DC ROCK CLUB
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Wednesday, May 06, 2009

Khan You Dig It?

King Khan and the Shrines w/ Mark Sultan
930 Club
4/29/09

Once again Sacklunch writes a very belated review of a show, what a surprise...

Anyway, we all ventured out to check out King Khan for a late performance at the 930 Club. I had heard from a friend, let's call him Donald Malice, that we should definitely get there early to check out Mark Sultan (aka BBQ), because, well, he is worth checking out. Good call. I think he usually plays by himself, but tonight it was a three-way, but instead of lube and condoms, it was a bassist and an extra guitarist. Mr. BBQ plays pretty stripped down garage/blues/lo-fi rock, or whatever you want to call it. I dug the sound. Some tunes were better than others, and I think he suffered a bit by playing in such a large, fairly empty room. Also, I found the extra guitarist to be somewhat superfluous, though he did shred a fair amount on the closing song. Would love to see this dude again in a smaller, more intimate setting. Perhaps the BC Backstage, DC9, or at that imaginary party where I invite all of the friends that I don't really have...In any case, good opener. I also enjoyed the fact that late shows at the 930 Club tend to be sparsely populated, thus giving me plenty of room to wander about like a drifter (or M. Kapiloff).

King Khan came on around 11:30 PM and by then, the room was respectfully about 1/2 full. I had heard some stories that KK shows tend to get a little crazy, so I was anticipating the worst/best. However, Mr. Khan and his Shrines were very well behaved the entire night and busted out some very good, danceable, foot-tapping, head-bobbing garage soul. Here are my notes from the show:

1. There are like 12 people of stage, all of whom were not necessarily blessed in the looks department. Definitely a qualifier for ugliest band currently touring today. That being said, this could open up an interesting topic. What is the ugliest band (both past and present)? Please leave your comments in the, uh, comments....

2. Potsy and I did a fair amount of texting during the show. I have to say that I have become quite adept at text messaging as a mode of communication. Thank you iPhone. Mostly, the texts had to do with doppelgangers:

Chris Kattan on keyboards
John Norris (MTV news) on guitar
2 homeless guys on percussion
Gabe Kaplan on sax
Hitler sans stache on sax
Etc....

3. I thought the show was good, but became a little one-note/derivative over time. However, I kept expecting someone to pull a Jame Gumb, so that kept me on my toes.

4. And finally, Ahmed the blind guy was in attendance. Shocking. I seriously think that guy goes more shows than Donald Malice.


5 comments:

Jimbromski said...

nice

1--ahmad, goddammit. i thought we already went over this.

2--sultan was quality. one song really sucked but the rest I liked.

3--let's call donald malice tor eckman instead

4--yet again I should have purchased a shirt but didn't

5--i was laughing so hard when potsy showed me the "hitler without a mustache" text. especially at the end when he was waving to the crowd as he left the stage, it looked like he was giving the casual hitler salute to us...yeah, heil, see you later...heil...okay, bye...

Potsy said...

even our Soul music is being outsourced to India. I couldn't help but feeling like the Black Man is getting the shaft once more.

Sultan would be better in a smaller space, I agree.

Congrats on getting this review up before the summer's end.

sacklunch said...

Yeah, I had like 30 minutes last night between the end of work and the start of the Caps game to get this done. Good game, bad result.

Also, in doing research for photos, I found out that the word King Khan has something to do with Bollywood. Is there an actor named King Khan?, or is a word used to describe a huge movie star? Can't quite figure it out...

Unknown said...

saw mark sultan at beerland in austin, which is a real hole, and that was a good space for him. but he was even better on the black cat mainstage opening for clinic, when he was by himself.

hitler sans 'stache is the name of my new techno band. and i'd legit like to hear a chris kattan/john norris collaboration.

Jumbo Slice said...

I hope Ahmad won that "free tickets for a year" contest because you know damn well he's going to take advantage of it.

Malitz and I saw an ugly band during SXSW called Major Stars. Look them up. Not an attractive bunch.

John Norris was the guy that pulled the Jame Gumb move during SXSW.