This Friday, the Good/Bad Art Collective is staging Benefit 46 at Rubber Gloves in Denton, continuing its habit of mixing rock and roll and fundraising. The Dooms U.K. are headlining--not surprising, as the aforementioned groups tend to run in packs.
It's the first benefit in three years that's been organized without the supervision of Chris Weber, the Good/Bad member who recently flew the coop to help start a Good/Bad spin-off in Brooklyn. We almost believed that the glory days of G/B's musical forays were over. Not so.
Going by the unadulterated, gleeful power of the Dooms U.K.'s last few shows, we have to report that these guys, fronted by the three-ring circus of a man called John Freeman, are on a roll, with all the juice of Dokken, Throbbing Gristle, and the Stooges wound into one sleazy-deluxe package.
What is surprising, especially without the scout-like eyes and ears of Weber, is that G/B has managed to book three up-and-coming (read: fairly unknown) acts for the show: Lo-Fi Chorus, The Ditch Kids, and rawk wonders The Riverboat Gamblers (Mike Weibe's newish project). Even with our heads together, the Dallas Observer's music writers can't tell you much about these bands, which means we have some work to do. (That Denton town just churns out the young musicians like rabbits on fertility drugs. It's near impossible to keep up.) And since G/B is not known for booking crap acts, we'll generously predict that these three bands will pull their fundraising weight. Should be interesting. And with a cover charge of only $4, you're paying one buck per band.
Every G/B benefit is worthy. The collective always finds a way to shake the bands out of normal play mode (the bands perform facing against each other; the bands exchange members; the bands have to perform a song about food, etc.), and the cash raised covers most of G/B's scant overhead. But right now, the income is crucial. Good/Bad is planning three major installations for three separate venues over the next five months--one for the Arlington Museum of Art, one for the Angstrom Gallery in Dallas, and one for ABC No Rio in (gulp) Manhattan. Given the collective's way with installations--definitely some of the purest, oddest, most fascinating stuff to come from these parts--the cause is a worthy one. We don't want them crawling to the NEA, now, do we?
After all, this herd of creative wonders is movin' on up. Let's give 'em a hand.
--Christina Rees
Good/Bad stages Benefit 46 at 9:30 p.m. Friday, January 29, at Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios, 411 E. Sycamore, Denton. Admission is $4. For more info, call (940) 591-1725.
