Steal Your Funk w/ Charles Neville Pacific Standard Tavern 11/1715

One can gauge the "hippie-ness" of a show by the crowd. In pulling up to the Pacific Standard Tavern on Crown Street, I saw legendary New Haven hippie, Carrot Man entering the venue. Carrot Man, a 60-something, scraggly, gray, carrot suit wearing, grateful dead dancing, all around vegetable propagandist is plugged in to the jam scene. Steal Your Funk is a loose, local Dead/funk amalgam with Jen Durkin on vocals (Deep Banana Blackout fame), and various members of Legion of Jerry as the house band and a revolving case of sit-ins. On this particular evening, Carrot Man was definitely in the right because Charles Neville of The Neville Brothers came to funk. The set list included: The House That Jack Built, Muffin Man tease, Roll Away the Dew, Tippi Toes, a Sly Stone number, Iko Iko, Eyes of the World, and closed with Led Zep's Talk About Love. With Durkin's Joplinesque delivery (Janis, not Scott), and Neville on sax and vocals, this was more than local funketeers out for a stroll. Considering Neville is legitimate co-progenitor of Iko, this evening dripped with genuine Nawlins funk.