Bob Log III, Willem Maker, El Paso Hot Button
Club Dada
May 29, 2009
Better Than: Jumping 12 school buses on a Harley XR-750 only to find out you missed the thirteenth one.
The crowd at Club Dada slowly trickled in after the late sunset on Friday.
Tattoos swirled from arm to arm, holding women in dark jeans or rockabilly dresses. Then, from the dressing room appeared a bird, a plane, no... just Bob Log III.
Wearing a fighter pilot helmet with a telephone-mic welded into his facemask, he moved through the crowd, hammering on a slide guitar as he made his way to his seat on the stage.
After his opening, he promptly unsheathed his sports coat to reveal the one-man band superhero within. The zipper on his glossy, overly tight, sheer-gold stuntman jumpsuit was pulled down behind his guitar to let his chest hair breathe in the stage lights.
The crowd leaned against the stage, crawled on the stage and, by the end of the night, danced on the stage as Bob kicked out on a bass drum with his right boot, a hi-hat cymbal with his left and slid up and down his guitar like Spider Man on a speedball binge.
By the time Bob launched into "Boob Scotch," a full-out dance party had broken loose in the venue. Someone climbed on an amp. Drinks were laid at his feet (he stirred one with his nipple). A pair of blondes sat in his lap for "Doo Rag," and Log stopped only to shout through his telephone-mic, sounding like an exhausted Evil Knievel: "You are hired as my audience!"
Listening to his album on your morning fight through rush hour wouldn't cut it. You might scare the other commuters as you travel down the road, jamming to the bluegrass and rockabilly blend that burns like cheap whiskey.
No. Bob belongs in the red-bricked and stripped-down cubby hole that is Club Dada. Not in your dented Honda Civic.
Opening for Log was El Paso Hot Button, another one-man band who punches out raw rock sounds through the fog of his smoke machine. The other opener, Willem Maker, switched gears as the second act into an introspective blues set. His harsh and graveled voice reminds of long roadtrips on poorly paved highways with a close group of friends, and his slide guitar is adventurous enough to make you want to plan such a getaway.
But when Bob made his entrance, the volume leapt to eleven. Passersby on Elm Street paused at the sight of this head-bobbing stunt man, seemingly filling all of Deep Ellum with half-crazed antics, throbbing beats and shredded blues that seem to flow right out of the Mississippi moonshine-soaked riverbanks.
Critic's Notebook:
Personal Bias: Daylights savings time needs to go away. Opening a tab while the sun is still up is just depressing.
Random Note: A group of old ladies in Canada make Bob's customized cannonball jumpsuits. "I tell them I'm an ice-skater," Bob said.
