review by: Roberto Martinelli

Do you remember the “Police Academy” movies? Do you remember the eternal gag when Mahoney and his gang would trick the mean-o cops into going to that gay bar, The Blue Oyster? You know, where yoked gay dudes would force them to dance the tango? Well, The Eagle Tavern *is* that bar.

So normally, I might be downright scared to set foot in such a place, regardless of how many metal armbands with nails coming out of them I have on. But on this night it was cool, because The Eagle Tavern was one of the featured venues of the Mission Creek Music Festival, and I was in the company of three very cute and very straight young women who would jump to my defense - or so I hoped.

At least Eugene Robinson would be there. To laugh at me.

It turned out that The Eagle is a pretty cool venue to have a smallish, intimate gig. But by the time the headlining band overtook the room with its, like, EIGHTEEN members, making the only place one could breathe in either the outside patio or maybe the nook between the pinball machine and the neighboring, retaining wall, we were all kind of hoping the show had been scheduled for Slim’s.

Waycross, in retrospect, was the perfect opening band for an evening that just got more lasciviously intense as the show went on. Waycross were quiet and pretty. Kind of country, kind of folk. Not much to actually look at - strangely enough, the best enjoyment of the set was watching the band on live TV next to the bar.

The Vanishing were a nearly gripping spectacle of Goth crashing into electronica and with an almost cool, sort of fascist militant vibe. The band was made up of three members. One guy on a Mini Moog, making those noises that only the diminutive, cult keyboard can make. The physical absence of a bass player made the prominent basslines that seemed to come out of nowhere all the more bizarre.

You have to admire The Vanishing for playing music with constant dancy beats but using a real drummer. Playing beats that would normally be handled by a drum machine and keeping them even is hard, man, but the guy did a great job.

The Vanishing’s Singer has a delivery a lot like the B-52's frontman, except she also whips out a saxophone and plays frightening tunes with it held way up to the mic.

From there, the intensity jumped up even higher once Oxbow got started, slowly at first, but then as the sweat started pouring and the clothes came off, higher and higher and more crazy and higher.

        

Woe be the young, attractive woman who got too close. One woman, who wasn’t paying too much attention to her surroundings, ventured too close to the lip of the stage. She was scooped up by frontman Eugene Robinson and given a big, nasty kiss. She screamed, but I think she liked it.

I’m not sure how much another woman who got up close to take pictures liked the sweaty smooch on her cheek that she received.

But all I could think of was the poor person who had to use the mic after it spent a third of a set stuck in Robinson’s undies.

                        

Meanwhile, the audience, including yours truly, was thrashing around to the heavy, odd time grooves the band was furiously laying down. It was an Oxbow show. It kicked ass.

   

And so it seemed that he night couldn’t get any crazier, but The Extra Action Marching Band had numbers on their side. This band is indeed that: the kind of thing that you see in parades and halftime shows - a group of people with tubas and snare drums and trombones and whistles and dancers. Except this band was made up of women and gay men.

             

The crowd loved it. They even loved Extreme Elvis, the local, semi-mythical fat guy who dresses up like Elvis Presley and does all kinds of gross out stuff on stage. On that night, it was limited to taking off all the clothing he had on and jumping around on the bar, much to the disgusted fascination of the audience.

                 

Extra Action had exhibitionists male and female and moved the audience so that it began to become difficult to see the separation between performers and audience. Everywhere you looked, there were members of the marching band. There, on the bar, were women dancing; here, on the pinball machine, a trombone player with a plastic devil tail.

                  

The Extra Action Marching band played some marching tunes as well as a couple of Black Sabbath covers, which were a big hit. It was a perfect bill. Exhausting, but perfect.

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