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Chris Colepaugh and the Cosmic Crew, Cafe Dekcuf


Guest Low Roller

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Guest Low Roller

Theoretical question: What would happen if ZZ Top, The Supersuckers, and Grateful Dead were all blended together and poured into three cups? The result would be Chris Colepaugh and the Cosmic Crew.

Fun show. Real fun for what it was, but way too short.

The next band? Well let's just say that one guy had a Mr. T t-shirt, the bassist was actually shaved LIKE Mr. T, they looked like Generic White Suburban Punk Rockers Who Have Nothing To Be Angry About Except What the TV Tells Them To Be Angry About, and they started their set with the following prophetic words:

"Are you fucking ready? Are you fucking prepared?"

No apparently I wasn't...

Catphish: "Fuck the gov'ment!"

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It was a fun show. Three bands for three bucks is a pretty good deal. Nice Rack wasn't that bad; they did all covers (and some off-beat ones, like "The Ballad of John and Yoko"), with that more-exuberant-than-competent high-school-band kind of vibe. The bass player (the short blonde who works at Dekcuf) played pretty well (playing bass with her fingers, which even a lot of experienced bassists don't do), the drummer was pretty good, and the guitarists weren't too bad, either. They did "Last Night" by the Strokes at one point, and recovered well, passing the vocal duties from the drummer (whose mic wasn't set up properly) to the (electric) guitarist without missing a beat.

CP & tCC were great right from the start. As soon as they started playing, I had "ZZ Top" flash in my brain. It might have been the trio format, or the bearded guitarist, but mainly it was the music: raw, Les-Paul-through-a-tube-amp heaviousity, with a confident swagger to it. (It was also *loud*: I usually don't have to wear ear plugs at Dekcuf, but I did for these guys.)

For the first half or so of the show, it was mainly straight-up heavy 'Top-infected rock (with a lot of need-a-lot-of-practice quick changes and stops/starts), and great fun. For the last part of the show, though, they whipped it *out*: I don't know the name of the song, but it was as if ZZ Top decided to play "Tommy". It was an epic thing, at least 20 minutes or half an hour long, with several meshing sections. It had the flavour of "First Tube", or maybe "2001" (or maybe both, at different times), and had a groove in which you could lose yourself. A Nugget show with these guys headlining and given room/time to really let it out would be a blast.

About Hard Times, well, Low Roller said as much as needs to be said about them.

Aloha,

Brad

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