Back in high school in Paris in the early 80s, I
discovered heavy metal. AC/DC, Black
Sabbath, Ozzy Osbourne, Metallica, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, etc. I’d also heard of this band called the Grateful Dead.
With a name like that, they had to be hardcore metal,
right? And all these album covers with
skulls and roses, you know? So I bought Reckoning,
a double live acoustic album, and was …”HUH?”
A helpful friend, Sean C., observed that this material was in fact
standard fare for the band and agreed to take this album off my hands. Decades later, he still has the vinyl I gave
him, and I replaced it with the CD version (with extra tracks). Suffice to say that the Grateful Dead were
not nearly as heavy as their name would imply.
Fast forward to 2018 and I found the opposite with regard
to this band, Texas Hippie Coalition. I suspect they wanted everyone to know they
smoked weed and wanted a band name which fit tetrahydracannabinol (THC), which we
all know is the active ingredient of marijuana and gives it the ability to make
you stoned. All well and fine, but while
“Texas” and “coalition” don’t necessarily imply any particular type of music –
except maybe ZZTop – “hippie” certainly implies the type of music hippies
generally listen to, the #1 being…the Grateful Dead. So with a name like that, the most obvious
implication is that this is a jam band.
Nope. THC sound
like Pantera mixed with Lynyrd Skynyrd.
They are definitely heavy and brutal.
Mind you, there is no law that says everyone who smokes MJ and listens
to music has to listen to the same music.
Rappers love weed. Deadheads love
weed. Floyd fans love weed. And metal fans – particularly fans of
so-called “stoner rock” (mostly highly influenced by Black Sabbath with about
25% Pink Floyd added in) – also love weed.
Not everyone, of course. Plenty
of us stoner rock fans are happy with a beer or two and don’t need a joint or
bong to appreciate even songs like “Sweet Leaf”. I enjoyed the THC show on Monday night with
nothing more than a 16 oz Blue Moon consumed while the last opening act, Kobra
and the Lotus, was playing.
Band
Names. While I’m on the
topic… THC is not the only band openly
expressing its love for the weed. Of
course, Black Sabbath sang “Sweet Leaf”, pot leaves can be seen on the cover of
Second Helping by Lynyrd Skynyrd, and of course many rappers like Dr.
Dre, Snoop Dogg, and Cypress Hill are likewise open and notorious about their
habits. Many stoner rock bands make it a
point to name themselves accordingly, such as Bongzilla, Weedeater, and my
favorite (from Poland), Weedpecker. The
bands vary in how brazen they are about displaying the pot leaf – which itself
is fairly distinctive and recognizable by now (and is NOT on Ohio State
football helmets, by the way) – on their albums or t-shirts, Brant Bjork these
days being the most so, competing with Wino in that regard. This band’s pot leaf shirt is long sold
out.
As MJ legalization gains momentum I dare say we’ll see
more of this. Eventually I expect the
straight edge crowd to follow suit to remind us that not everyone smokes
weed. (No, really?) Anyhow.
Band.
Their prior bassist, John Exall, left the band recently and was replaced by a
left-handed guy un-named on the website and in the show, who did a remarkably
good job of looking cool and getting the job done. Whether he earned the right to remain in the
band after the tour remains to be seen.
Drums are done by Timmy Braun, twin guitars by Nevada Romo and Cord
Pool, and – last but not least - the vocals handled by the large, verbose and
unmistakable “Big Dad Rich”, whose mike stand was a double-barreled
shotgun. Like AC/DC, this band has one
member who vastly outshines the rest of the band, and BDR is definitely that
guy. In addition to his powerful singing
voice and imposing stage presence by sheer mass alone, he loves to tell the
audience about his prior career smuggling weed from Mexico and selling it in
the US at a profit.
Discography. Pride of Texas (2008), Rollin’
(2010), Peacemaker (2012), Ride On (2014), Dark Side of Black
(2016). Of these, I purchased the newest
and listened to the prior albums on Spotify in reverse order. Pride of Texas could be considered a
de facto Pantera tribute album, released 8 years after Pantera themselves
released their last album, Reinventing The Steel. Mind you, THC made no secret of their love
for Pantera, and as fellow Texas metalheads it’s hardly a surprise. As the band developed the material gets a
bit looser and groovier, leaving Pantera not far behind but at least no longer
being a verbatim copy anymore.
The point of all this is because on Monday night, April
30, I caught the band live at the Baltimore Soundstage, a small club in
downtown Baltimore just north of the Inner Harbor. Of the three opening acts, I caught the last
one, Kobra & the Lotus, essentially a heavy hair metal band with a
leather-clad female singer who looks like Britney Spears as a Motley Crue
fan.
With time and money in finite supply, we can’t see every
show we want, and usually we end up seeing bands we’ve seen already because we
know we’ll enjoy the show. But every now
and then we see a band we’ve never seen before, like this one. [I say “we” but in fact I saw the show
alone.]
I got there a bit early, and before sundown, so I took the
liberty of parking on the street and walking around. Although I’d been to a few shows at the
Soundstage before, at those times I arrived just in time for the show, already
dark, and wasn’t able to relax and look around.
I briefly cruised through Buns & Nubile in the power plant building,
complete with huge smokestacks – no longer active – rising up through the store
and up through the roof. I had dinner at
Chipotle (not much different there). I
walked around the pier, which is parallel to where the Pier Six Pavilion is to
the east. I recalled a date back in
September 2006 with an annoying Filipino woman – right here at this exact
place. Then once all the random and
restless nonsense was out of my system and I calculated that the last opening
act was due to go on, I returned to the venue and checked in.
Before a band goes on to play, particularly a headliner, the
venue plays songs on the PA specially chosen by the band the prep the audience
for the upcoming musical festivities.
These aren’t random songs. Before
Clutch went on at Terminal 5 in NYC in December 2015, a few days after Lemmy
had died, they played Motorhead songs in tribute to the fallen Hawkwind
bassist. See next entry…
Clutch. Oh, this is funny. I was wearing my Clutch hoodie to the
show. Clutch are from Germantown,
Maryland, and with KIX long off the radar, are probably the premiere rock band
from Maryland at this time. THC put the Clutch
song “Spacegrass” on the PA before they took the stage. This is the song that starts off slow and
includes lyrics about “Galaxie 5 0 0” and “Jesus on the dashboard” (often
deliberately misheard as “Jesus on the dance floor”). You would think a Baltimore, Maryland crowd
would react to Clutch – and this being one of their most popular songs and most
commonly played live despite set lists changing every night - but I was the
only one in the audience wearing Clutch gear and the only one who recognized
the song, prompting a high five from the security guy at the side of the stage
– the only other Clutch fan in this place.
Anyhow.
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