I went to see the Growlers last night, and it was so good it shocked me speechless. So instead of writing a review I'm just going to steal the copy from the back of their 1967 debut LP, "Suppertimes With The..." to serve as an introduction to their live show, never before seen anywhere outside of southern CA.
Growling their way across the country on the first United State tour, the Growlers ride the american highways in what else but a converted extra-long school bus, festooned with primitive imagery and filled with hangers-on, well-wishers and hitchhiking dreamers wearing their cowboy poetry on their fringe-fringed sleeves.
Sometimes the beach gypsys have other musicians open for them on their freaky travel wanderings, like Washington DC's spooky country-rock ghost singer John Bustine, who sings very deep and fine, and The Vermillions, about whom little is known if you arrive late to the show.
When the Growling ones take the stage they set up a beach chair on the left hand side, and the lead singer, Brooks Nielsen, will sit in the chair for a minute while the rest of the bums set up around him. His lips will be painted black with a sharpie and you can't tell whether his pencil mustache is painted too. To Brooks, and the rest of the boys, mysteries are as prevalent as the waves of their Costa Mesa home.
You will never know the answers. Is that percussion player who takes Brooks' place in the beach chair wearing a wig? Is that mic'd block of wood he's slapping somehow filled with the ghost of reverb? One guitarist has a teardrop tattoo in the corner of his eye but doesn't seem like a murderer. The other one has an earring and only talks into the mic between songs in a (fake?) Mexican accent (SUPPers FUCKer...yeah essay loco etc) How they both combine to rip brutal surf solos that make you skank and dip and twist while shifting times and tempos lightning fast like a prog-rock band? What in the hell is Brooks singing about? When he sings into the second mic set up in front of the first mic, and the delay and reverb double and woosh around the speakers of the club like creeping madness, is that crackling in his voice a cold or part of the effect? That's no mystery in truth, Brook has one of the most effective vocal styles in US History, essentially monotone but pitched to swing effortlessly through the constant shimmer of dirty echos in and out and up and down while he leers and hops like a late-era Dylan at a Sinatra karaoke contest while wearing a raggedy ann doll dress, the last part of that analogy was not an analogy.
Every song on this album is a massive hit in an alternative timeline where the Grateful Dead were chemically castrated by redneck Nazis and forced to play the live soundtrack to a dragstrip on the Gulf Coast but escape to join a Romanian circus and Elvis is the president.
The people standing at the front of the stage who are touching the musicians and their instruments and doing groovy surf dances, you will not be able to tell whether they are on the bus with the band, or even what sex some of them are, but they indubitably are fellow-travelers of some kind or the other. They may scare most of the crowd into clustering at the back of room, but it's too late for anyone there to get off the ride at this point. We're all on the bus now.
If you creep up to the window and look inside it, the bus has a kitchen and a dining room and a loudspeaker that broadcasts bad vibes into the mental atmosphere wherever they roam like smog belching from a beatnik anti-factory. No acid is needed, the test has been failed and it is summer vacation forever.
©4.12.67 c. milles manson venice ca all rights wronged, all sins empowered
Previously in Live DC:
- 2/3: Live DC: The Asteroids Galaxy Tour @ RnR Hotel
- 2/3: LiveDC: Smith Westerns @ Black Cat
- 2/2: PHOTOS: Elizaveta @ Jammin' Java
- 2/1: PHOTOS: H Street Karaoke Championship
- 1/31: LiveDC: Carsie Blanton @ Black Cat
- 1/31: LiveDC: Loose Lips/ Lightfoot/ Paperhaus/ Ugly Purple Sweater @ Black Cat
- 1/30: LiveDC: Jeff Mangum @ Lincoln Theatre
- 1/30: LiveDC: Coeur de Pirate @ 930 Club
- 1/26: LiveDC: Ryan Adams @ Strathmore
- 1/25: LiveDC: GHOST @ RNR Hotel
God loves a cheerful giver.
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