Sunday, December 07, 2008

Sweat shop

King Khan and BBQ have travelled far and wide together: First in the Spaceshits, then as solo acts, then together again. I've seen them before at Babylon where they played an ace set to a small crowd. I saw them again at Irene's where things were a lot wilder, but this time around audience craziness was really off the scale - Babylon was packed and getting hotter by the second. This was the last show of their latest tour, but no one seemed tired as the ripped through a bunch of popular favourites and even a couple of super-new tunes.

Mother's Children put on a particularly crunchy set to kick things off. Ace power-pop that made me think of the Titan label comp on Numero I picked up a short while ago.



The Golden Triangle understands that a good way to get a crowd worked up is to have two female singers in short black fringed dresses shaking their stuff front and centre. They also have a singing drummer, a hot lady bass player and a couple of gnarly pawnshop guitarists. Their music is pretty frenzied lo-fi garage that usually ends with a psychedelic blowout by the end of each tune. I would not necessarily say they were a good band, but they certainly are a fun band.



King Khan and BBQ finished things off with their patented R&B sweat-o-rama. The audience was heaving back and forth and I had to brace myself against the stage to prevent being knocked over (a regular occurence on the stage's frontline all through the set). You can judge how frenzied things were by the eventual fate of those stuffed rabbits - the place was littered with bunny guts and someone was wearing a head for a hat by show's end. As they finished their main set they called Golden Triangle back on stage. More shows should end with a guy dressed as a boa constrictor riding one of the performer's backs. The photo below isn't all that crazy, but I wanted to show what Khan and BBQ were dressed like at the start of the show. Khan lost the golden veil after the first few numbers.



It was one crazy scene, man!

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