Ever have the urge to visit another time, another place, another state of mind? If so, Louisville’s Bodeco is your tattered, sweat-soaked ticket. There’s no shortage of “rockabilly” bands, but Bodeco aren’t just another bunch of mock-greaser history majors tricked out for the evening in bad clothes and phony snarls; like that 5,000-year-old hiker found frozen in the Alps a few years ago, they’re freakishly authentic. They hark back to that era when hillbillies recorded tinny, scratchy, mono 45s for long-gone labels. Their sparse recorded output belies the decade of experience that has made them a well-stoked, freewheeling swamp-rock nightmare: the rhythm section of Brian Burkett (drums), Gary Stillwell (percussion), and Jimmy Brown (bass) chugs like a crack-fueled locomotive beneath the smoky guitar gnarl of Wink O’Bannon and the amazing vocals of Ricky Feather, who howls like a frenzied, braying loup-garou on Night Train. And their most recent record, 1992’s Bone, Hair and Hide (Homestead), sounds like it was chiseled out of a pool of petrified beer-bourbon sludge at some deserted, ramshackle roadhouse–with its old-time production and manic performances, it makes a strong case that Bodeco is the Ernest T. Bass of the rock ‘n’ roll world. Thursday, July 28, 9 PM, Lounge Ax, 2438 N. Lincoln; 525-6620.
