Friday, Feb. 5, 1999 | 11:45 a.m.
Levi's SnoCore tour -- a snowboarding-themed band showcase featuring Everclear, Soul Coughing, Redman and DJ Spooky -- snowballed its way through the Hard Rock's The Joint Thursday night. Frankly, I don't know what snowdrift the garment manufacturer has its collective head stuck in; "Sno-Core" is one of the stupidest nonphrases I've had to wrap my poor, aching cerebellum around. Levi's calls it "a gathering of tribes, music culture and physical stimulation." I didn't find it to be exactly that, but at no point did the evening head decisively downhill.
SnoCore was a blistering mini-Lollapalooza (another useless phrase!) of fringe talents lumped together under a somewhat overrated pop-punk group. Oh, sure, Everclear's all right, I guess -- they have wonderful haircuts, and they seem like swell guys -- but Redman, DJ Spooky and Soul Coughing mopped the floor with them.
Redman - nee Reggie Noble -- got the crowd primed early on with his old school hip-hop beats and over-the-top vamping. (His roadies took strategic positions in the audience, bearing signs that shilled for the rapper's latest album, "Doc's Da Name": "REDMAN NOW," as if he were running for office.) DJ Spooky kept the energy level high between sets, spinning records and working the mixer as if born to the turntables. As good as they were, however, Soul Coughing skated circles around both.
The New York quartet blends a dozen musical styles into a hyper-jazzy formula whose true chemistry can't be divined, much less imitated. Drummer Yuval Gabray laid down a beat that could green Buddy Rich with envy; vocalist/guitarist M. Doughty took full advantage of Gabray's heavy foot, deliberately stuttering and staggering his lyrics to counterpoint the beat. There was real genius in the way "Bus To Beelzebub," "St. Louis Is Listening" and "Super Bon Bon" slalomed through the crowd.
After such an intense buildup, Everclear's grinding feedback seemed almost a letdown. They played very well, but still approximated a bunch of guys wandering into an alpine lodge bearing surfboards. They may have been the "core" element of the evening, but the other three artists wielded the cool.
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