Pleaseeasaur :: Live You Got It
2000-01-12
THE ROCKET
Due to the high cost of the evening, the younger devotees of Murder City Devils and Source of Labor stayed away in droves. Instead, the half-full dance floor was dominated by fiscally comfortable couples well into in their third decade who came dressed to the nines expecting a seamless musical groove for dancing, romancing and imbibing. They had little interest in Pleaseeasaur's comic rants or MCD lead singer Spencer Moody's stage jumping audience attacks.
For anyone who knew what they were getting, though, the evening's music had moments of brilliance. Pleaseeasaur, a techno comedian in a polar bear suit who sings about everything from dog excrement to Paul McCartney's penis, opened the show. He was followed by jazzy hip-hop explorers Source of Labor, who grooved through a solid set of tunes from their upcoming CD, Balance.The program took an unusual turn when MCD rang the bell on a round of gut rock athletics. Midway through their set, the band solicited audience members to wrestle Moody for $1. They got one paying--and several non-paying--volunteers to roll around with him in the beer batter grime on the stage floor as he sang. Musically, though, MCD seemed to struggle, running through both crowd favorites and newer tunes a little hesitantly. One band can only give so much, and on this night, the Devils more focused on giving up their singer to anyone with $1 and the temerity to get onstage. This WWF-style showmanship, however, more than made up for any lapses of big rock proficiency.The evening ended on a smoother, cleaner note when Maktub, the champagne of Seattle trip-hop excursionists, popped the cork on their collection of sweet, sexy, funk-inflected tunes. By the time Maktub grooved into "Just Can't Make It," from their eponymous debut, singer Reggie Watts, a latter-day Al Green, had won over the floor's sea of undulating bodies such that all New Year's worries--about money, terrorists, computer breakdowns, anything--seemed miles away.
