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LS Crude (Light Sweet)
has played this venue before, is set up as usual in the south corner beside the
dart boards, a small hardwood dance floor between the band and the nearest
tables. Monitors sit on two steel 40 gallon oil barrels (light sweet crude).
Two condenser mics hang from the ceiling, four feet apart, record the gig "out
of the air", so the action is captured raw, almost binaural, with the crowd
sound always in counterpoint to the driving music of this classic rock combo,
two guitars, bass, drums and a shotgun vocalist.
You'll notice how the crowd is part
of the "orchestration" in the first track, "Heartbreaker" (a Stones cover), the
guitars drifting into the signature as part of the conversation, like the
whisper of the night tide. The jazzy "Prisoner" and country-rock "Terminal" (LR
originals) have the same interactive crowd patina, so you really get a feel for
the location, and the unlocked atmosphere.
The fever rises with "Ain't Too
Proud To Beg" (Temptations cover) to pure anarchy with "My Father Was A Jockey"
(modified John Lee Hooker boogie) when a rowdy man takes over the mic, exhorts
the patrons to "Let's take out the windows! Let's rip this fuckin' joint,
they're gonna tear it down anyway!"
Tim, Crude's vocalist, purrs, "Does
this mean one more?"
LS Crude is:
Tim
Pieschel, vocals
Lawrence Russell, guitar (Gibson Nighthawk)
Duncan McLachlan, guitar (Strat Deluxe)
Garry McKevitt,
bass (Larrive fretless)
Darryl Marquette, drums (basic
kit)
LS Crude: Live at the Hotel
Sidney was recorded by LR on VHS tape, remastered to digital.
[for the gearheads: Duncan played
through a Roland Jazz Chorus amp, LR through a 50 watt Marshall combo twined
with a 40 watt Crate Chorus, Garry through a Gallien-Krueger or maybe a Roland
100 bloc... check Garry out at the Victoria Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (http://rcmpsite.com/)
as the bassist for The Noblemen] |
Chick with the
Poisoned Eyes flashes the band, pulls up her sweater, gives the boys a snapshot
of her magnificents. Yep, they're all here, wired and ready to rock. Clifford
the Clown, wearing his harlequin suit, perched on a stool at the bar, sipping a
fat glass of red wine, playing games with his fingers, talking to himself.
Ricky, the Mexican migrant, moving through the tables trying sell some stone
idols, the real deal, looted from a ruin somewhere in the Sierra Madre...
Natasha, the Russian poetess, sitting on a stool by one of the pillars,
smoking, scribbling on the back of a coaster, perhaps sketching out her
inevitable suicide... Jesse the regular, lives upstairs, hunkered down for the
night, every night, table loaded, keep 'em coming, funded by an absent husband,
safely out of sight on an off-shore oil well in the south seas, "anywhere they
drill"... the nameless carpenter, coked-out, barred earlier, oils his way back
in... fishermen, roofers, students, welfare idlers, stressed civil servants,
counter-culture ghosts, people betwixt and between... Mike the barman in his
muscle shirt, stroking his moustache, smiling faintly as a guy with a fat belly
bursting through his Cochise T-shirt tries to cash a cheque [sign above the bar
says "Banks don't sell beer, we don't cash checks"].
Yep. Rock n roll
humanity... a painting left behind in the rubble after the
demolition. |
