Darkroom.

Tuesday, January 16: Unknown Hinson and Zenbilly are at Spanish Moon.

Wednesday, January 17: Fred Weaver and Chris Brokaw (of Codeine and Come fame) will be at Spanish Moon. Will Hoge, The Drams and Marah are at Chelsea’s Café.