Howdy, folks! Here’s another gig report in English from me. This time it is because I feel only the native tongue of Rock’n’Roll is the proper vehicle for me to convey the atmosphere of a genuine fifties’ juke joint Spunk was transformed into this Monday night by one John Paul Keith and his rousing band of musicians. To write this piece in Croatian rather than English would be tantamount to having an opportunity of driving a pink Cadillac along Sunset Strip, but choosing instead to trundle down that same road in your old beat-up Yugo (not that there’s anything wrong with Yugo, many a time it got me and my family safely to wherever we were going, and it was a pretty sweet ride once we got accustomed to the funky smell and leg cramps).
Video zapis s koncerta.
John Paul Keith is a scrawny, bespectacled fellow with a slick head of black hair; the kind of guy we’re used to seeing get served regular portions of Indian burns and atomic wedgies by school bullies in all the American high-school films. But I bet you for all I’ve got that this scrawny, bespectacled fellow has never even got his hair ruffled, unless he did it himself, tossing his head wildly on stage as he squeezed another goose-bumps raising solo on his Fender Telecaster. Yeah, that’s right, this guy is a hot blooded rocker, of the Knoxville-born, Nashville-raised and Memphis-hardened stock, which means you’d have to be bloody Lemmy from Mötorhead to dare and mess with his underpants. He writes and plays the kind of original straight-outta-the-fifties rockabilly, the originators like Chuck Berry, Johnny Burnette, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Sonny Burgess used to play back in the golden era of rock’n’roll. It doesn’t surprise me much that Mr Keith has chosen this song-writing, guitar-wielding career. Christened John Paul, the two other career options available to him were to either become the Pope or a French perfume designer, and both are somewhat difficult to achieve when you’re a kid from Knoxville. So, I guess his is more a case of the career choosing the man, less the other way round. His two-part Beatles, one-part Rolling Stones name magnificently sums up the kind of music he makes: upon the firm base of crispy-clear guitar licks and solos he superimposes catchy pop melodies, and ties it all together with lyrics mostly about love and leaving, thus creating perfect, pithy, two-and-a-half-minute long pop-rock gems. Of course, there are smudges of country and blues in these diamonds, and those ”imperfections” serve not only to distinguish such songs from his poppier ones, but to remind us listeners that John Paul’s musical roots are deeply rooted in the rich loam of Tennessee and Mississippi rivers.
Following these rivers into the Gulf of Mexico, and then crossing the Atlantic Ocean (yes, I imagine real American rockers sail to Europe on ships, like some roving musical pirates bent on getting drunk, infecting us with the fever of rock’n’roll, and absconding with our women), J.P. Keith enlisted his two musician buddies, of which I only got to meet the drummer Brian, as his cohort for their first solo European tour, the purpose of which, apart from getting drunk and absconding, is the live presentation of songs from John Paul’s new album ‘Memphis Circa 3AM’. And luckily for this old rocker, one of the stops on the tour included the Spunk club in Zagreb, my hometown. Unfortunately, the night of the Zagreb gig was Monday, not the most suitable night for rambunctious rockin’ razzle-dazzle. Coupled with the poor promotion of the concert in the social media (there’s no point in mentioning any other type of media, although I’m beaming with joy because the webzine I write for had the announcement put up at least a week before the gig), by which I mean that the organizers had made an event page on Facebook only, there wasn’t even a last.fm event, it is no wonder not many people showed up. OK, Spunk (and here I mean old Spunk, not the new Prostor Do) is not nearly the largest club in Zagreb, but I’ve been to numerous gigs in it in the past when bands played in front of double, or even triple the number of people gathered at this gig. It is also possible that the admission price of 40 kuna, a price unusual for Spunk in which 99% of gigs were admission free, and the remaining 1% had a symbolic price of 5 or 10 kuna tops, made some people decide to miss this gig, in adherence to some hard-coded belief of theirs that it is not truly Spunk if you have to pay to get in, but I think this lunatic fringe accounts for a minuscule number of J.P.K. fans. Moreover, the fact that the attendance were predominantly older gentlemen (and some dames), and judging by the stately look of their attires (I suppose that’s what norm-core, or dad-core audience looks like), and the never-empty beer bottles in their hands (the average price of a bottle of beer in Spunk is 15 kuna), one can readily assume that such people possess sufficient means to allow themselves to indulge in a bit of Monday night ear-candy, and would have done so even if the entrance fee had been steeper. To burden all the blame for this excellent concert’s pitiable attendance on Monday’s already aching back is easy and rather convenient, but I think that the real Mr Pitiful here is the promotor who just couldn’t be bothered to print a few gig posters and plaster them in the thirty or so clubs and bars in Zagreb where the potential audience is known to dwell.
