The Black Crowes
Charlottesville Pavilion
Saturday, September 9
music On a beautiful late-summer night, The Black Crowes brought their Southern rock style and drawn-out jams to the Charlottesville Pavilion. The Crowes, best known for early hits like “Hard to Handle” and “Jealous Again,” played a rockin’ two-set show, plus encore, without any distractions. Although the band went light on the hits (they didn’t really play them, except for “She talks to Angels” and “Twice as Hard”), the energy was high, and the sound crew got it right, with the show sounding great both under the lobster trap and on the lawn.
Founded in the late ’80s by brothers Chris and Rich Robinson, the Crowes have had a rocky history—achieving near-instant success with 1990’s Shake your Money Maker, then gradually losing steam through internecine battles (Chris and Rich have a notoriously contentious relationship) and a changing lineup over the years. But the band has maintained a loyal fan base—with numerous Internet message boards and a Dead-like music-swapping culture—and is now touring heavily and planning for a new album in 2007.
True to form, the Crowes honored the jam-band tradition of playing a completely unique set at their Pavilion show. While the current lineup features a new keyboard player and guitarist, as well as a couple of backup singers who really didn’t sing that much, the song (mostly) remains the same: blues-inflected rock reminiscent of classic ’70s outfits like the Faces and the Allman Brothers Band. Backed by guitar licks that could have easily been played by Warren Haynes or Dickey Betts, Chris Robinson sang, played a little guitar and harmonica, and did his trademarked swivel-hipped hippie dance while the band jammed away behind him. Overall, the band was in fine form, and the song selection—which included a nice version of “Up on Cripple Creek”—was consistently interesting and unexpected. Sure, it would have been nice to hear “Hard to Handle”—but in the end, it was satisfying just to see these old Crowes exploring old tunes and new sounds with renewed vigor, and deftly avoiding the pitfall of becoming a state-fair nostalgia act.—Bjorn Turnquist
No Gods No Monsters
The Outback Lodge
Friday, September 8
music When vocalist Bob Davidson and drummer Jon Hartline left local rock band No Gods No Monsters last year, the fate of the group was anyone’s guess. But if their September 8 show at The Outback Lodge is an indication of things to come, No Gods No Monsters is in it for the long haul.
The show opened with a long set by In Tenebris, a band worth keeping an eye on. The videogame/pop feel of the group’s keyboard and synth intros seemed at odds with their heavy guitar riffs, but the soaring, ghostly voice of lead singer Christina Fleming made it all work, imbuing the group’s music with a unity of feeling and sound.
If In Tenebris gave the audience heavy guitar riffs, then No Gods No Monsters smashed the crowd with 10 tons of molten metal. Guitarists Matt Singleton and Hal Brigish, the two members of the band who survived last year’s exodus of talent, proved their technical chops from the very first song, breezing through hard and fast solos without breaking a sweat.
Vocalist Tony Pugh’s voice lacks the range of, say, a young Ozzy Osbourne—but what he might be missing in the higher octaves, he more than makes up for with enthusiasm. In between shots and the odd beer on stage, the mohawked vocalist kept up the hard rock vibe with bouts of fist-pumping and cries of “Let’s rock!” His confidence on stage was evident throughout the set.
Bassist Cory Tietelbaum and drummer Clay Caricofe provided a solid, but otherwise unnoticeable, performance—until they suddenly flooded the room with sound during “I Don’t Cry For Yesterday.” The onslaught was so loud, so fast and so hard-hitting that it moved members of the audience to spontaneous bouts of completely unironic head-banging.
The show really took off from there, with Pugh reeling off song after song about women and revolution. “God and Killer” featured a guitar-and-bass intro worthy of Metallica at their heaviest, and “The Black Machine” even inspired an impromptu mosh pit.
All in all, both performances proved well worth the price of admission…and walking around half-deaf the next day.—David T. Roisen
My Pet Virus
By Shawn Decker
Penguin, 240 pages
words While most of us spent portions of our childhoods blubbering over insignificant problems and tiny quirks of fate, Charlottesville resident Shawn Decker endured two thunderous blows. First, at an early age, he was diagnosed as a hemophiliac. And then, at age 11, tainted blood resulted in him becoming HIV-positive.
