King Khan & BBQ Live @ The Scion Garage Fest!
Live at Scion Garage Fest
After watching several great acts at various venues throughout the day at the Scion Garage Fest in Portland Oregon last week, we were treated to the “topper” of the festival (although Roky Erikson was the headliner for the Festival) King Khan @ BBQ. We at YATM, have been waiting for this opportunity to see and hear King Khan and tonight was the night. As well, we had a bird’s eye view up in a small balcony of this well known smaller venue, Dante’s, for his performance.
We started following King Khan after his “rooftop” performance for Pitchfork was posted a little over a year ago. It was a 6 song set up on top of a Brooklyn NY rooftop and he was as outrageous as ever! (see below)
As expected, they came out in costume, King Khan with his wild shimmering blue mini skirted outfit with matching sparkling wig and some very wild spiraled specs with his sidekick (literally aka kick drummer) BBQ outfitted in red turban, sash, and cape. From the minute they hit the stage, the crowd went ape shit! As you can see from our photos, King Khan strutted his stuff, shook his mini skirted ass, batted his eyelids at us, prancing across the stage as he delivered a barrage of King Khan-istic blast of Garage Rock. How do you describe this guy? Even though it was a small venue of about 200 or so, the floor dynamics looked more like a few thousand with the crowd moving as one from one side of the venue to the other (as in an arena rock fest). It looked phenomenal from our vantage point but I’m sure that the crowd felt the effects of being driven over by a truck the next day!
The Sultan (Mark Sultan aka BBQ) sat for the majority of the set behind his drums, barefooted, a tambourine taped to the foot petal which played every time he hit the drum. As much King Khan is the showman, BBQ, is just as amazing with a voice that he can belt out with great force which is equally as stunning as King Khan’s showmanship. We were blown away by his vocals!
They played for a solid hour and a half with no break between songs, it was full on. However, it did appear that King Khan looked a bit tired and seemed like he held back toward the end of the set but to his credit, he played a damn good set. Perhaps with all the crowd and the stage lights the effects of wearing the wig the entire set, no doubt he was steaming hot!
All photos courtesy of Vix at YATM
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