As there were no opening acts, around half past nine the main, and only, attraction of the evening, John Paul Keith and his two-man, drums and bass backing band took their positions on Spunk’s small stage. Clad all in black, his black hair neatly combed back and polished with hair-pomade, his black-rimmed Ray Ban’s safely perched on top of his straight nose, John Paul greeted the audience and immediately launched into the first song, the rhythm section following assuredly and in perfect beat to his gray Telecaster’s wail. In accordance to the strict limits of the genre, the songs were played straight, without much embellishments, save from the occasional guitar solo stretched a bit further than on the album, and from time to time the drummer, a big baby-faced guy sporting a budding Afro hairdo, would let his drumsticks dance a little more frivolously on the skin and metal of the drum set, especially on the faster rockers. John Paul’s looks and voice immediately brought to my mind the late, great Buddy Holly, or even Roy Orbison, without, of course, the high vocal orbits only the latter was capable of launching his voice into, while his poise on the stage remained quite stationary, his showmanship boiling down to a hep knee-bending move once in a while. Well, not all rock’n’rollers have in them the flair for such buffoonery as the genial Screamin’ Jay Hawkins had! I’m sure that even he would totally flip his wig on a wild little rocker like ‘True Hard Money’, a raucous rattlesnake of a ditty with a blistering guitar solo that would have any audience in stitches, apart from the one in Spunk, whose sedated members were hardly managing to toe-tap to its beat. What the band must have wondered at that moment was how on earth had Spunk gotten the name it bears? Presumedly it’s a titty bar on Saturday nights? My feet were positively itching for some hard-core boogieing and bopping, but strangely none of my punk/psychobilly friends came to the gig so I had no one to mosh with in front of the stage (my girl Nika was busy taking photographs and serving as a portable drinks cabinet). If the band hadn’t toned things down with the lovely, mid-tempo country burner ‘There’s A Heartache Going Round’, I would have surely burst into an one-man pit of death, sucking into my vortex all the beers free of their owners’ firm grips. Not many beer bottles remained on tables, however, when the yet slower country ode to a girl’s intoxicating lips, ‘Ninety Proof Kiss’ was being performed. That is just the type of song, with its poignant guitar wail, insistent percussions and the tearful sing-along refrain, the average Croatian male is programmed to raise his bottle to his lips to; whether he does it bare-chested on a Mate Mišo Kovač‘s concert, or in his torn Supersuckers t-shirt on a gig like this one is, fundamentally, the same thing. I guess it must be due to the hard-crusted accumulation of the wild, prehistoric Balkanic genes somewhere deep inside us that we’re unable to resist the mesmerizing power of such songs.
The highlights of this gig are many, personally I would be hard pressed to choose a favourite moment or performance because every song was played beautifully and with utter dexterity, but for the sake of this text I will say that it was the moment when John Paul descended from the stage into the small area of clear space in front of it, and started playing ‘Hide Away’, a peppy instrumental by the mighty guitar wizard Freddie King. I absolutely love it when I’m able to recognize a cover song amidst the band’s originals, and this one I recognized immediately, for I’m a big fan of Freddie King and listen regularly to his lively, funky instrumental albums. Another high-point was the furious crescendo of all three instruments on the final song, which signaled a belated wake up call for some audience members. Magically revived, they started head-banging and flailing their arms and legs about, like puppets on a string, sweating profusely in the process. This menopausal monster-mash lasted until the song ended and silence ensued, after which all that could be heard was the loud huffing and puffing of these rusty dancers.
I know for a fact that the atmosphere on the dance-floor was much wilder when John Paul Keith came to Spunk as Jack Oblivian’s guitar player back in 2008., but that is mostly due to the much punkier audience drawn to that gig by Oblivian’s long track-record in various garage and punk bands. This Monday night’s audience may have been a tad more tranquilized, but that didn’t stop John Paul and the guys to pour their hearts out of their instruments for us. Every time I closed my eyes during any of the songs, I instantly found myself in a juke joint in Nashville or Memphis, which is the next best thing to actually having a real juke joint in your own hometown.
Nenad Lukač
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