Most nights when I go out, all I want to do is sdance, dance, dance. And if there’s ever a band that on any given night you can count on shakin' to, it’s Athens, GA’s Dark Meat. Dark Meat’s a band I love seeing because it’s not just a bunch of sweaty unwashed dudes; there’s also lots of lovely ladies providing back up vocals, like Sara J. Ursrey (the Ones, Creepy) Hope for a Golden Summer’s Claire and Page Campbell (also Creepy), and other ladyfriends providing percussion and horns and strings.
Dark Meat also boasts a horn section called the Vomit Lasers, with satyrs on saxophone, foxy boys playing trumpet, feral boys burnishing blasts from their trombone. There’s also several wild things blowing your mind on guitar, and a tall boy trilling away at the keys. Ben Clack thumps out bass lines compelling you to get your groove on, conjoining with the two of Athens’ hardest rocking drummers Jason Robira and Forrest Lefford to propel the whole combustible madness taking place before your eyes, pounding in your ears, your brain, your butt, your gut, taking you from psych to blues to jazz to straight up punk rock, guitarist/ frontman Jim McHugh freaking out on the mike as he belts out each song, at one point pressing his face close against Ursrey as they delivered dueling vocals. Sadly, my batteries died and the image remains imprinted only in my mind (and explains the lackluster quality of these pictures...)
Highlights of Friday’s show included the brand new song they started with whose name I don’t know, a louder harder version of Oh Sh** I F***** Up than I’ve ever heard before, and Freedom Ritual, which begins with the lovely toned lady Page Campbell singing acapello, all the band sitting quietly at her feet, her throaty voice soaring to lovely heights before the song erupted into clamor and chaos.
On any given night Dark Meat boasts between sixteen and twenty-three members, and there’s so much going on onstage that it’s not possible to do the band justice with mere words. It’s something that has to be experienced in the flesh, something you have to see in person at least one time. And when you do make it to see them live, do yourself and me a favor, and remember to let yourself go, freak out, and shake, shake, shake for me.
