Thursday, Oct 10th, 2002
Tongue and Groove - San Francisco, CA

BURKE'S TOTALLY UNDER CONTROL WEEKDAY!!
It was a hippity hoppity good time that the guys and gal from Burke put together. Those crazy kids...they wanted four bands, and fire spinners and a comedian and an emcee. Geez, asking for the world!

And ya know what? That's exactly what they got.

We had Two Gallants starting out the night with their lonesome, twosome country-tinged guitar/drums thing. Great playing by both, and if you go to one of their 27 upcoming shows in the next two weeks, listen for the lyrics too. They are poetic, and funny and clever and sad. Fit THAT in your ten-gallon hat!

Will Frankin, the twisted SF spoken word/comedian took over next. It always takes a new audience, not familiar with his style, to warm up to Will....or to KEEP up with Will. He bounces from character to character in these strange one-man dialogs that take you from a country bumkin movie audition to a high school shakespeare class, in lightning speed. But once you forgive his jarringly un-PC ways, and get into his pace, you realize that the guy is Freekin Funny. His Stephen Hawking impression is worth the price of admission alone.

Next up was us. We kicked up the musical energy a notch, and sold some cds. Made some new friends. Saw some old friends, then siddled up to the bar. Karen wants to make a public apology to Mark for never remembering to go into Dirty Hour, even though she was reminded right before the previous song. One of these days she'll get it. Really. She will.

Clone Revolt from LA was the secret weapon of the evening. Now we know that every band in LA has a schtick. I guess it's necessary when you hail from a huge city of entertainers. But Clone Revolt's schtick was an endearingly funny blend of Beastie Boys rap, bad 80's Breakin', Carrot Top prop humor, and a charming Horschak accessibility. The never-ending energy that these two dudes with wireless mics and seven layers of orange clothing kept up throughout their set, was astounding. I'm not painting a great picture, but if you want to see a very entertaining show, go check them out. And bring your sense of humor.

So who better to wrap up the night, but Burke? I still don't know how they go about writing, rehearsing and pulling off these songs live. They are so chock full of crazy stops and starts, theatrics involving the whole band, frantic three person dialog and bits and pieces of what normal folks would call rock and roll all together. But the groovy thing is that they do it, and they do it REALLY well. Usually a band has one or two people who are into it, and the other musicians are either not paying attention, or are generally embarrassed by their band mates. But not Burke. Every one of them is in it. Involved, contributing, amazing. What a concept!

Thanks to Burke for putting this all together. Perhaps this too, should be an annual event?

( Photos courtesy of Greg Moynihan )