Peace, Love and All That Jazz
Allman Brothers bassist Oteil Burbridge is one of those musicians who's über-talented but often overlooked because of the star power of his bandmates. The laid-back, often barefoot Burbridge packs a scat-singing, jazz-infused punch, his technical prowess and stellar improv skills better showcased in his own band, Oteil and the Peacemakers. Though their studio stuff is a little too smooth and soulful for my taste, their live shows are a funkin' good time. In fact, the last time the Peacemakers came to town, they locked in on some booty-shakin' grooves early on, getting the crowd nice and lubed up before raging through Jimi Hendrix's "Power to Soul" like nobody's business. If you missed that show, don't make the same mistake twice.
Oteil and the Peacemakers w/Buffalo Strange, 8 p.m. Fri., Dec. 8 @ Skipper's Smokehouse, 910 Skipper Road, Tampa; $12 in advance, $15 d.o.s. —Leilani Polk
Anything Goes
Over the last couple of years, screwed-up genre-destroying local shows have become a welcome Bay area tradition, with indie-rock bands sharing the stage with hip-hop MCs, jam outfits playing after solo singer-songwriters, and general stylistic mayhem ensuing. Musical and promotional co-ops like GwanMassive and Tastemakers have been serving the local-music equivalent of Mongolian Barbecue to open-minded fans at small venues in Ybor and St. Pete, and the scenesters have developed a taste for these anything-goes shindigs.
Tonight, the Crate Brothers DJ/production collective offers up the second installment of its Cold Wars series. Gainesville performance art/psyche-pop purveyors Morningbell return to town to finish out a wildly eclectic slate of talent that also includes Crate Bros member Mes, skewed St. Pete electro maestro Holiday and noisy Orlando garage-rock-meets-hip-hop outfit The Bloodthirsty Caterpillars.
Cold Wars 2, 9 p.m. Fri., Dec. 8 @ Orpheum, Ybor City; $7. —Scott Harrell
UFO Sighting
Early on, Illinois' Planes Mistaken for Stars were often dismissed as another addition to the burgeoning late-'90s emo woodpile — hey, given the name and fact that they showed up on the third installment of Deep Elm's The Emo Diaries compilation, it was an easy mistake to make. But PMfS were never really emo. They started as a noisily cathartic posthardcore outfit; now, they're a genuinely, mesmerizingly creepy posthardcore outfit with actual songs. They're a band like no other; the stuff is sort of melodic, sort of dissonant and all-out visceral — vocalist Gared O'Donnell's, er, unique singing style is as simultaneously jagged and hypnotic as the music itself. Michigan's similarly taut North Atlantic share space at the top of a bill rounded out by Central Florida's mellower and slightly out-of-place Mouse Fire and Tampa's own, ballistic The Holy Mountain and Elysium.
Planes Mistaken for Stars w/The North Atlantic/The Holy Fire/Mouse Fire/Elysium, 8 p.m. Sat., Dec. 9 @ Crowbar, Ybor City; $8. —SH
This article appears in Dec 6-12, 2006.
