Curt Kirkwood - Kansas City - 6/30/01 Mar 24 '04 (Updated Sep 22 '04)    Write an essay on this topic. Tweet Popular Products in Music The Dirtchamber Sessions, Vol. 1 by The Prodigy From $11 Jersey Boys [Original Broadway Cast Recording] by Original Broadway Cast From $8 The Bottom Line Go see Curt if he's ever in town. I'm sure the Meat Puppets are also good. "Where do bad folks go when they die?" and Backwater. That's about all I knew about this guy Curt Kirkwood before last night when I went to go see him. I knew the guy was appreciated by Kurt Cobain and I liked the lyric "a knife to open up the sky's vein". But, basically, I didn't know anything about the Meat Puppets or this guy Curt. So, somehow I ended up at the Grand Emporium waiting to see the lead singer of the Meat Puppets, sitting through a depressed country singer with some pretty good lyrics and a country/Adam Sandler influenced guy named Chilidog Crawford. I mentioned those opening acts for a reason. When I described both of them, I described them both by their influences. You can usually do that with most performers. If you can't do it, you combine a couple..."Oh, he's sort-of a folky-country singer with some blues influences". I've been trying to think ever since last night if I've ever seen a concert by someone where their influences were as faint as Curt Kirkwood’s. From the very first song of the night, I was awestruck by this guy. I've never seen anyone who has developed their own unique style of music like this guy. I know that there is a kind of music out there called "experimental" music, but this guy doesn't even fall in that category. A good example of that is the fact that I'm not even for sure if the first song was actually meant to be a song or he was just checking his equipment. I won't even try to explain what it sounded like, but to me, it was totally original and I loved it. The music last night was music that didn't follow the rules. It didn't follow all the rules and it still worked. To sing intensely and with emotion, you have to raise your voice, put extra expression into it, don't you? Well, what if you decided that you wanted to find a new way to intensify your music? What would you do? This guy last night didn't raise his voice much at all through his show. I love blues music and Curt had none of the intensity with the voice that blues singers have, but the music was powerful. It amazed me how strong the songs were with the soft voice he was using. I remember one song that was really raising in it's intensity level. Instead of stepping into the mike, getting all sweaty, raising the volume of his voice, and jumping into yell-mode like most singers would, he got so intense he seemed like he forgot to sing into his mike. He was just singing and playing his guitar. You could barely hear the words, but to me it seemed as forceful as anything I'd ever heard. What he was saying was so important to him that all other thoughts were out of his mind and his emotions were more controlling than even where he was...that was the impression he was giving off. So, besides for the way he used his voice, he also did things with his guitar and his foot petal that I had never seen before. This guy seemed to me to be a great guitarist; there was lots of finger picking while he was singing and great guitar solos (which were seemed to me to be very unique to him and reminded me more of having classical roots than blues or rock...). I loved this foot petal he pressed and it repeated the last thing he was playing over and over. He also had a thing that sounded like a motorcycle when he stomped on the ground. He used both of these things to compliment his music and they both worked great. But, what impressed me wasn't so much the foot petal and the motorcycle thing, it was just seeing someone trying to get out of the box that we are all in of recycling the same ideas. That was what I loved about the whole set he played. This guy was more out of the box than anyone I can remember seeing. I really wish this kind-of music was rewarded in our society. Instead, our society rewards copying the familiar things. So, instead of expanding our limits, we are diminishing the quality of our art. But, if we lived in a society where the unique and the heartfelt were rewarded can you imagine the possibilities? We could have whole new genres of music, maybe even new instruments. The idea of these boxes is exciting and scary. Who knows in what ways we've been limited as people by the way we look down on anyone who has original, unique, and weird attributes. If these unique characterizes were nurtured instead of stifled from a young age imagine the repercussions. I loved seeing a musical artist looking for new ways to express himself. I loved even more than that seeing a person who had apparently been doing it for so long you couldn't trace his musical roots. I loved listening to this man perform. It was really an experience like none other I've had in the many concerts I've been to. I wish there were a lot more people out there performing outside of the boxes we are born into and pushing on to better things. That is what Curt Kirkwood seemed to be doing last night. I guess there's a chance I could be misinterpreting things. Maybe he just sucks. But, maybe he's one of the best musicians I've seen. http://www.geocities.com/joshg2fl/autographsMusicCurtKirkwood.html

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