The Severed Cortex

N: Did he just say Girl you're a beautiful lemon mall?
D: No. He said animal.
N: Oh my god. Beatle Bob is up there.
D: Yeah, I know. I was hoping you wouldn't notice.

Johnny Hickman plays guitar so well that just listening to him might break your hoo-haw. I'm a big fan, but to me he seems terribly underrated. The simple fact is he's got a ton of chops and blues licks out the, well, hoo-haw. He did not disappoint. David Lowery just looked old and he seemed awfully tired. But, be that as it may, Lowery, Hickman and the whole Cracker gang put on a pretty decent show. Hickman's guitar could have been mixed up a little bit and the whole thing could have been a little louder, but at age 41, seven years of living on top of locomotive engines, and only six months removed from getting my eardrums perforated at a Supersuckers show, I'm OK with the lack of loudness thing nowadays.

It's actually been awhile since I've seen a show at the Duck Room (John Scofield?, Mike Stern?, Jive Talking Robots?), but I've always liked seeing a band there. It's a small enough room to basically be on top of the band and despite the small-ish bar, you always seemed to get served quickly enough, even if there is a large crowd. And there was a pretty large crowd to see Cracker which sort of surprised me. What surprised me most was the number of middle aged guys like me there. It was like a freakin' sausage fest. I always considered Cracker to be one of those groups that no one ever knows about. That is, until you play Low for them. "Oh, those guys. Yeah I remember them". I don't meet a lot of people who cite Cracker or Camper van Beethoven as one of their favorite bands, so to see around 300 people there kind of shocked me too.

They opened with St. Cajetan, which is probably my favorite Cracker song not titled Eurotrash Girl. This is mostly due to Hickman's kick ass opening guitar riffs. About eight songs in they did Eurotrash Girl and just about everyone in the place was singing at the top of their lungs. From that point it looked like they disregarded the pre-planned set list and just reverted to Lowery calling out songs. They played pretty much all old stuff and tons of it. At least 3/4 of the songs were from the self titled debut or Kerosene Hat. As near as I could tell they only played one song off the new release, which I haven't bought yet. Overall, including the three song encore, they played for almost two hours. That's certainly reasonable for your hard earned $17.50.

I should also mention that drummer Frank Funaro was as serviceable as expected and Sal Maida was outstanding on bass. Maida primarily played a white Fender P-Bass, but he also had another nifty looking bass that I have no idea what it was. I know very little about bass guitars.

David Lowery mostly played an orange Ibanez Jet King. I don't think it was the same one that was stolen from him in Montreal. All I know is that I want one and as soon as I see one that's for sale I'm going to buy it. His other guitar appeared to be a hollow body Ibanez Artcore, although I'm just guessing at that. Johnny played a black Gibson Les Paul.