Bob Log III
Before I start, a disclaimer. I am full of cold and I feel like death. A small but very evil gnome has got inside my head and is trying to smash his way out with a pneumatic drill and I am feeling distinctly unusual from the (over-the-counter) pills and potions that I am taking in an effort to feel at least a little more like a functioning human being. So, what follows may not truly reflect he events of tonight.
Things get off to a less than great start when I manage to pour boiling hot lemon and ginger tea all over my hand. Nobody’s fault but my own but blooming hellfire NAC’s hot drinks are very HOT. (And if you had told me in my youth that I would be drinking herbal tea – rather than Red Stripe or JD ‘n’ coke – at a gig, I would have laughed long, hard and right in your face.)
But enough of my woes and on to the music and Thomas Truax, singer-songwriter, guitarist, instrument inventor, New York antifolker, cultural ambassador for the wandering floating island of Wowtown and former Celebrity Death Match animator.
Truax is backed up by what he describes as a band of his self-built and fantastical instruments, the Hornicator, Stringaling and what is introduced as the Mother Superior but my research suggests is Sister Spinster. Spending almost as much time off stage, playing in the audience, rather than on it, the songs include standards and originals and are, by turns, surreal, wistful, sorrowful and uplifting. Lyrics take in an injured butterfly bumming a lift, the precarious waltz between life and death and sleep whistling. There are hints of David Byrne and Tom Waits in the delivery and the stranger, more wilful songs bring to mind recent Scott Walker. For all that, I can’t help being comparing Truax with John Otway - a John Otway channelling New York spirit but John Otway nonetheless.
Bob Log III takes to the stage in the garb of a human cannonball, complete with velour jumpsuit with rhinestones and a sparkling crash helmet. Singing into a telephone receiver built in to the helmet’s visor, playing slack stringed guitars and drumming with his feet, he is clearly not your run-of-the-mill bluesman and is here to deliver a blues-punk dance party.
BLIII is clearly a showman of the highest order, high-fiving the audience, taking a ride over the crowd in an inflatable dinghy and inviting the audience on stage to be bounced on his knee whilst he plays. The music has its roots in delta blues but with a huge injection of punk energy and attitude. The guitar work is fast and furious, with some stunning slide work, whilst the rhythm pounds out. My only criticisms are that the music does become a touch one dimensional and the vocals are almost inaudible. Still, that may just be the result of this cold and my fuzzy, messed up head.
By 22:30, with Bob Log III three quarters of an hour into his set and still on stage, this hasn’t been the cure for my ills that I was hoping for. I still feel more dead than alive and that evil gnome is still using the pneumatic drill and I have to call it a night. For all that, I wouldn’t have missed this for the world. Despite my reservations about the music, Bob Log III is a true entertainer and puts on a properly fantastic show but Thomas Truax is a revelation and it is his performance that has won me over. On a different night, in better health, it may have been different and I would have stayed to the very end. Tonight, I just can’t do it.
PS/ Apologies to anyone at the gig that I may have infected with this frankly evil bug. Just call me Typhoid Mary…
