Are people out there listening? Or is it just that time of year where we’re actually inundated with selections of good shows? I’m not complaining.
Both Egan’s and Green Bar have quality events this weekend, most noticeably on Friday night. (Also, are you noting a trend where I mention Egan’s and Green Bar every week? How ’bout some other venues and bars take a cue.)
Sure to host a fine display, Egan’s brings back Banditos from Birmingham, slowly becoming a Tuscaloosa staple amongst our own regulars.
Green Bar, upping the ante, brings in the Woggles. If you’re of the slightly older persuasion around Tuscaloosa (and, yes, it’s time to admit that you are), then you know who the Woggles are and Heaven and Hell both know that you’ve been to one of their shows. And, shit, what a show it was.
My first Woggles show was at least five years ago, maybe much longer ago than that; more importantly, they’ve been creating genuine, fast-paced garage rock for a while more than that, give or take fifteen more years. It’d almost be disgrace to simply call it “high energy” because it’s that and it is a certain vibe that you just don’t get with many bands these days. The music’s got a slight punk feel — a feel that has no pretensions other than playing a helluva show — and it’s got garage buzz with it, too. It’s like early Who may have been before they were world renown.
After all the years, too, the Woogles have a level of talent and togetherness than few bands around here have. It is a maturation of a band without getting old in every sense of the word, which they’ve done so well that other bands look to them, salivate, wonder how they do it, shrug, and enjoy it.
Featuring Tuscaloosa’s own Dan (Electro) Hall, who is also arguably one of the best drummers residing in town, the Woggles will get you moving. If not, The Professor will come out there and personally kick you in the ass. Hell, he’ll do that anyway. Be prepared for guitars being thrust in your face in unison with the music, the bass line dancing along with the melody, a drummer that’s as much fun to watch as he is to hear, and the singer playing tambourine like a tent-revival preacher on meth.
You know how you think the Sixites were all kinds of cool, probably? And the thing that made them cool was that you know someone, somewhere was putting on kick-ass records and by doing so revving up a dance-a-thon house party? Well, that person in that Sixties house party could’ve been putting on the Woggles. The Woggles just seem to have existed since then, and they haven’t lost any momentum.
Signed,
-Wellington Riverbottom