Decker was born in Waynesboro in 1975. His new book, My Pet Virus, partly recounts his boyhood: a strange brew of absolute normalcy (such as fumbling attempts to unlock the secrets of human sexuality via Penthouse and a dirty movie), and the constant presence of medical realities, effecting his family and—after his father outed him as HIV-positive—his wider social circle. The book also explores his adult life as both a regular human being with a normal marriage to beauty-pageant veteran Gwenn Barringer, and an AIDS activist who knows whereof he speaks.
Given such a delicate subject, how can any critic bear to scan the book for weaknesses? Fortunately, that’s not necessary. Decker writes about his life with welcome depth and bracing humor.
“Being pegged with a medical condition can be a real downer,” he says a few paragraphs into the book. Such a colloquial and chummy approach spells shallowness, but, as is typical of the rest of the book, this tone quickly gives way to more intricate material, where the power of the imagination wages war on uncontrollable circumstances. The rest of the paragraph is an etymological attack on medical lingo that reaches a compelling crescendo: “So I came up with a new word for the modern-day hemophiliac: ‘thin-blood.’”
Decker’s humor (soon after the above-mentioned paragraph, he remarks that a good Indian name “for someone of my ilk would be Bleeds Like Waterfall”) raises a question. Is it escapist—a ruse to commandeer our attention, or sincere?
There’s not a false note in the whole book. As a young adult, after his grandmother’s funeral, he writes that he had “a new guardian angel in my grandmother, who was now in Heaven making cafeteria-style lunches for her favorite dead liberals.” Add Decker’s unique situation to the fact that this is the kind of thought we all come up with to relieve death’s sting, and you have layered, resonant writing.
Later, when describing his new marriage to his HIV-negative wife, he says: “The cloak of romance prevented either of us from fully confronting what was going on, which is why it took Gwenn a while to realize that such a stud, capable of fulfilling one’s every fantasy, could be…sick?” Yes, it’s difficult to imagine being Shawn Decker, but passages such as this one, swimming in vulnerability yet revealing through whimsy a capacity for courage, make knowing him easy.—Doug NordforsOn a beautiful late-summer night, The Black Crowes brought their Southern rock style and drawn-out jams to the Charlottesville Pavilion. The Crowes, best known for early hits like “Hard to Handle” and “Jealous Again,” played a rockin’ two-set show, plus encore, without any distractions. Although the band went light on the hits (they didn’t really play them, except for “She talks to Angels” and “Twice as Hard”), the energy was high, and the sound crew got it right, with the show sounding great both under the lobster trap and on the lawn.
Founded in the late ’80s by brothers Chris and Rich Robinson, the Crowes have had a rocky history—achieving near-instant success with 1990’s Shake your Money Maker, then gradually losing steam through internecine battles (Chris and Rich have a notoriously contentious relationship) and a changing lineup over the years. But the band has maintained a loyal fan base—with numerous Internet message boards and a Dead-like music-swapping culture—and is now touring heavily and planning for a new album in 2007.
True to form, the Crowes honored the jam-band tradition of playing a completely unique set at their Pavilion show. While the current lineup features a new keyboard player and guitarist, as well as a couple of backup singers who really didn’t sing that much, the song (mostly) remains the same: blues-inflected rock reminiscent of classic ’70s outfits like the Faces and the Allman Brothers Band. Backed by guitar licks that could have easily been played by Warren Haynes or Dickey Betts, Chris Robinson sang, played a little guitar and harmonica, and did his trademarked swivel-hipped hippie dance while the band jammed away behind him. Overall, the band was in fine form, and the song selection—which included a nice version of “Up on Cripple Creek”—was consistently interesting and unexpected. Sure, it would have been nice to hear “Hard to Handle”—but in the end, it was satisfying just to see these old Crowes exploring old tunes and new sounds with renewed vigor, and deftly avoiding the pitfall of becoming a state-fair nostalgia act.