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Ugly ducklings
Graveyard BBQ, Heathen Shame, and ‘Open Sound’
BY WILL SPITZ
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Coyote Ugly, the local franchise of the hot-bartender saloon chain celebrated in a cheesy 2000 movie, is about as far removed from Boston rock-hipsterdom as you can get. Which may have been why Waltham’s Graveyard BBQ fit right in. A week ago Thursday, the group answered the age-old question of what happens when you combine Creedence Clearwater Revival with AC/DC, Lynyrd Skynyrd with Pantera, real beards with fake beards, and Confederate flags with pentagrams. Marrying Southern-fried slide-guitar swamp with classic hard rock, the BBQ seemed right at home amid the heavy drinking, alpha-male-dominated crowd (sample T-shirt: American flag with the slogan "Support the best/Fuck the rest"). Brownbag Johnson melted faces with white-hot wah-wahing guitar leads, and drummer Peterbilt Wilson — also known as Dave Pino, former guitar player and mastermind behind both Waltham and Damone — provided ’70s-era four-on-the-floor beats, proving he’s more than just a master shredder and pop craftsman. Following a cover medley that included Thin Lizzy’s "Jailbreak" and Ted Nugent’s "Cat Scratch Fever," three of the four females from opening band the And Wutz hopped on stage in Graveyard BBQ T-shirts — low-cut for added titillation — to shake and sway in unison and offer caresses and back-up vocals: "I’m just a barbecue girl/I’m just a barbecue." "Wanna pick a note?", Heathen Shame’s Kate Village asked her mates a week ago Wednesday at P.A.’s Lounge in Union Square. "How about E?" Then she plucked the note out on her hollow-bodied guitar, allowing it to swell into oscillating feedback before trumpeter Greg Kelley and guitarist (and fellow Twisted Village Records owner) Wayne Rogers joined in. That was all the preparation they needed; for the next 20 minutes, the trio didn’t look back. Kelley played his trumpet into a hand-held SM58 mike run through a gaggle of effects pedals, Rogers attacked his beyond-overdriven guitar, and Village used an oversized urn as a slide, eliciting an ungodly sound — harsh and at the same time oddly soothing. Who ever said that practice makes perfect? UMass-Dartmouth professors Jorrit Dijkstra and Ken Ueno didn’t even bother to rehearse for their debut as an improvised duo last Friday at the NAO Gallery in SoWa. With Andy Zimmerman’s arresting "Light from Two Sides" art exhibit providing the visual backdrop, Dijkstra played an alto saxophone and a lyricon — an analog electronic wind synthesizer — and then processed, sampled, and looped himself using a myriad of electronic gadgets. Ueno manipulated the sound across four channels (through four speakers in each corner of the small room) by using a PowerBook and light-sensitive photocells that reacted to the movements of two mini flashlights. The effect was hypnotizing; Portland’s Skot Spear, who goes by the alias id m theft able, went on afterward and seemed a bit childish and indulgent in comparison, if just as gutsy. More performance artist than musician, Spear trotted out an arsenal of odd exclamations: making fart sounds and Donald Duck noises with his mouth; splashing and blowing bubbles in a bowl of water; eliciting squeaks by rubbing his fingers on the wet table; playing a toy trumpet; squishing Suave conditioner in his hands — the sort of thing children do in the bathtub. The show was the second installment of OpenSound, a monthly event that Tim Feeney initiated last month as part of NAO director Karine Jouenne’s "Experimental Atelier" program. (See Randi Hopkins’s "Museums & Galleries" column in the Arts & Entertainment section.) For more information, visit www.naogallery.info Will Spitz can be reached at wspitz[a]phx.com
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