19jan18:Freaks Ball XVIII
Tags: Music

18 years of Freaksballin’. Unbelievable.

This year’s was an ideal night of music and socializing with the NYC Freaks community and beyond. Of course, the music had to feature Scott Metzger who has played all but the first two. Joe Russo, not far behind… I believe he’s only missed one or two others? This year they were playing in a group known as Hola! which means that Scott Metzger is in two different bands with an exclamation point at the end, which still might not be enough. Perhaps his next group will include two of ’em for good measure. He deserves every exclamatory punctuation and his playing Friday night was certanly !-worthy. Besides Scott and Joe Hola! features the excellent-and-underrated Andy Hess on bass and Avi Bortnick on second guitar. In fact, Hola started as a Bortnick project and features mostly his compositions. But over the course of 5 or 6 gigs over the past couple years, they’ve really coalesced on what I could only call a “jam-friendly” sound. Instrumental music that touches on bits of jazz and rock and funk as well as a surprising dose of electronica. But it’s really in the in-between jamming where they make it work and because all four of the guys are so fucking good, it doesn’t really matter what style they play in. That being said, they have definitely shaded more towards a dance-friendly thing — their last gig at Nublu was a freakin’ party, so much fun that it did, indeed lead directly to them playing the Freaks Ball… here’s a little inside scoop: it was Russo’s idea for them to play right after that one, which gives you an indication about how good it felt that night.

Friday’s gig, in the much bigger room of Brooklyn Bowl, on the much bigger stage of the Freaks Ball, Hola! was as good as ever. Playing to their “home crowd,” Scott and Joe were as thrilling as ever and all four were having a blast. Fact of the matter is, as they worked their way through a bunch of Bortnick originals, a (rare) Russo song, a Wolf! tune and a cover or so, they were a band with four leaders and without a leader at all. It was a perfect fit for the night: an undeniable dance party with more love flowing between musicians, between the band and the crowd and among the crowd than even the Brooklyn Bowl could contain. Without a A-line headliner (like JRAD, for example) and with a serious bout of the flu going around, the Bowl was at an extremely comfortably 65–75% capacity which made for a perfect, perfect show.

The gig was more or less a co-headliner affair, with the late slot going to Circles Around the Sun. This is the band that formed out of Neal Casal’s Fare Thee Well setbreak music. I caught their debut gig at Lockn two summers ago, when they played late night in the middle of the woods, a sublime set of music if ever there was one. That was a perfect way to take in their sound which is a mellow, west-coast-rambling on certain Dead motifs. On record, the music is really killer and in that late night setting, it was 100% vibe in the best way possible. As luck would have it, it turned out to be a perfect soundtrack to the late half of the Freaks Ball. Starting around midnight, the crowd buzzed from the first set and the so-many-friends setbreak hang, not to mention whatever booze and whatnot had been ingested over the first couple hours, Circles created a sort of good-vibes bubble around the room. You could let the music take you in, or you could hang out in its periphery, an ambient groove in the jam vernacular as backdrop to a massive hang.

Personally could not have asked for a better Freaks Ball, in my somewhat-humble opinion, always the party of the year and 2018 was no different. I remember very distinctly putting together the first Freaks party and deciding that whatever we did, I wanted it to be called the “Freak’s Ball” — somewhat inspired by the MOM’s Ball in New Orleans, which I’d never been to, but always sounded like a totally nutso event. Not just a concert or a party, but a happening. That was my hope for the Freaks Ball 18 years ago, to create a must-attend annual event that transcended the music in as many ways possible. So far, so good. Hope to see you next year.