music
Take Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band and pack them into one man’s body. Zip that body up in a blue spandex jumpsuit adorned with mirrored sequins. Slap on a glitter-covered, half-motorcycle, half-space helmet with a telephone receiver glued to the front. Feed the resulting Frankenstein some scotch and amphetamines. This is Bob Log III.
Three…two…one…liftoff! Bob Log III blasted futuristic blues during a wild, scotch-soaked night at the Outback Lodge.
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Before Bob emerges from some dark corner of the Outback Lodge, his manic blues riffs are already coming though the speakers. And then there he is. The crowd cheers and parts to create a path to the stage for the one-man band, who looks like an astronaut that has just returned from the moon and decided to wail out on his trusty old guitar before he’s even taken off his space suit.
“Hi, I’m Bob Log the third,” speaks a voice that sounds like it’s coming through a telephone circuit (it is), “and I’m from Tucson, Arizona. You are Charlottesville. Hello, Charlottesville.” Bob straddles a swiveling stool and places his feet on two kick pedals, one attached to a bass drum, the other to a cymbal-and-tambourine mish-mash, and then he blasts off.
Two drum machines start and stop on a dime, Bob’s feet stomp along and his hands blur as he sears out scalding slide twang from his blue and yellow axe. At one point he stands up and holds the instrument over his head. “My guitar wants to say something. She says, ‘Please, Bob, don’t play that next song. It’s too fast.’ Should I play it?” The crowd cheers and someone shouts, “Play it, Bob!” “You heard them,” he tells her, and launches into the tune.
Bob can be distasteful, but it doesn’t really matter since his vocals are too muffled and distorted to understand. The juvenile content of songs like “Clap Your Tits” and “Boob Scotch” are wince-inducing, but on stage they come across as typical noise-blues barrages. However, in a seeming effort to emphasize the sexist immaturity, both songs have complementary stage gags. During the former, Bob invites girls to bounce on his knees as he plays (there were no takers at Outback) and, during the latter, he encourages someone from the audience to dip her breast into a scotch on the rocks (still no takers, so he did it himself).
Bob is many things. He’s a creepy old man. He’s a lightning-fast slide guitar slinger. He’s a vaudeville-like phenomenon. He’s a dirty joke multiplied into a one-man rock spectacle. He’s someone you should see if you get a chance.
His antics topped the night, but the Tuesday night show wasn’t without worthy openers. The Corndawg sang woeful, beautiful songs about swooning for your best friend’s mother and forgetting to take out the trash. The 40 Boys shouted punk anthems about drinking whiskey, PBR and various other alcoholic beverages. Both acts meshed with different facets of Bob’s punk-redneck dynamic, and the night congealed into a truly odd and entertaining affair.
