|  

Monday, August 31, 2009

photography / Music / Concerts / Local Music

Summer Jam 5 review, Part I: Blind Man's Colour, Shunda K, Mogul Street Reserve, and Alexander & the Grapes

Posted by Leilani Polk on Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 4:49 PM

click to enlarge mogulduel.jpg

Mogul Street Reserve pictured at right; all photos by Phil Bardi.

Despite being bone-weary and mentally exhausted, I slagged my tired ass down to Ybor City and made it to Summer Jam 5 just before sunset to enjoy the mini-fest's variety of musical offerings, which featured a huge roster of quality local acts as well as the few necessary nationals (The Honorary Title, Cory Branan, Carter Hulsey) to round things out.

We cruised into Crowbar just in time to see Blind Man's Colour (pictured after the jump), a new experimental outfit made up of some young and green but super skilled musicians who are so hot that Kanye West gave the little known St. Petersburg outfit some love to with a "Some Dope Shit for My Apartment" post on his blog this past January, and Grizzly Bear's Edward Droste followed suit with a tweet about the band around the same time. BMC was also featured recently on NPR's on All Things Considered for a "Music from the Sublime to the Old Time" artist spotlight a few weeks ago, so it appears like they're on the upswing.

And I gotta say that aside from a lack of onstage confidence, these are some damn talented kids and the confidence thing will work itself out naturally the more gigs they play. I hear them compared most often to

click to enlarge bmcfull.jpg
sound with just enough psychedelic influence, ambient trance elements and moments of tropical hop keep things interesting. Aside from random tech issues (the 17-year-old drummer had to borrow drum parts from The Sheaks, and the sound from their mics seemed to be cutting in and out through the first half of the set), the foursome left me impressed, especially since they closed the set with a number brewed up three hours before the show that featured the drummer beat-boxing the rhythm quite proficiently.

We trekked over to New World Brewery next to catch GreyMarket but the NWB schedule was running behind and they were just setting up the act scheduled to perform before GreyMarket, experi-hip hopper Deficit. We waited around for about 20 minutes for him to start, but I was concerned about missing Tampa prog-rock trio Mogul Street Reserve -- a band I'd been meaning to check out for quite some time -- so we skipped out and returned to Crowbar right as Deficit was going on.

And I was not disappointed.

click to enlarge shundak.jpg
Wood and Pfiester, a surprise since it's not often you see a bassist traveling up and down the neck of his instrument and coaxing out notes like some sort of second lead guitarist. And he still managed to maintain a solid rapport with the drummer while engaging in occasional guitar-versus-bass dueling. And the drummer -- geez, that dude could pound some skins, and brought the syncopated rhythms with much ease and flare. I enjoyed watching all three perform; they were not only tight but kept the good time energy going all throughout their set.

Then, I had my first experience with Shunda K (pictured left), and all I can say is, goddamn that woman is hot shit! She's raps in a lightning fast, tightly-reined, tongue-twisting, fierily-furious style, with her solid, clever rhyming set against a backtrack of well-produced beats that made you want to shake your rump just as much as her playful prompting to do so from the stage. She made sure to engage the audience between each break, interrupted her rapping with the occasional nicely-sung verses, and brought enough self-confidence to fill the room. "That's how I do it," she said at one point after she'd worked herself and the small crowd dancing in front of her into an excited frenzy. Good stuff.

The night was getting late, and I was getting tired, having trekked back and forth between the two venues several times on a half-healed broken toe, so I decided to swing by New World to catch one final local act before hitting the road:

click to enlarge alexfull.jpg
lively entusiasm and grinned all throughout, wearing the blissed-out expression of a person perfectly in his element, his dark curls, youthful charm and dressy casual attire (white collared shirt and tie) reminding me of Tom Everett Scott's stick-wielding character in That Thing You Do. And support guitarist Chase Swan played electric guitar but was best when he was drawing out the long, lazy sliding notes from his lap steel, adding a nice texture to the band's countrified leanings.

Overall, I'd say the night was a success. Free burgers and dogs on the Crowbar patio, hot sets of live music by quality locals, a respectable turnout as far as I could tell for a two-venue event -- and I didn't even stick around to see the headliners. Stay tuned for a post about that part of the evening, with photos, by Nicole Kibert aka elawgrrl.

*The only irritation of the night had nothing to do with Summer Jam 5 and everything to do with the annoying Church of Scientology recruits stationed on either side of Centro Ybor. On the Seventh Avenue side, where the religious fanatics usually set up shop, a pleasant young man and his newb companion (who was actually wearing a Dianetics shirt) asked, "Where are you going tonight? Would you like a free personality test?" "No, thanks, I like my personality just fine," I replied. On the Eighth Avenue side, directly in front of the organization's Ybor offices, which happened to be next door to Crowbar's patio and en the route to NWB, they took the more aggressive "Would you like a free stress test today?" approach -- same test as above, different title for those naive few who don't know what that really means: being brought into their lair to fill a long and drawn-out "test" that gives the Church enough personal info so they can bug you incessantly for the rest of your life with pamplets and phone calls. (A different Scientology recruiter tried to accost me here, too, but I told her I wasn't stressed. I felt the lie was adequate and necessary for the situation at hand.)

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this thread:
By Email
With RSS

Add a comment

Latest in Daily Loaf

Author Archives

Search Events

all events
concerts
restaurants
movie times

Recent Comments

Top Commenters

Most Popular
Most Shared
Most Commented

© 2012 SouthComm, Inc.