Black-Eyed Snakes with Romantica

Music Starts:12/28/2007 - 8:00pm

The first time I saw the Black-eyed Snakes, I thought I had walked into a parallel universe. Alan Sparhawk, typically a sedate and melancholy musician, appeared to be having some sort of epileptic fit. He was thrashing around violently and screaming sounds that didn't even sound human, let alone lyrical. Apparently, it was supposed to be blues he was singing, but it wasn't anything like blues I knew. He was like John Lee Hooker being electrocuted. Meanwhile, Bob Olson, Brad Nelson, and Justin Sparhawk backed him up on guitar and drums; their demeaner suggested they were not playing music but butchering pigs. The whole sound seemed to reach into my chest and drag out my soul like a vine. This wasn't a show, this was voodoo.

Later, like an addict, I would return to show after show, and learn that Sparhawk kindly named his maniacal persona of his 'Chicken Bone George.' I also learned that when the spirit enters him, it has terrifying results, causing him to tear down ceilings, somersault off a drum kit and land flat on his back, to fall recklessly onto the floor and flip around, or even, godhelpus, cover Moby.

Since then, word of the group has spread. The group was voted 'Minnesota's Best New Band (2001)' by City Pages in Minneapolis and the reader's choice for the same honor in Duluth's Ripsaw. The band continues to pack hot, smoky rooms with freaked-out fans, and the icy Minnesota restraint seems to be melting just a touch. As the Snakes performed their greasiest song, '8-inch Knife,' at the last gig in a month-long weekly stint at a seedy dive in Superior, Wis., the dance floor looked something like an orgy. The Black-eyed Snakes are on to our dirty little secret. They know we're all hungry for a let-out, the real deal, the greasy meal, the knife in the back, so to speak. And they're going to give it to us, whether we like it or not.
(Barrett Chase, Duluth's Ripsa)

“be ready to have a good time; the Black Eyed Snakes are as sweaty and rowdy as a summer night on Beale Street, and about as crazy as a naked romp in a chicken coop.” (All Music Guide)