Road Rocket Rumble Part II - Keep 'er Tight and In Control

It'd do my soul good to claim that over the weekend I've been a lazy slob of the sort prone to neglecting their blogging duties. I could go on about how I lazed by the pool and drank Mai Tais .while eating bonbons. Alas it wouldn't be true. I won't go into the gory details but the synopsis involves two computer desks, a truckload of books, and a lot of climbing stairs. Yeah, the pool would have been a lot more relaxing. So, excuse making out of the way - this weekend was Road Rocket Rumble 10 and it lived up to its name in many ways.

Friday we arrived around 7 o'clock expecting to park in the hotel parking lot and search for the event. Somehow it slipped my mind that this event did involve hotrods and they couldn't be parked inside the hotel. So, I pull up to the hotel where two women greet me. I roll my window down and lean out to tell them we've come for the dance. Their response? "Dance? You mean the bands?" Okay, yeah I mean the bands - that should have told me something there - more on that later - but yes, we came for "the bands". The ladies at the gate promptly directed me back to a field we'd passed on the way in - the one with all the cars parked in it - and we hiked to the hotel in 90-degree heat.

The place was jumping. The last time I saw cars so freaky hopped up the driver was one of the Munsters. Every vehicle had been chopped, lowered, and tricked out with chrome and side pipes. We signed in with the first Bettie Page look alike of the day and headed inside to find the ballroom.

I say ballroom strictly in the conceptual sense. When I was a kid, I went to a crappy public school. Good old IPS 107 was a boomer service centers - one of those mid-sixties soulless government buildings with acoustic tile ceilings and asbestos-wrapped hot water pipes. The kind of place the fifties generation sent their kids to have the spirit and originality taught out of them. Well, the classrooms in that place were about the same size as the 'ballroom' where the Road Rocket Rumble bands played. Cozy would be a euphemism; uncomfortably close would be more like it! In spite of the tightness of the confines, the bands were fab.

Rumble Club hewed to the psychobilly side of things: speed, booze, and speed. I give them a seven for skill but I just couldn't dance to them. My inability to get on the floor wasn't the band's fault, it had a lot to do with the fact nobody else was out there dancing. The place was kinda dead in spite of the band's efforts. When we did manage to get ourselves on the floor the tempo was blistering - so much that we had to dance at half speed just to manage a triple swing.

The second band up was a little slower. The Star Devils gave us a chance to dance and we were on the floor until we were dripping with sweat (not too hard considering the AC had to be set to simmer) and sometime around 11 o'clock we dragged ourselves off the floor and packed up our shoes.

As I collected my belongings, an old fellow came across the room and put his hand on my shoulder. He leaned in and said, "Nice dancin' - you keep her tight and in control." I thanked him and as he walked away I wondered if that actually was a compliment or an admonition. Kelly had to remind me that one of the few other couples dancing that night were a pair of Lindy Hoppers and by comparison our EC Triple must have looked like precision flying. Sometimes a venue is too small for a dance and sometimes, when it is, I guess it leaves you looking like a wild dance-thug. I don't know.

Day two came a little early for my sore muscles. We showed up in time to take a few pictures but the hotrods doing burn-outs in the driveway kinda' sent me to the dance floor without doing too much strolling. Too much gasoline and burning rubber gives you the feeling you've either walked out onto the bricks at the Indy 500 or maybe into the middle of a Mad Max flick. Besides, the sun threatened to reduce us to Shrinky Dink status so we made for the Michigan Room.

On our second night I got to see the Rockabilly Swing in the wild. A few kids (god I hate using that term because it implies I'm not a member of that clique any longer) took the floor while the DJ spun disks and they definitely tore it up. Lesson one about Rockabilly Swing: The steps are tiny. I'm not talking small, I'm talking itty-bitty as in you go through about twenty steps before you make a full revolution. This was news to me. In my version of the dance I'd make a full revolution in five steps, maybe. Since that day I've reduced my step size and added a bounce.

That bounce is important. I know from Lindy Hop that the bounce keeps you light on your feet and makes speed easier to obtain. Rockabilly isn't any different; you need to keep off the floor as much as possible to be able to do some of the complex spins. Definitely another learning point.

Day two of the Rocket Rumble kind of reminded me of day two of a family reunion. Everyone seemed to be getting a little cranky. People came in from the parking lot once the sun went down and soon the tiny dance floor was crowded with chairs. Kelly and I stuck around to see Pearls Mahone and the One-Eyed Jacks, a Chicago-area band was more our speed. They played a little Wanda Jackson and a little Patsy Cline, everything in between had a beat. Second on stage was the Hi-Q's, a Detroit band that chewed up the chords a little fast for our feet. We called it an evening but not before being asked where we learned to dance again.

I like to point out those times that people admire our dancing. It's not because I crave confirmation (although that's nice) but it's because I'm the sort of person who can focus on the negative all too often if I let myself. I worry over my ability to do a turn or get a step and sometimes I forget that we often get compliments. I think the biggest one came on Sunday when we took my dad out for Father's Day breakfast. He chose Cracker Barrel and while we were waiting for a seat Kelly spotted a couple people wearing Road Rumble tee-shirts. They recognized us as 'those dancing people'. Hey, there's a lot worse to go through life being known as!

