Ken Loaf at the Shakedown Wednesday, July 20, 2012

Ken Loaf as Meat Loaf - Shakedown 2012
Photo by S. Casey

Ken Loaf at the Shakedown

Wednesday, July 20, 2012

Waiting for the spectacle. This evening is all about the magnificence of Ken Loaf. Ken sings Meat Loaf songs at the local karaoke nights. Along with his “producer,” Zach Zinn, he hope to get enough money from this show to attend a Meat Loaf concert. Now, he is standing on the stage ramp at the Shakdown, collecting his thoughts, perhaps working himself up to channel the force of musical nature that is Michael Lee Aday. 

There is method to his madness, allowing the anticipation to build, more shots to be downed. The crowd is drunk and getting slightly unruly. Zack Zinn, master of all things karaoke, is on stage introducing. Then Ken Loaf ascends in all of his majesty of scarves and perspiration, announces he is "ready to rock.” The crowd is chanting: “Let’s Go! Ken Loaf!” over and over. 

It begins... Ken has the suit, the scarf, the hair, the beard, the comportment and gravitas of Meat Loaf down to an art. The red scarf there in his hand like a ribbon of blood. All the drama in his expression: the bulging eyes, the trembling high notes. Ken has an excellent voice. This is karaoke taken to the n^th extreme, karaoke porn. There is something sweet about it all. No trains wrecking at all.  Just one car stopped at the station for a man who is obsessed with Meat Loaf: Ken Loaf. With each song, he gains more confidence, becomes more Meat Loafian. The crowd waving lit lighters, chanting as Ken Loaf takes another shot. “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad” shines like a diamond. “I’d Do Anything for Love” is performed as a Mystery Play where the spirit of Meat Loaf is crucified on the form of Ken Loaf and all the beauty and pain emerge as pure song. 

Ken Loaf as Meat Loaf - Shakedown 2012
Photo by S. Casey

Ken Loaf as Meat Loaf - Shakedown 2012
Photo by S. Casey

Ken Loaf as Meat Loaf - Shakedown 2012
Photo by S. Casey

Black Breath, Leatherhorn, Beattofuckingdeath – Shakedown – December 23rd, 2011

Black Breath, Leatherhorn, Beattofuckingdeath – Shakedown
December 23, 2011 - source

Black Breath, Leatherhorn, Beattofuckingdeath – Shakedown

December 23rd, 2011

Beattofuckingdeath. The Germanic Teutonic pulse thundering under Set H’s sticks. Jeff Debock dedicating songs to Jon Benet Ramsey, himself, berating the crowd to get fucking stupid, reeling into the crowd gathered around their set-up in front of the stage, moving from surreal banter to full throated scream. Short explosive pieces, not songs, more like deconstructions of silence, Zach’s guitar creating violent feedback laden odes to the joke of the world. Debock dressed in an outlandish Antarctic pimp suit careening around like a skeletal windmill covered with meat, a psychotic pinwheel spinning off sprays of blood/ rage filled vocals into the crowd, all seeming like they would like to take a step or two back. You wonder, maybe worry, that Debock is holding razors in his hand, ready to gut the first row because they aren't being "rowdy" enough.

The redemption of Leatherhorn. Hooded figures working obscurely on the stage drenched in blood red light, skull lamps glowing in either side. Like a chainsaw through sheet metal, Leatherhorn begins. Jeff’s vocals rise up operatic over the metal, moving through time changes, melodic warps and slides. Driven by Clapper’s relentless bass and Noah’s machine gun artillery drumming, they launch into “Meet the Beast.” This is war music. No quarter. Just beautiful slaughter. A musical analogy to the annihilation of the listener. Sean and Nathan’s guitars spit hot white arc light from the welded metal. Imagine all the lost souls in hell given one last chance to play their pain. Picture a horse ridden to death and then kicked to a bass beat like the thunder of the Gotterdammerung.

