Not too hip to be square Buddytown.org, Nashville’s emerging hipster Illuminati, played host to a much-hyped dance party at Ombi Bar/Le Peep on Saturday night. DJ Tanner (get it?) slaved over his laptop to keep the party hits coming, and the gussied-up crowd thrilled for the thousandth time to Michael Jackson and Madonna. Weaving through the gyrating mass of boys in eyeliner and neo-flapper girls with haircuts straight out of Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, one couldn’t help but wonder when the movers and shakers took all the fun out of moving and shaking. The chic, mood-lit atmosphere cast a veneer of glamour over the occasion, and the exuberance on display led to more than one up-against-the-wall makeout session. But an undercurrent of self-consciousness and entitlement made it damn near impossible to truly cut loose. Buddytowners have every right to their self-declared snobbery, but who wants to pay 5 bucks at the door and 8 bucks for a mixed drink when you can throw your own elite dancefest with just a stereo, a garage and a keg? Populist punk Friday night, The End was the crime scene for Punk Rock Party No. 11, a rollicking all-ages we-don’t-give-a-fuck fest. It was a wasteland of dudes in black band T-shirts and punky pin-up types. In addition to four decent bands, we were lucky enough to witness four very impressive mohawks, three of which could be found on just one guy’s head. My Red Hot Nightmare—featuring a rehashed lineup from The OC Supertones—kicked off the night with music to be filed under ska-punk for Christ. To the rescue, Sacramento street punks Final Summation carried the torch with a more beer-spitting version of a good time. When the frontman from Rock ’n’ Roll Hooligans came out in a plaid button-down, the angry-dancing diehards had room to pace. But The Carry-Ons, who are split between Nashville and Atlanta, had the whole room pushing, bouncing and singing along. “I Remember,” an infectious don’t-wanna-grow-up song, brought a horde of fans onstage who knew all the words. Shouting over riffy punk and black-metal inspired guitar solos, lead singer Abraham Mesaris proved he knows how to hot-wire an audience. Still, it doesn’t hurt that most songs were punctuated by anthemic “Whoa-oh-oh’s.” After the show, Punk Rock Party organizers threw together a “Harlem, 1958” jazz greats-inspired group portrait of bands and fans, encompassing an enigmatic mix of rockabilly beauties, balding metal-heads and leather-clad kids who still live with their parents. Beer, chicken and women: what’s not to get? The problem with dragging friends to a concert like Friday’s Southern Culture on the Skids show at Mercy Lounge is that some people just don’t get it. They don’t get Mary Huff’s bouffant wig and go-go boots, so they overlook her amazing dexterity on the bass. They see Rick Miller’s Col. Sanders-meets-Gilligan costume and fail to see one of America’s truly great surfabilly guitarists. So, you ask your friend, “What don’t you like about these guys?” The band’s music has appeared in everything from a Dukes of Hazzard movie to Helzberg Diamonds commercials. The reply: “There’s too much guitar in their music.” Which makes no sense, since first-rate guitar playing is precisely what SCOTS is all about. That and fried chicken, which SCOTS gives its audience each night it plays, usually during “Eight Piece Box” or the encore. Four dancing women in retro swimsuits, part of the Panty Raid lineup, tossed chicken bits into the open mouths of the largely male audience members, bones and all. One of the Raiders actually spit chicken, but it failed to land upon the waiting tongue of a female fan. Obviously, the message to Huff, Miller and drummer Dave Hartman is that you can’t please all of the people all of the time—people who say there’s too much guitar in your music, for example. But for this reviewer, you once again made the city’s best party all about beer, chicken and the shaking hips of bikini-clad women. What the funk? Theme parties like Saturday’s Funk Ball at City Hall tend to be entertaining even if the performances are weak. When funk is on the menu, attendees usually don some outrageous caricature of ’70s clothing, pimps attend with “ho’s” in tow, and someone is always going to wear an Afro wig and dance like an idiot. If the audience disappointed—in that few rocked the Superfly gear or danced—the performers made up for folks’ lack of adherence to the joy of ’70s soul music with renditions of hot buttered soul classics. The Dynamites, featuring the nattily attired lead singer Charles