Fujiyama Mama

Ah, the slide guitar; the mellow sound is enough to melt me in my seat. Don’t know exactly why, maybe because the sound is prominent in surf music and that reminds me of a beach. Anyway. It’s a hard instrument to play; the slippery sound I love so much can easily descend into twang and “slide” off key unless in the hands of a skillful player, and skillful is exactly what I got yesterday at the Road Rocket Rumble, the band was Pearls Mahone and the One Eyed Jacks. http://www.myspace.com/pearlsmahone

All the bands were good, don’t get me wrong; to perform rockabilly nowadays you have to love it, because you are not going to make your living playing it. But Pearls and her band stood out, both for their musicality and their stage presence. Picture a busty redhead in a skin tight dress with huge white pearls wrapped around her neck; her posse of “boys” rather like the silent Darlings on Andy Griffith. Pearl belts out rockabilly like she was born in the backwoods; my favorite was Wanda Jackson’s Fujiyama Mama, woooHOO. Combine Pearl’s lusty delivery with the cutest giggle I’ve heard in a long time, and you get a lead singer that’s hard to ignore. And her band. Wow. All very good, especially the base player and the slide guitarist. Pearl’s funny too: loved the story about escaping Friday’s downpour with a Pabst carton over her head, and pleading to the crowd to buy her Margaritas because she drank ‘em like water. The boys, she added, preferred Blue Ribbon. Funny.

Overall, we had a blast at the Rocket Rumble; we danced and danced, and when we weren’t hopping and bopping until our feet hurt we listened to the music and watched the crowd. Rockabilly culture is an amazing mixture of young and old, male and female. (It is not diverse in other ways, unfortunately.) You’ve got your car geeks, your music aficionados, folks who like to dress up like Bettie Page and the male 50’s greaser equivalent, and people like Gary and me who are not part of the underground so to speak, but we love love LOVE the music and of course, love to dance to it.

Dancing isn’t first and foremost within the rockabilly culture, although people DO dance and dance well, aka, rockabilly swing, which Gary and I have been learning. We saw some stunning examples and I could have watched them all night. Mostly young people doing it because much of the music was lightening fast.

And herein lies something that perhaps the community should think about. As I was reading up on the Rocket Rumble, I saw some posts out of Chicago bemoaning the fact that rockabilly isn't as appreciated like it used to be. I understand; the bands we saw were fantastic, but there wasn’t a huge crowd. And I wish there were more places to hear the music around Indianapolis.

But what comes to mind considering this problem is Terry Lee and the Rockaboogie band. I think they fit into the Rockabilly genre, but the culture that follows Terry is a bit different. You do see Bettie Pages and 50’s guys, but you also see a lot more older people, AND many more folks dancing. The reason for that is Terry plays a more varied selection speed-wise; he might do a blistering Jerry Lee Louis tune, but then puts the brakes on with some slower country numbers. All rockabilly/country/hillbilly, but it gives everyone the opportunity to dance, not just young kids.

If you’re a psychobilly band fine, you do fast. If you advertise yourself as that, people know it. But if you do like Pearl and advertise hillbilly or rockabilly, then my one bit of advice would be to add more slower numbers. People want to dance. I can tell by the way they bounce in their seats, and because older people make a beeline for the floor when you DO play a reduced beat number. Your band is fantastic. I don’t think you can improve musically. Your stage presence is blistering hot. But maybe you could widen your audience participation just a little. And that goes for the other bands too.

Bang bangedy bang bang.

Road Rocket Rumble - I

June's been a busy month. Traveled to Virginia but didn't have time to check out any dance venues (plus my one and only partner didn't come along) and then work became little bit of a mess. Finally things are shaking out and just in time for the 10th Annual Road Rocket Rumble!

For a long time Kelly and I have been wanting to actually see Rockabilly in the wild. Not the domesticated stuff you get on a dance DVD or YouTube (okay, YouTube's pretty much in the wild too). Well, this is our weekend. We've got two days planned at the rumble – tonight we'll catch a band and cruise the vendor stalls, tomorrow we'll catch a couple bands and get real tired.

I promise lots of pictures and much opinionating. We'll be at the Clarion West, Indianapolis which advertizes a big dance floor. My fingers are crossed. I've lived on the west side of Indy for a long time and I know the Clarion but I don't know it for its dance floor. I know it for the fact it's an 80's era hotel in an odd location that seemed tired and run down as soon as it was built. I had some friends who worked in an office building near the Clarion and we used to go to the hotel bar once in awhile. As I recall, it wasn't overly impressive – let's hope I've mellowed over time!

The fest itself is a gangly affair. There are hotrods, pinup girls, retro wear booths, car parts, dance instruction, a daredevil show, and bands. It sounds like having the circus come to stay in your guest room for about a week. What a mess, you'd be finding peanut shells and Pabst Blue Ribbon bottles under the bed for months. The smell probably never would come out of the upholstery. I'm keen on seeing the cars and it'd be interesting to catch the pinup show as well as some of the daredevil stuff which brings up the one piece of advice I'd give the organizers before ever entering the event. Publish a COMPLETE schedule. I know when the bands play but that's it. No idea when the shows are or when the venue opens – I just know we'll head down there before 7:30 tonight and see what we see.