Saturday, April 30
Meetwood Flac with C.O.P.S.
Al’s Bar; 601 N. Limestone. 9 P.M.
You ever have those nights where you wake up repeatedly because of your dreams? Not necessarily nightmares, but dreams so vivid, so involving, that they jolt you from sleep, leaving you alert but confused and trying hard to separate observed reality from the imaginary?
When you recall the Meetwood Flac show a few days afterward, you’ll experience something like this half-sleeping, half-waking feeling. Did they really play that song? Did they really sing those lyrics? Was I actually there? Is any this of this even real? Yes, it was real. Or was it?
Noah Wotherspoon
The Crossroad; 286 Southland. 9 P.M.
You’re standing in a desert landscape, alone, by the side of a dusty highway. From a heat mirage out near the vanishing point emerges a convertible Cadillac, ink-black, roaring through the saguaro and mesquite, the Devil himself behind the wheel. And he stops, and you get in. The Devil smiles and drives east, the setting sun white-hot in the mirrors and momentarily blinding you. When the spots clear and you open your eyes, you’re in Chicago, in a basement speakeasy, and the Devil is not to be found. Dazed and well into your cups, you stumble out into a swampy pasture surrounded by stands of cypress and live oak, fall into the muck with a splat, and begin to plead, sobbing and frantic, for forgiveness of your sins.
Is this a dream, then? Or just a collection of images drawn from a long-told narrative—the narrative of the blues, in this case. But who told you this story? Why do we all know it so well? If our daily perception is isolated from the ken of others by time and geography, does that exclude the possibility that another perception, another experience, could be shared and known to all? If we replace the first-person singular with the plural…were not we in a desert, awaiting the Devil in his hellbound chariot? Were not we in that speakeasy? Were not we looking for our collective salvation on a steamy Mississippi flood plain?
We construct our own narratives and yet participate in the narratives we construct together. Such is the duality of existence. You will know this when you see guitarist Noah Wotherspoon at The Crossroad; sit, drink, eat, and say to yourself, this is not Eric Clapton. This is not Howlin’ Wolf. This is not Lonnie Johnson. Then say, yes it is.
Tuesday, May 3
Julia Knight
Natasha’s; 112 Esplanade. 8 P.M.
“I can make you happy, make your dreams come true.” So sings teenage Julia Knight. Miss Knight, therefore, is a shaman. Like a Sonoran nagual she has the power to shift your perception and lead you to a dream-realm well beyond your everyday experience. She is but 14 years old, chirpy and earnest behind her dreadnought Washburn, but appearances deceive, do they not?
The nagual is a shape-shifter, and may or may not choose to drop the mask when you encounter one in your journeys. So you should remain vigilant, lest the day come when your trusted guide appears differently than what you had come to expect. Or maybe it’s you who will have changed, as time passes and our lives wander: what I see of Julia Knight now may not be the same as what I will see in the next phase of my own travels, or what I will see in her when she turns 18. Impossible to predict, but the warrior is ready for all possibilities.
Thursday, May 5
Randy Tuesday with The Bleats
Al’s Bar; 601 N. Limestone. 9 P.M.
David Lynch’s Blue Velvet: freaky, right? From the opening frame, nothing is quite right. The familiar isn’t anymore; characters behave exactly as you’d expect but nothing like they should; colors and sounds, all a shade too bright, a semi-tone sharp. Unreality posing as reality, or the other way around. Or just the sort of world we can choose to step into when we likewise step into, and command, our dreams.
Randy Tuesday plays the soundtrack to an unreleased sequel to Blue Velvet, a rollicking and anarchic film in comparison to its comparatively restrained predecessor, and available only by mail-order on grubby VHS bootlegs from a blind, parentless ten-year-old girl dwelling alone in southern Colorado. The Bleats play the music the blind girl listens to when she has company over.
Sunday, May 8
Hinder with Red, Kopek and Royal Bliss
Buster’s; 899 Manchester. 9 P.M.
The warrior has enemies: some are easily identified by their appearances, but as we have seen, many spirits are able to obscure their true selves, and the most malevolent among them seek to lead the unwary into a beastly place, a place where the music entices but soon grows tedious, a place promising artistic freedom but where corporate shackles lie in steely wait, a place where your intent is hindered.
Oh, surely the pleasures of the flesh are to be had in such a place, if that is your wont. But the warrior is not tempted; the warrior will not allow such damage to his wholeness. Buster’s, then, is the site of a challenge: you may choose to try yourself there for but the price of a ticket, or, if you think yourself unworthy at present, you may wait until the next package tour.
Tuesday, May 10
The Foreign Exchange
Cosmic Charlie’s; 388 Woodland. 8 P.M.
It swings, but it doesn’t swing. Yes, it swings. Producer Nicolay has reached the point in his development as a warrior that he can simultaneously exist in multiple musical planes. It is now well known that Nicolay and fellow-warrior Phonte formed The Foreign Exchange through the Internet (that force that links us all in ways both magnificent and unseemly), and released Connected to wide acclaim in 2004. Then, as now, the sound that emerged from the trans-Atlantic partnership was nothing like the hip hop to which we’d grown accustomed: while the great mass of disposable heroes became ever less musical, The Foreign Exchange sought to expand the genre’s grasp by seamlessly integrating the careful lyricism and head-nodding beats of the Golden Age with far-reaching forays into contemporary electronic and ambient styles.
Their shared warrior path has now delivered Phonte and Nicolay to Lexington, in support of their latest effort, Authenticity. As the title suggests, they have arrived at the point in their spiritual development that they have dispensed with the superficial, inauthentic trappings of Western culture and sought the real, the genuine, and the eternal. If you venture to but one hip hop show this year, let it be this one, and may the jaguar leave your dreams peaceful and fulfilling.
—Buck Edwards
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