Lightning burning into the brain, frying out neurons. There is good metal and great metal. Then there is apocalyptic metal. Leatherhorn: cutting the head off of the pale horse, calling down the wrath of the gods, destroying mountains metal.


http://leatherhorn.bandcamp.com/


Black Breath wastes no time. Volcanic rumblings from Elijah’s bass and Jamie’s drums. The sound of flesh screaming across metal strings, pounding like the last heart beats of a dying world. Mark and Eric’s guitars wailing through arpeggios, the ghost of complex classical music buried under the rumbling of enormous machines, Segovia and Bach spinning in their graves until the earth catches fire.

Fresh off a European tour, Black Breath’s sound is tight and professional. Polished. Practiced. Cut down from the raw like a diamond. Neil launches into one song after another. No waiting for applause. A relentless onslaught of beautiful noise. They have a sound you want to call heavy, but it is heavier than that. A black hole of musical gravity. Dense compaction, music reduced down to a singularity. A still point of a burning universe.

Imagine a theater of anatomy constructed of sound, where a corpse/song is being dissected with sardonic enthusiasm. What is irrelevant is thrown splattering against the walls, what matters is held up like the still beating heart of a recently slaughtered animal. Primal music. Driving towards the necessity of sacrifice, of any sort of intense gesture, authentic act for the times. The music is out to crucify everyone here, nailing the flesh to the walls of the Shakedown. An aural assault, notes piercing through the skull to impale the brain on violent hooks, songs suspended over the crowd like the Cherokee sun dance practitioners, hanging in the dark shadows of the Shakedown, dripping blood, eyes rolled up in the skull, dreams of violent ecstasy. Sort of music Georges Bataille would play while desecrating corpses.


http://blackbreath.com/

Footstompin Trio, The Cheeps and Chris Con Carne at the Shakedown - June 10, 2011

Footstompin Trio - Shakedown - source

Footstompin Trio, The Cheeps and Chris Con Carne at the Shakedown

Friday, June 10, 2011


Friday night show at the Shakedown. The ghosts of how many clubs rising up from their graves to moan in some sort of wicked benediction for the powerhouse bill of  Footstompin Trio, The Cheeps, Chris Con Carne. I am here mostly for Footstompin Trio because just about every third person that I know in Bellingham told me that I had to go check them out. Supposed to represent everything that Bellingham used to be. 3B and that Xeroxed flyers age represented. Pacific Northwest hard-core hillbilly soul. Had to hear it to believe it.

Walk in late, sadly missing Chris Lamb and Dan Lowinger’s Delta Blues slide steel thunder drum duopolis Chris Con Carne – which I hear puts the Black Keys to shame. What is going on is The Cheeps. Imagine early White Stripes garage punk with a more fuck ass drummer and Leather Pants, lead singer, ripping his throat raw while channeling Roky Erickson in the insane asylum and a Tommy James strung out on a bad speedball run. Just relentless. Whips of sweet noise cracking out over the capacity crowd during favorites “Anything New Please” and “Don’t Cry for Me.”

Next up on the block: local legends Footstompin Trio remaining true to perfect form. Conjuring up the ghosts of Buck Owens, Link Wray and Carl Perkins, the Trio possessed the stage in a manner that made you wonder if the the 3B had ever gone away. Dan Lowinger dominated on vocals and guitar managing to simultaneously evoke Hank Williams and Screamin Jay Hawkins. Stell Newsome spit blood next to him and would have made Dick Dale proud. This was balls-out hillbilly rockabilly that had everyone feeling like someone had spiked the Ranier with White Lightning LSD. Their cover of Jerry Reed's Mr. Wiz lit the place on fire and kept most wondering when Jeff Gray's slap bass was going to spontaneously combust. While Tom Forster’s back woods rhythm took the crowd into some weird voodoo rockabilly trance. At the end, the rousing encore of Wray's Run Chicken Run left no doubt as to who had ripped the bones out of the commodified corpse of modern day Rockabilly and made the skeleton dance.

Thank all the devils down in the belly of Bellingham for the Shakedown and their continuing efforts to reanimate the best of what was and electrify the best of what is. Although ever hopeful bone in your body shivers against it, this sort of show is what makes a great music town. You know every musician in the crowd – and there were more than a few - felt the resonance of that long snake moaning against the brick walls of that old building and thought: this is it is all about, this is worth living for, this is some good fucking music.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/the-footstompin-trio/id275061985

Originally written for What's Up!