By Dina Maccabee
The rumors are true: a band member has confirmed that if you buy Chow Nasty‘s new album Super (Electrical) Recordings (Omega/Redeye) at an independent record store, you can get into their show at the Uptown in Oakland on April 25 for free, if you bring a receipt. Granted, that might be an easy sell to folks who already dig the Bay Area band’s guerilla party tactics but just haven’t gotten around to picking up their own personal copy of Super (Electrical) Recordings. Isn’t it more likely, though, that you’d be lured into buying a CD after taking in a kick-ass set and enough beer to soften the impact of forking over 15 bucks?
No matter, the thing to celebrate here isn’t free admission to the Uptown – it’s that these guys managed to translate even a fraction of the lunacy of their live show to a recording. Chow Nasty is the party-est band I’ve ever seen, crafting a militantly bizarre beat-fest out of stage rituals paying homage to James Brown and the Beastie Boys.
On tape, the combination of inanely indelicate rhymes (like MC Pep Love’s contribution, “I’m a give it to you / it’s a party in your mouth / and I’m coming through,” a slightly zany approach to hip-hop conventions, and a kind of studied boneheadedness result amid a fantastic funk frenzy reminiscent of Beck’s Prince-loving album Midnight Vultures (DGC, 1999). For this tour the drum-machine-vocals-bass trio includes a sidekick on trombone and guiro who reportedly refuses to perform in anything but a sleeveless velour track suit. Hell, yes – or should I say, “Ungawa!”
CHOW NASTY
With Trackademics, HotTub, and DJ Eddie Bauer
Fri/25, 9 p.m., $8
The Uptown
1928 Telegraph, Oakland
(510) 451-8100