This Friday, June 10 and Saturday, June 11 Dax Riggs will be playing the Echo in Los Angeles with the Slang Chickens and The Bowery Beasts. Both Riggs and the Slang Chickens are Buddyhead favorites, but I just want to encourage everyone local to LA to go see the man this weekend. At 12 bucks a pop, this show is a fucking bargain. It’s fully worth doing the drive from OC or SD, in case you were wondering.
Travis knows his music and I had picked up Dax’s latest album because Travis said the guy was cool, but hadn’t listened to it yet when Travis hectored me into going to see Rigg’s last gig at Spaceland last year. I was instantly transformed into a Dax Riggs fan that night. Most of the time, Keller’s recommendations are right on and way ahead of the curve, but watching this guy play just immediately caught my breath and made me listen with my whole being. It was just so good.
That shit doesn’t happen to me very often. Watching Riggs is like watching a guy pull music out of the air and craft it into a soothing but ultimately strange and unnerving soundtrack to a ride through an unknown country. Listening to Dax Riggs is like traveling without moving, like a river that flows through your mind and takes you somewhere that you can only dimly grasp. It’s like a waking dream, and I don’t even do drugs, but this is what really good music (or drugs) should do, transport you and your mind. When you look at the guy on stage, it’s like he’s there, but not really. This sounds kind of hippie, but fuck it, it’s the real thing. Don’t get me wrong though, it’s not that they don’t rock as well, they do, but everything that the band does is striking and has this otherwordly quality to it. This guy should have the fan base that the pretentious cockbags in Coldplay have.
As a plus, the guy likes to say Hail Satan a lot, for no readily apparent reason, and I’m sure that bugs somebody. Dax Riggs brings wonder and dark magic to the stage. He sings of Blood and Love and is probably the only person in music today that should be allowed to cover Elvis, because there’s really no point unless you can bring something new to it and Riggs does.
See him now (and listen to his music) or regret not being smart enough to catch on quick in the future. He also has a really excellent back catalog of work that you can dive into after checking out his solo work. I’m still stuck on Say Goodnight to the World, because it’s just that great.
