Salt Lake City Upcoming Concerts: Dr. Octagon, Meg & Dia, Buckcherry

By Brian Staker, 2-02-07

	Caption: Staker Pick of the Week: Dr. Octagon

Dr. Octagon **Staker’s Pick of the Week!**

Bronx-based “Kool Keith” Thornton was one of a small group of underground hip-hop turntablists who virtually defined eclectic in the late 90’s. Since he had at one time been a psychiatric patient at Bellevue, it seems fitting that his musical expressions can’t be confined to one ‘personality,’ and his Dr. Octagon moniker was the most experimental of the family.  His bellwether full-length Dr. Octagonecolegyst (DreamWorks, 1996) featured like minds in innovative producer Dan the Automator and scratching maniac DJ Q-Bert, and the futuristic soundscapes they helped him create supported his own explorations of the surrealist possibilities of language in rap. Work like this found the genre crossing over into guitar-chord weary indie rock listeners.

Although Dr. Doooom (hope I got enough ‘O’s in there), another of his alter egos, killed off Doc Oc (note the reference to a Spider Man arch villain—not just villain but attaining the lofty status of arch) on the opening track of 1999’s First Come, First Served, the freaky physician found a return on last year’s The Return of Dr. Octagon. With reports of his death exaggerated, the truth began to emerge, that in the preceding decade of ‘Earth time’ his clones had been methodically roaming the universe, one by one decimated each planet, until he arrived back here. If you’ve used clones, you know the problems they can cause, and the rampage was unauthorized, so he’s back to get them in check. This time instead of the sparse sonic palette of Dan the Automator (who went on to Gorillaz), he went with frenetic trio One Watt Sun, somehow broadening his focus to the state of humankind instead of just female anatomy. He can go from “Our Operators are Masturbating” to “A Gorilla Driving a Pickup Truck,” a metaphor for terrorism urban and cosmic, and it’s the kaleidoscopic range of his body of work that is stunning.

February 3, Urban Lounge

Dr. Israel

Another eclectic doctor from the Big Apple, Dr. Israel adds dub reggae, drum’n’bass and jungle to the repertoire of his pactice. 2005’s Patterns of War (ROIR) showed evidence of his evolving ire at the political environment of recent events, as well as showing him moving in a more old school direction, without completely forsaking the experimental. Last year’s Friction (Dougl) followed it up in not as definitive fashion. But this kind of music is best witnessed live, to let the beats get into your bones.

February 5, Monk’s House of Jazz

February 9: Denver, CO (Cervantes Masterpiece Ballroom)

Munly & the Lee Lewis Harlots

Whereas Southern literature has always had a revered place in the American artistic pantheon, its musical correlative Country and Western has unfortunately been commonly viewed as a degraded genre, trite and unintellectual. But Munly and the Lee Lewis Harlots are here to dispose of that myth, with a few well-aimed songs at the cranium. Not that the group is too cerebral to be down-home soulful; Munly Munly’s songs are downright Faulkneresque. Titles like “Of Silas Fauntleroy’s Willingness to Impress the Panel” and “Big Black Bull Comes Like A Caesar” convey the weight of artistic expression they carry.

Munly has an impressive resume, as the front sideman to the outfit Slim Cessna’s Auto Club to his book of songs in story format, Ten Songs With No Music, to the Young North American Playwright Award. 2004’s self-titled Smooth Records/Alternative Tentacles, sounds like an imaginary conversation between Faulkner and Johnny Cash, eloquent in its seeming simplicity. And here is actually a musician Denver is giving us that doesn’t require listeners to bring a hacky sack to gain entrance to the show.

February 6, Urban Lounge

Head Automatica,

Head Automatica is the unlikely pairing of NYC hardcore mainstay Glassjaw frontman Daryl Palumbo with Dan the Automator (see Dr. Octagon above) of hip-hop innovators Gorillaz. While the duo’s 2004’s debut Decadence showcased the more ‘Automatic’ side of the collaboration, last year’s Popaganda, true to title, was more poppy in a rock way, akin to Interpol, the Killers and others of that ilk. That’s to file under the by now conventional ‘If You Like This,’ (IYLT) music mag acronym, since we music listeners amidst a sea of sound, battle the opposing impulses of building a little familiar sonic niche for ourselves and letting the waves (.wavs, mp3s etc) carry us across sometimes choppy and not always pleasant waters.

February 8, In the Venue

Also appearing:
February 9, Denver, CO (Fillmore Auditorium)

Meg & Dia

How does a teenage phenom cope with the traumatic post-teen years? Local products Meg & Dia Frampton had been performing their power pop for years at the usual venues, county fairs and local band showcases, before hitting it big (relatively speaking, for an unknown entity) on Myspace and a spot on the website’s Warped Tour stage last year. Their Doghouse Records debut, Something Real, actually delivers what it promises, to the extent that they convey the ‘reality’ of living in the conservative community of Draper, and the limited wisdom of twenty-somethings. But they’d make for a better reality show than much of the ‘family life’ presented on the tube currently, and you don’t see them succumbing to the eccentricities of the Olson twins.

February 8, Thanksgiving Point (Lehi)

Buckcherry

LA hard rockers Buckcherry are yet another combo commemorating a decade since inception, so what do they have to show for it? Since emerging in a SoCal scene post-grunge when hard rock was still dominated by Guns’n’Roses glam and ‘classic rock’ acts like Aerosmith were enjoying a renaissance. Buckcherry seemed geared towards creating their own new classic sound, yet not the innovators their forefathers were by any means. They haven’t had any songs to equal the popularity of early hit “Check Your Head,” but last year’s 15 (Eleven Seven Music) showed a definite progression into more countrified, bluesy territory without sacrificing any of the power of the rock.

February 8, Saltair

Also appearing:
February 5: Denver, CO (Ogden Theatre)
February 7: Blackfoot, ID (El Rey Events Center)