Walker, burned up the stage with slick grooves. Highlights included Walker and guitarist Bill Elder feeding off each other on a cover of The Meters’ “Just Kissed My Baby.” The Meters are from New Orleans, and so are, we guess, some of the members of The Dynamites, since they played several zydeco songs that to our chagrin, caused impromptu shag dancing. Actually, the shagging was much preferred to the frat boys who decided to execute some bastardized version of a Native American medicine dance during Johny Jackson’s DJ set. Getting folks to dance is what Johny Jackson is all about, though few chose to get funky. His reemergence gave us memories of the humid backroom at 328 Performance Hall, where no one was afraid of the funk—or the dance floor. Nietzsche + nipples=rock When Kyle Krone, lead singer of The Shys, leapt onto one of the tables at the front of The Basement’s stage last Thursday night, we thought, hmmm, haven’t seen that before. Then, when lead singer Ben Tegel of The Vacation stood on one of those tables, grabbed a candle and poured hot wax all over his bare chest, we thought, hmmm, don’t know if we ever want to see that again. It was an evening of L.A. meets Nashville, which meant big theatrics, tight pants and a plethora of bemused looks in the crowd. But it also meant a night of bright, loud, take-notice rock ’n’ roll without all the exhausting indie apathy. And Tegel didn’t stop with the table dancing—he writhed on the floor and cruised the crowd, at one point remarking how “postmodern” it was to stand among the audience, facing the stage: “I’m in the band and watching the band at the same time!” But, really, what does every drunken rocker want in his dark little heart? To be seen as an intellectual, of course. In post-show conversation, Tegel was insistent that despite his liquor-swilling, floor-humping and nipple-scalding antics, he reads Nietzsche. And look, watch him quote Marx! The Stooges were pure genius, he told us, boxing is poetry and The Vacation’s songs are really about manufactured desire. Wonder if he came to those realizations before or after he shoved the mic down his pants for their album cover. Real raw power Recently, the shuffle function on our iPod called up Alejandro Escovedo’s “Crooked Frame” (containing one of the great petty breakup lines: “I’d have to stretch the truth, to say that you were pretty”). Midway through the song, our passenger exclaimed, “Who is this?! It’s so raw.” Having played rock, punk and country over a decades-long career gives Escovedo an enormous reserve of influences and inspiration—yet what he emerges with resembles nothing else. With his serene yet intense presence, Escovedo held the room in thrall at 3rd & Lindsley last Sunday night. Playing with an ensemble that included a cello and violin (both amped up and aggressively rock ’n’ roll), Escovedo came out swinging, with a heavy, pulsing version of “Put You Down” that had audience members turning to each other as if to say, wordlessly with a nod of the head and a bemused grin, “Holy shit, this is fucking gooood.” After a recent, well-publicized bout with hepatitis C, Escovedo looked slight but powerful. After the Lightning 100 taping ended, he promised, in the midst of an enthusiastic standing ovation, a couple more songs. That encore included a cover of The Stones’ “Beast of Burden” that Escovedo sang in his raw, disarmingly unaffected way—bringing out the insecurities in a song that Jagger mostly made swagger. Opening was Sonya Kitchell, an impressive, soulful singer-songwriter with a rangy voice and an endearing openness—so imagine our surprise to find out she was only 17 years old. Chicks “R” Us Dawson Wells is a lover, not a fighter—so given his prodigious romantic inclinations, he surrounds himself with some pretty hot chicks. As long as that’s his lifestyle, why not make a band out of it? Thus sprung forth the band Dawson Wells, Some Hot Chicks & Bob. (We’re not sure how Bob, a.k.a. Robert Paul Wilson, fits in, other than he plays bass and we assume, helps keep the ladies happy when Dawson needs a rest.) DW has been busy at work on his upcoming disc (featuring one of our favorite titles of the year, Re: Re: No Subject) and the samples ( www.myspace.com/dawsonwells ) are promising: shiny power-pop featuring string-laden ’60s-style production worthy of Petula Clark or Dusty Springfield. Come see the Nashville underground’s answer to Dean Martin as he publicly woos Hot Chicks Laura Taylor (drums), Jordan Brooke Hamlin (guitar), Jenn Stone (keys), and, um, Bob, Tuesday, May 30th at The Basement.