KISS / Photo by Erika Goldring
Friday:
Worst Supernatural Powers: Alejandro Escovedo
He's been through a lot in the course of a 30-year career, from opening for the Sex Pistols (with the Nuns) to triumphing over hepatitis C. On the opening day of Voodoo, his set was positively blistering, as he led a black-clad band through a fierce hour of True Believers, Rank and File and solo alt-country-punk volleys of fire. The afternoon was warm, sunny and humid till he tore into "Castanets" – a cold wind sliced through the crowd as he started the closer, Bowie's "All The Young Dudes." As soon as the (other) man in black was gone, the sky turned black and cold pellets of rain started to hammer the crowd. If a gale-force guitar can control the weather, then his may well have.
Click here to see our exclusive Voodoo photo gallery.
Best Music For Giving In to the Rain: Black Keys
When icy rain is pouring down on your head and you're up to your ankles in frigid, stinky mud, the Black Keys' weighty garage-blues sounds as dragged-out, fuzzy and distorted as you feel.
Best Fusion: Lil Brian & The Zydeco Travelers
Zydeco isn't just for heritage fests; up in North Louisiana, the traditional Creole hybrid sound is getting mixed with soul, R&B and hip-hop till it's straight pimping. Lil Brian and the Zydeco Travelers are one of the best of the neo-zydeco acts, strutting with washboard and accordion through songs like Parliament's "Up For The Downstroke" reworked as "Up For The Zydeco." Aieeeee!
Eminem
Worst Misogynistic Rabble-Rousing: Eminem
Em's set otherwise revealed him as 110 percent back in fighting form after his long hiatus. His lightning flow made more than a few of us remember that way back before Weezy claimed the title of Best Rapper Alive, there'd been another heavyweight contender in the game. But did he really have to exhort thousands of fans to grab their nuts, pump their middle fingers in the air and yell, "Bitch, you make me hurl," as a lead-in to "Superman?"
Worst Audience Rapport: the Knux
This New Orleans-born rap duo moved to Los Angeles after Katrina and got pretty hot pretty quick, thanks to video-game beats, old-school hip-hop appeal and craftily constructed songs like the NOLA-rap-flavored "Fire (Put It In The Air)" and "Bang Bang." They played a kickass show at Essence Fest in New Orleans earlier this year. At Voodoo, though, they wavered in the face of the crappy weather and came through with a stage presence on the WWOZ/SoCo stage that was like a primer on unpleasant ways for a band to act: 1) Don't refuse to start the show till the audience yells your name and puts their hands in the air to your satisfaction, when they are already standing in freezing rain for you and your stage is running an hour late. 2) Don't ask chicks to take off their tops in that same freezing rain. Because no women will, but that drunk fat guy with huge man-boobs thinks it's a good idea, and now look what you did. 3) Don't get into a standoff (which stops the already late show) with the security guard who's telling you that audience members can't come up onstage. 4) Don't talk about how much the festival you are playing right now sucks because you're mad at the security guard. If you're being a cranky bitch, nobody will yell, "Fuck the police" with you when you ask them to. See? They didn't. 5) Oh, and don't try to force the crowd to yell your band name when your band name sounds like "nuts."
