Having missed it, I resolved to keep an eye out for a return visit and that happened last week. This time it was a solo show. Curiously enough, his backing band played at Gamma Ray just a couple weeks ago. That too I sadly was unable to attend.
For this show it was Moctar alone with his guitars. He warned us early on that, since he was without his band, he was expecting us in the audience to provide the rhythm and the audience did his bidding with clapping more or less throughout each song.
Moctar hails from Niger and I've always heard his style of playing referred to as "desert blues", a reference to the northern and western parts of Saharan Africa. While I can hear traces of American blues in his playing, it really sounds more African than it does the Mississippi Delta or the south side of Chicago. His guitar tone was usually clean so it has this tinny sound that perhaps mimics an acoustic stringed instrument from that part of the world.
Whatever the case, he played songs that were on the lengthier side. They settled into a groove early and then built in tempo and intensity with hypnotizing results. If I wasn't clapping along, I would get lost in the eddies of the swirling, meandering melodies which felt elusive, as if I could reach out and grab them only to find that they had slipped through my fingers.
The encore, a song whose title I do not know, saw Moctar go into Jimi Hendrix mode. His guitar took on a dirtier sound and instead of trying to charm us with it, his playing took on a coarser, almost obscene, flavor. Something more primal.
What a fantastic evening. He only played for about an hour but he did chat with folks at the merchandise table after the show. I am looking forward to his return already.
A couple weeks back I was also at the Majestic with a friend to see the Reverend Horton Heat. It had been something like 20 years since I'd seen them and I was really hoping that they'd play "Galaxie 500", one of my divorce songs. But before there was a psychobilly freakout, there were two opening bands, neither of which I'd heard of.
First up was Piñata Protest and I was pleasantly surprised to see the singer strap on an accordion. Soon enough they made it clear that they were not messing around. They were hitting on all cylinders right out of the gate and did not let up for their entire set. Singer/squeeze box maestro, Alvaro Del Norte, immediately started to career around the stage and spin widdershins while spitting out lead accordion riffs like a whirling dervish on speed. He came to party and would not take no for an answer.
Drummer Chris-Ruptive kept a steady and fast tempo, threatening to maniacally go off course like Animal from The Muppets. Lukily bassist Mike Aguilar was there to keep him on the straight and narrow. Kinda. Guitarist Regino Lopez bolstered the sound with his speedy rhythm licks and he kept up the energy with his own kinetic stage presence as he bounced from his spot on stage to the top of his monitor and back.
The crowd fed off their energy and moshing was to be had. While I personally did not mosh, the energy in the room was so thick you could cut it with the wrong side of a knife.
At one point Del Norte slowed things down and divided the crowd into red salsa lovers vs. aficionados of the green stuff. Having encountered this gastronomic dichotomy in its full glory in Albuquerque a couple months back, I appreciated the sentiment and voted green.
My friend and I ran into Lopez at the bar after their set and he was a really friendly guy. We, well, my companion bought him a beer and we chatted for a bit. He voted for green too.
Black Joe Lewis came next. Another muso I'd never heard of. He played fairly old school blues and R&B with some rock in there too.
While he and his band couldn't match the fiery, kinetic energy of Piñata Protest, they did find their own groove, slower than the manic Tex-Mex punk but grittier. Lewis' singing was really spirited as was his guitar playing which alternated between tasty rhythms and frenetic, dirty solos that conjured the spirit of Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughn, and others in my ears.
Lewis was a nice change of pace that night and, sadly, it had been a while since I'd seen and heard some live blues so it was great to end that dry streak.
When the Rev. Horton Heat came on, it was yet another change in style - psychobilly.
I think I last saw them in c.2003. Where does the time go? The Reverend still has Jimbo by his side on upright bass while Jonathan Jeter was on drums. They opened with "Bullet", the opening song on their first album and segued into "Baddest of the Bad", the night's first busted relationship lament. As it chugged along at breakneck pace, I found myself singing in time, if not necessarily in tune, with the Rev, "Young girls and gin may be the cure". Ha! It was a friend of 35+ years and Yuengling that night but it was cathartic nonetheless.
Some newer stuff came next. "Let Me Teach You How To Eat" dates to 2014 while their cover of fellow Texan Johnny Carroll's "Crazy Crazy Lovin'" appears on their 2023 album Roots of the Rev (Volume One). While the more recent tunes may not have been at balls out, catch us if you can tempos, the Rev still writes fun songs with blatantly catchy guitar riffs.
Then came that quiet strumming. I knew those hushed chords that could explode at any moment instantly. "Galaxie 500"! This song quickly became part of the soundtrack of my divorce last summer and hasn't gone away since. As the kids out front were moshing, I was singing along to every fucking word of that song. When it came around to the couplet "You get the house/I get a cheap motel room", I sang especially loudly as that really hit home. My wife is getting the house and I really did stay at a flophouse motel - twice. (As some kind of consolation, I got a raincheck for a blowjob out of the second stay. Haha!)
It felt so good to sing that tune as it captures some of the anger, some of the intensity of my situation perfectly. And it has a happy ending: "But things ain't so bad 'cause I got a Galaxie 500" although in my case it's "But things ain't so bad 'cause I got a Mazda 5".
They could have ended the show there and I'd have been elated but there was much more to go including my friend's fave, "400 Bucks". "I Found Blue" was written at the behest of Billy Bob Thornton for the TV show Landman while we were told that "Gravel Farmer" dates back to lockdown when the band were doing livestream shows and inventing fake song names. Well, this one stuck and the Rev got Jimbo to write the lyrics. On stage that night Jeter took over guitar and vocal duties while the Rev setup shop behind the drums.
The night ended on an unexpected note. The Rev told a tale about how Hank III bowed out of a tour with them and that he had approached Lemmy as a replacement. The Englishman agreed but refused to play Motörhead's biggest hit despite the Rev's pleas on behalf of fans. And so they left us with "Ace of Spades" which rocked the house and reignited the mosh pit.
There was a running gag that night whereby the Rev would remark that it was Saturday night instead of Thursday. But it felt like a Saturday night with people moshing and carousing as if they had the following day to recover instead of having to work. It was a party and folks were letting loose, though I didn't see anyone get naked.
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