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Carry That Weight
A crowd of maybe 400 clustered into a field in the middle of the South Knox County woods Saturday night to see an unusual four-piece band six weeks before an engagement at Carnegie Hall. They looked, from a considerable distance, a good deal like the Beatles. The early Beatles, right about 40 years ago, that is. The tribute band, 1964, played in a field that’s part of the John Sevier home site on John Sevier Highway. The band sticks to those earliest years, the clean-shaven, suit-and-tie Ed Sullivan, Hard Day’s Night years when the Beatles were actually performing in public.
The Faux Fab Four played a set of maybe an hour and a half, “I Wanna Hold Your Hand,” “Twist and Shout,” “Ticket To Ride,” “She Loves You.” The latest song they performed was “Yellow Submarine,” about the only tune they did that wasn’t pre-Revolver. Several of the songs sounded astonishingly close to the early Columbia LPs from which most of them were taken. George’s guitar licks on “Eight Days a Week” made some of us think they were faking it all with a good recording. They also reminded us that the Beatles, remembered best today as songwriters, did a lot of covers in their early years: Carl Perkins, Chuck Berry.
We’d heard that we wouldn’t believe our eyes, but actually we did. It wasn’t the Beatles, but four middle-aged guys in suits who could play pretty well. “Paul,” even owlier than the real Paul, is also sturdier-built, and probably not even capable of the giddy loose-limbedness of the original. “George” resembled George, though his hair was a bit too long for 1964; he looked a good deal more like Bill Wyman of the Rolling Stones, which may be his day job. “John” was a cigar-store Indian with a wig; he seemed to have left his manic unpredictability and trademark smirk at home; he spent the evening standing at stage left, chewing gum. He looked a little bit as if the weirdness of his chosen career was getting to him, and he was thinking of bolting and marrying a Japanese performance artist.
“Ringo,” however, looked astonishingly like Ringo, even perfecting the full-lipped scowl that always seemed to afflict the drummer when he was preoccupied.
Vocally, John, Paul, and George were pretty close to the mark, though their Everlyesque harmonies weren’t quite right. Singing Carl Perkins’ “Matchbox,” “Ringo” sounded less like Ringo than like Carl Perkins himself.
The band has gotten raves in the press and has been praised even by George Harrison’s sister, who has hosted parties for the blokes. They’ve been together for 20 years, more than twice as long as the real boys could stand each other.
Opening was the local New-Wave/1980s nostalgia band, the Throwbacks, who must have seemed, to the Fab Four, futuristic. Adding to the overall anachronism of the evening were a few historical characters from about 200 years ago, a mock-Gov. John Sevier and his wife Bonnie Kate, roving amongst the audience.
The crowd, dominated by folks old enough to remember, asking the barber for a “Beatles cut,” seemed a little stunned. And we have to admit that seeing the Beatles, or any rough approximation thereof, in the darkening South Knox County woods, is the weirdest thing we expect to see this year.
On The World-Wide Web
The best way to find out about local bands is to go out and see them perform. But if you’re a fan of pre-show research, or like to listen to local music in the comfort of your own living quarters, Knoxbands.com could soon become your new favorite web site.
Still in its launch period, Knoxbands.com was started by Candace Brown and three friends, a quartet Brown describes as “just a few people that want to really boost and spotlight the music scene in the Knoxville area.
“It seems if you want to catch a show or hear about a local band, you really have to do a lot of digging for not much information,” she says. “We want to push the bands to the forefront allowing them to let people try out their music. Also, we want to make concerts more visible by constantly hyping upcoming shows.”
Currently the site is averaging 5,000 hits a day and has 43 members who have been actively posting on Knoxbands.com’s bulletin boards.
What remains to be filled is the site’s chewy center, that bevy of local band content. To get bands involved, the site crew hosted an open house of sorts at Guitar Center on July 17 and recruited 35-40 bands whose profiles, mp3 clips, photos and other info will be posted for our browsing pleasure.
Brown asserts that Knoxbands.com will fulfill a heretofore-unmet need by connecting local bands with fans of international origin.
“We’re hoping that more and more people will come to our site and discover a multitude of bands,” she says, claming that, “There are no sites that cover the breadth and depth of Knoxville-based bands. The current sites are either not created by locals, or they have managed to attract a single genre specific audience to the exclusion of everyone else.”
Although plenty of local bands maintain their own sites of varying informational worth, Knoxbands.com has the potential to be a one-stop-shopping source for details about bands playing around town. Then we can all determine, once and for all, the difference between Jomo and Mojo.
Go.
Thursday: The American Plague, finishing up a new record, is headlining Knox Metal Fest at the Grand Square Ballroom (near Emory Road) with Straight Line Stitch, Psychotic Behavior and Redwinterdying. If that’s too heavy for you, go see the Mito Band at the Pilot Light for fun.
Friday: Have fun with The Ghosts at Manhattans. It’s Friday—don’t leave the bar until they toss you out.
Saturday: The Bijou is the best sounding room in Knoxville and it’d be a damn shame if we lost it. Help save it by listening to some great music by Robinella, The Roddy Branch Bluegrass Band and Dark Hollow Band.
Sunday: Eat a nice brunch at either the Tomato Head or the Downtown Grill & Brewery. Then get lost in the woods.
Monday: Write a letter to someone you love.
Tuesday: Contemplate sobriety over gin and tonics.
Wednesday: Like “Joliet” awaiting her “Rummio”—duss will I await Ignatz, upon, and among a belcony and evva thing... Oy, why comes he not, why comes he not? Wear four is thou, ‘Ignatz,’ and why?
—Jack Neely, Paige M. Travis
July 29, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 31
© 2004 Metro Pulse
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