Angry Crowe Stew

Okay, so let's make a bit of a stew here... Let's take a large group of people with easy access to too much alcohol and let them bake in the sun on an extraordinarily muggy May day in Texas. Then add a band that doesn't really want to be there. Finally, sprinkle a few over-anxious police officers in the mix... And voila! You have the Black Crowes at Taste of Addison...

First, the crowd. It was an agitated, slightly angry crowd. You had the pioneers, who had been there all day, and just wanted to sit and chill and listen to some music. Then there were the overachievers, who wanted to get as close to the stage as possible, and would stand directly in front of the sitting pioneers if it got them 10 inches closer to the stage. And there were the spendthrifts, who had paid their 10 bucks to get in and wanted to hear "Hard To Handle" and are basically oblivious to the fact that the Crowes have had a career since then. Saw several confrontations around me, but no punches thrown...

Second, the Crowes... Musically, they were amazing, stellar, brilliant... They did the jam band thing extremely well, where they take a song off into left field somewhere until you can't even hear the original in there any longer, then they take you back into the song from a direction you never would have thought of... Love that! But they sure looked like they would rather have been on the bus smoking up and watching SNL or something... For all I've read about Chris Robinson's dynamic stage presence, he barely moved a muscle. He occasionally bobbed his head, but spent most of the show behind the microphone, even when he wasn't singing. I mean, I get it... Headliner at a food festival isn't the most prestigious position, and I'm fairly certain the Crowes don't get the payday in ticket or merch sales that come with a normal show, but at least try to win the crowd over...

Third, the police... Okay, so Taste of Addison is supposed to be a family event, I get it. But family events don' t usually book bands that prominently feature pot leaves on their t-shirts. An extreme example would be booking R.Kelly for MayFest: "Lots of cute little girls here!" My theory is that the person doing the booking probably thought of the Crowes as a band that used to have some fun hits on the charts. But many of the fans know the Crowes as a pot-friendly band, so they show up carrying, as occasionally happens at jam-oriented shows. Well, the police were having none of that. Prior to the Crowes coming on stage, I saw few police. But a couple of songs into the Crowes set, the police swarmed the front of the stage and the center area, and started pulling people out of the crowd.

So yeah, it was a bit of a mess... Despite it all, I heard some good music from the Crowes, and they played several tracks from Warpaint, my CD of 2008 so far, including "Oh Josephine" which is absolutely divine... Can't wait to see the Crowes in a better setting.

P.S. I have a man-crush on the Crowes' bass player... Absolutely amazing! I wanna be him when I grow up...