Riverboat Gamblers @ 9:30 Club

I thought I had seen it all at the 9:30 club...hanging out (and passing, not smoking, a bong to) in the green room with George Clinton; seeing Dave Grohl get hammerfaced on jaegermeister only to jump on top of the bar on the side of the crowd and rock out; seeing the guitarist for the Roots shimmy out into a sold-out crowd and play a guitar solo behind his back that would have made Hendrix pop a boner in his grave...and then came the Riverboat Gamblers. The lead singer seemed to have taken personal frontman lessons from the Vacation's Ben Tegel; the mic-swing and catch, head-butts with the front row, jumps, and entrance into the crowd were identical. Except for the Gambler Frontman upped the ante by one or two last night: 1) breakdancing 80's style (Can I get a coffee-grinder please? Oh yes you can!) in the middle of a crowd circle 2) singing on top of the t-shirt booth 3) climbing up onto the balcony from the t-shirt booth stand like spiderman 4) singing all along the balcony to the uppermost (crowd) right (see above). Well, it worked. The crowd loved every minute of it, and clearly these guys deserve the buzz they received for SXSW, if for nothing else than for their showmanship and energy. The music itself...ehhh. I really need to dig into their recorded stuff to give these guys a fair shake. The bass drum was turned up way too loud (although I was 3 feet in front of the big speaks), and a lot of the songs kind of blended together in the way that punk songs can tend to do. I much preferred the music of The Bronx, which seemed fairly similar in genre, and just realized that I never posted anything about that great show I caught at