We arrived at Skipper's Smokehouse a half-hour later than expected. Disoriented by our, um, pre-concert routine, we found certain aspects of navigation difficult from the outset; a tricky detour on Fletcher complicated matters even further. By the time we arrived, the Glass Camels had finished their set, and the Radiators' roadies were going to work.
I'm interning at the Loaf this summer, and I'd never been to Skipper's. The place struck me as something conceived by Jimmy Buffet during a bout of delirium tremens — though Mr. Buffett's brand of surf-blah was mercifully absent from the evening's soundtrack. If I were a rumrunner with a blues habit, Skipper's is where I'd hide.
The Radiators are a New Orleans hot-licks combo into which the collective rhythmic ability of the white race seems to have been consolidated; these guys fucking breathe in syncopation. The music is all reckless precision, with coiled guitar choreography, systematic squeals and harmonic funk.
Sunday night's set (ballad-free!) was geared toward dancing, replete with rockers and jump-blues and second-line beats. Let me put it this way: If Chuck Berry, James Brown and Dr. John decided to make a splash at Bonnaroo, they'd sound a hell of a lot like this.
Twenty-nine years of touring hasn't slowed these guys one bit. They played with serious showmanship and musical generosity — guitarists Camile Baudoin and Dave Malone punctuated the lyrics and rhythm lines with percussive humor, turning to each other now and then to laugh at a sly musical joke.
But the intelligence of the interplay didn't smooth over the rough edges — the compositions and arrangements were tight and chops-driven but full of barreling crunch. Main songwriter Ed Volker was a mad soul scientist behind the keyboard, sweating into his Amish-style beard, fluttering his eyelids, puffing out his cheeks and belting with righteous élan.
The centerpiece of the set was an uninterrupted series of originals scattered with teasers from the classic-rock songbook — a "Suzie Q" here, Hendrix's "Fire" there. The riff from "Mississippi Queen" popped in just to say "hey" before three minutes of "Blue Sky" guitar harmony carried the boys into the next original. The jams were varied and versatile without becoming goulash. After a while, the blues riffs serving as jam-structure can get a bit hard to tell apart, but do we impugn the Allmans for that? I don't, anyway. Not when the music cooks like this.
The Radiators made themselves right at home at Skipper's, a place they've played countless times. And as the encore (Them's "Gloria") proved, they kept cooking long after the kitchen closed.
I'm no metalhead, but I'd always appreciated Slayer, a band that found an intriguing middle ground between classic- and death-metal and punk. Their rhythm and guitar onslaught is brutal, but the music has just enough melody, and the singer is just tuneful enough, to keep it in the realm of what I know as rock 'n' roll.
So I went to see Slayer last Friday at the Ford Amp, opening for Marilyn Manson. When the band took the stage in front of 30 — count 'em, 30 — Marshall amplifiers, it was still light out. Not the perfect ambience. After the first buzzsaw number, someone in the crowd yelled "Turn it up!" And he was right. I'm usually the last to complain about moderate volume at a rock concert, but what's a Slayer show if it doesn't bludgeon your ears a little?
The set quickly became monotonous, the same uptempo grind in a muddy mix — essentially one song that lasted more than an hour. Slayer definitely overstayed their welcome Friday night. It was the first time I saw the band. Wouldn't be surprised if it were my last. —Eric Snider
This article appears in Aug 1-7, 2007.
