As loyal readers will remember, I don't normally cover Southern Rock shows.  I'm the head (and sole member) of The Well, Mag33's punk section.   In all honesty, I rarely listen to Southern Rock, and I know very little about it.  So I decided I'd review the show as the only person I know who listens to Southern Rock - my old roommate, Texas Dave.

Method-journalism!  It's the way of the future!  Reporters playing characters to do interviews, and examine stories from alternate perspectives!  Finally, we can lay the hackneyed myth of objective reporting to rest, admit everyone has their own biases, and instead of trying to hide those biases, reporters can embrace them, and tailor them to fit their audience!  Honestly ladies and gentleman, there are times when even I am amazed by my own genius.

I started getting in to character the afternoon before the show, sitting around in my living room with no shirt on, watching Law and Order reruns, and listening to all the Lynyrd Skynyrd I have on my iPod (3 songs, all "Sweet Home Alabama").

When evening came around, I drank Jack and Cokes until I ran out of Coke, then I dipped tobacco and shot straight Jack Daniels for another hour.

Once I finished puking, I donned a Hawaiian shirt, work boots, and a straw cowboy hat, and stumbled off to the show, arriving just in time to miss the first band.  The horse-humping-thunder-cunt working the door claimed he'd never heard of Ratso, or Magazine33, so I had to shell out ten bucks to get in.

After a few minutes, the second act, a local Richmond band called Horsehead, came on.  They were fun, I've got to give them that.  Real balls-to-the-wall, heavy rock and roll.  But, and maybe this is Ratso shining through the Texas Dave here, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was watching a high school production of Hamlet.  Technically, everything was great, but there was a total lack of passion in their songs.  I never for one moment believed they really did, or felt, the things that they sung about.  They're a very good band, but barring some radical changes, they're never going to be great.

Between the two bands I badgered a friend into loaning me five bucks so I could get another Jack and Coke at the bar, where I met Zach, the manager for the headlining band, Sons of Bill.  Unfortunately, he told me he didn't think an interview with the band was going to be possible.  He was a real nice guy though, and he didn't call me on my fake southern accent, even when we realized we were from the same northern city.

Then SOB came on, and I've got to say, they were really great.  All the substance that Horsehead was missing, they had in spades.  Some of their lyrics struck me as a bit cliché, but every word felt so real, if they said they shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die, I would have called the police right then and there.

Stylistically, they mixed a lot of really great country music themes and riffs together with all this rock and roll energy, which was a lot of fun.  They sound like what would happen if Willie Nelson killed James Hetfield and took over Metallica, forcing them to play his songs at gunpoint.  Also, they had keyboards.

Midway through Sons of Bill's performance, I was accosted by a mustachioed hobo, who yelled at me about how he went to high school with the band.

"Right."  I replied.

"So how've you been man?"  He asked me.

"Uh...I've been...good. How've you been?"  I said, trying to think up a quick way out of the situation that doesn't involve getting stabbed.

"You know I know you man.  I've seen you around.  I see you around all the time."  Said the Hobo, putting his hand on my shoulder.

"Oh....yeah.  Of course.  I see you around too," I lied, mentally debating the ethics of throwing a bystander in the hobo's path and fleeing for the exit.

"You know we used to live together...right?" he asked me.

"Oh sure, sure.  I remember," I said, silently running through my list of former roommates.  Matt?  No, we're still in close touch; I know exactly what he looks like.  Dameon?  He has dreadlocks, and last I heard, he was in Washington State.  Brittney?  Not unless she's had a sex change.  Actually, it could be Brittney.

"You know who I am, right?   I'm Chris _____."  He told me, and all of a sudden I realized he wasn't a crazy hobo at all, but the Dave Matthews obsessed roommate from my freshman year of college, sporting an entirely new, grungy look.

Around this point, things start to get fuzzy. I believe there was more rum and Coke involved, more dip, and I think I may have unsuccessfully tried to trade the latter for the former.  Sons of Bill did a few more songs, and I believe they did an encore too, but I was outside puking and cursing Texas Dave's name, swearing I'll never touch dip again.

You can find Sons of Bill online at sonsofbill.com

By Author: Ratso

Ratso is a Russian-American author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. Ratso is one of the most prolific writers of all time, having written or edited about 500 books and over 9,000 letters and postcards. His works have been published in nine of the ten major categories of the Dewey Decimal System (the sole exception being the 100s: philosophy and psychology).

Ratso is widely considered a master of the science-fiction genre and, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke, he is considered one of the "Big Three" science-fiction writers. Ratso's most famous work is the Foundation Series; his other major series are the Galactic Empire Series and the Robot series, both of which he tied into the same fictional universe as the Foundation Series to create a unified "future history" for his stories much like those pioneered by Robert A. Heinlein and previously produced by Cordwainer Smith and Poul Anderson. He has penned numerous short stories, among them "Nightfall", which in 1964 was voted by the Science Fiction Writers of America the best short science fiction story of all time, an accolade that many still find persuasive. Ratso wrote the Lucky Starr series of juvenile science-fiction novels using the pen name Paul French.

Comments(1):

1. Texas Dave sounds like a real badass.

   Monday, March 01, 2010 George