`I want to knock you on your ass!”
So says Rocket From The Crypt drummer Atom, and the San Diego sextet has developed a reputation for doing just that.
“We want to make an impression on an audience,” Atom says, with considerable understatement. “We want to put on a great show, have a good time and get everyone else to have a good time.”
With its ever-changing stage wardrobe and blistering guitar attack, Rocket From The Crypt embodies not just punk fervor but a ’70s-era zest for showmanship, plus Jerry Lee Lewis’s addiction to freewheeling fun. It’s an unusual mix in an alternative rock scene still mostly enamored with punk’s anti-performer ethic.
“Enough with the tortured performer routine,” says Atom. “How many people in this world get to do what they love to do? We love to play music, and we get paid for it. How much better could that be?”
Actually, Rocket From The Crypt doesn’t always get paid. In September, the band played a series of free shows across the country. Yet that magnanimous gesture was cynically interpreted by some club owners and scene observers.
“Some people thought our record company funded that tour, that it was a publicity stunt. But we were never paid for any of those shows,” contends Atom. “It cost us more than we expected. We had to sell off our CD collections, some old guitars, my Walkman and other stuff just to eat. Some of the guys played on street corners for pocket change.
“But it was a lot of fun, and we got to play for people who would never get to see us otherwise.”
Rocket From The Crypt is back supporting its stunning new record, “Scream, Dracula, Scream!” In recent years the band has edged away from basic punk with longer, more elaborate tunes. On its new album, a mega-dose of classic R&B grooves is injected into its anthemic rock. The resulting Stax Records-punk mongrel is frothing with some of the most deliriously infectious music to emerge from the indie rock scene in some time.
Rocket From The Crypt headlines a late show at the Metro Saturday.
Yo La Tengo, Friday at the Metro: In the mid-’80s, Yo La Tengo boasted a scintillating blend of adroit guitar playing and ’60s-informed songwriting. Since then, the band’s musical reservoir has burst its banks and seeped into areas as diverse as minimalist droning, feedback filibustering, psychedelia and mono-chord punk. Yo La Tengo’s latest album, “Electro-O-Pura,” orchestrates a sublime symmetry out of the band’s varied musical impulses. A number of memorably beautiful songs are arrayed in ways that transform each into a bit of aural art.
The Pharcyde, Friday at the Park West: The Pharcyde rolls some languid ’70s soul swank into hip-hop’s sometimes cold, cutthroat ‘hood. The California quartet supplants militant beats with airy grooves, bad-boy boasting with randy raps and prickly satire. On its upcoming “Labcabincalifornia” record, the Pharcyde swirls samples of smokey jazz and electric piano into a bonged-out, spacey, yet soulful hip-hop mix. The result is refreshingly twisted rap.
Bjork, Saturday at the Riviera: Bjork’s ability to spin commercial gold from offbeat musical straw is uncanny. The debut record by her previous band, the Sugarcubes, was pimpled with odd, even creepy, rock ‘n’ roll, yet it sold as briskly as the blandest dance-club tripe. Her entrancing sophomore solo record, “Post,” musters a series of smart pop songs in a wide range of moods with unexpectedly original, even bizarre, arrangements. True to form, Bjork currently has an alternative rock hit with, of all things, her rendition of a World War II big band chestnut.
McCoy Tyner Big Band, Friday at Orchestra Hall: Though there are several terrific big bands flourishing in Chicago and across the country, pianist McCoy Tyner’s large ensemble may be the best in the business. Imagine the exuberance and muscularity of Tyner’s two-fisted pianism extended to a large jazz orchestra, and you have a rough idea of the rhythmic fury and sonic force of this ensemble. To hear a jazz band of this size and stature play in Orchestra Hall, where one can hear the kinds of details that typically are lost in a jazz club setting, should be revelatory.
– Howard Reich
John Stewart, Saturday at the Abbey Pub: Though not widely known, John Stewart has drifted like a ghost through the sprawling homestead of American music for 30 years. He learned guitar from Frank Zappa, played with the Kingston Trio from 1961-67, and has since recorded a stream of highly regarded, folksy records that often examined America’s social ills. The Monkees, Joan Baez, the Lovin’ Spoonful, the Four Tops and the Beat Farmers, among others, all have covered Stewart’s songs. His latest record, “Airdream Believer,” mingles new material with re-recorded classics and features cameo appearances by Johnny and Rosanne Cash, Nanci Griffith and Kingston Trio members.
White Zombie, Thursday at the UIC Pavilion: Where some rock acts get a kick out of occasionally affronting good taste, White Zombie assaults it with pathological thoroughness. Once noted mainly for its brutal guitar attack and crude lyrics, White Zombie’s music now boasts the most annoying qualities of almost every musical genre. The band’s recent “Astro Creep: 2000,” is a sleazy sideshow of mechanized industrial noise, repetitive metal riffing and smutty, raw-throated bellowing. White Zombie’s grandiose live show has all the makings of a multimedia trip through the large intestine.
Vassar Clements, Friday at the Abbey Pub: Fiddler Vassar Clements has done it all, from rock and swing to jazz and bluegrass, and each of these elements are mixed into his unique style of hillbilly jazz. His last Chicago appearance found him fronting a local bluegrass group, but tonight he will bring his own band into the Abbey Pub, providing a rare chance to hear Clements playing his original music his way.
– David Duckman
Tindersticks, Wednesday at the Double Door: What energy is to most rock ‘n’ roll, mood is to Tindersticks. This raggedly stylish British sextet stitches together a darkly alluring pop from funereal organ drones, minor key guitar strumming, piquant string arrangements and vocalist Stuart Staples’ richly resonant mumble. Reminiscent of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Tindersticks substitutes Cave’s penchant for American gothic with a weary Continental ennui.
Johnnie Johnson, Saturday at Buddy Guy’s Legends: After attaining rock ‘n’ roll legend status via his piano riffs behind Chuck Berry on most of Berry’s 1950s waxings for Chess Records, Johnnie Johnson is belatedly building a career as a bandleader. Though the laid-back St. Louis-based pianist initially found sitting behind a microphone unsettling, his new album “Johnnie Be Back” finds him coping with the spotlight admirably. His sideman days may not be over, but Johnson’s career as a blues singer is just beginning to blossom.
– Bill Dahl
B.B. King, Sunday at Cubby Bear: Opportunities to enjoy the King of the Blues in a club setting — the sort of comparatively intimate venue where King made his name through endless cross-country one-nighters during the 1950s and ’60s — are rare indeed. That’s why King’s 10:30 p.m. show at Cubby Bear is a sellout (fortunately, a 7 p.m. concert is also slated).
– Bill Dahl
Paul Kelly, Tuesday at Schubas: For almost a decade, Australian Paul Kelly has scrambled for a foothold on America’s precipitous musical shores. Earlier records with his band the Messengers were pitched unsuccessfully at the U.S. rock market. Yet his reputation as a songwriter has taken root, and luminaries like Butch Hancock, Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Kelly Willis have covered his tunes. His latest record, “Deeper Water,” is a solid collection of songs accoutered in a variety of styles.
Cordell Jackson, Thursday at Schubas: Jackson is a 72-year-old guitarist, songwriter, performer, producer and label owner best known for her appearance with Brian Setzer in a Bud commercial a few years ago. She began writing and recording her own music in the late 1940s, and a decade later was performing and documenting some of the earliest rock ‘n’ roll on her Moon Records label. She’s the real thing.
