Photos by Justin Treptow/In Focus Photo Co.
On April 13 I attended what I thought was going to be a fun dance/concert featuring the hard-rocking band, ‘Ragwater’.
But calling this pagan phantasmagoria a mere “concert” would be a gross understatement. This was something out of a goddamn Stanley Kubrick movie!
I knew right away that something wasn’t quite right when, out of the throng, a young boy came up to me and stopped me cold in my tracks. He looked up into my eyes and muttered, “RED RUM!” Of course I knew that “redrum” was murder spelled backwards. And then the so-called band wandered onto the stage ‒ but this was not merely a band — it was a coven of warlocks with one beautiful, captivating witch front and center.
On one side of the stage was a statue atop a speaker stack. The figure looked like a demon in a top hat. And on the other side appeared to be a statue of Venus with horns watching every move we break. The whole area was festooned in ribbons of white chiffon with little chandeliers hanging here and there. And then the Rite of Spring began. The music came on strong like a jolt of electric current through my frontal lobes. They warned us that it would be loud as hell and I believed them. I adjusted my orange earplugs as the music pulsated through my body, leaving “scars” on my soul.
It was as if Igor Stravinsky had dropped acid and jacked up the volume of The Rite of Spring to triple forte with a monster back beat. The “rite” being the renewal of the Earth through the sacrifice of a virgin chosen to dance herself to death! And the witch stood before the alter chanting: “Eye of newt, and toe of frog, wool of bat, and tongue of dog!” And all the while the warlocks played on in this cacophony of musical witchcraft. We in the audience were dumbstruck, happy to be there, glad to be alive (for the time being), but a bit leery that some nameless girl would actually dance herself to death.
My friend, Chris Haas, the lead singer, had become possessed and was running through the crowded dance floor, legs akimbo. His fellow warlock, Chris Rapp would “step right up” blasting his fully automatic 50 caliber guitar into the crowd like a melodic machine gun. Sound as a weapon! The Center for the Arts had become a musical crime scene with imaginary bodies “brushed aside” like so many fallen dancers in “the arms of their maker.”
Spells were cast and tempos were fast. The place had turned into a joyful insane asylum and the inmates had taken over. And now I was questioning my own sanity, just as others had for many years. The Center for the Arts had transformed into the Overlook Hotel and Jack Nicholson had just smashed an ax through the front door. “Here’s Johnny!”
We were a gathering of starry-eyed pagans happily swept up into a frenzy. If I did not believe in the supernatural before that night – I do now. The lovely mountain witch, Dione Patterson-Webb sang out like a charm of powerful trouble, like a hell broth boil and bubble, double, double, toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble! Let me drink your strange brew, pretty sorcerer. (But perhaps the drink had already gone to my head?)
And the band played on. Glen Goss enchanted us with his licks and Jason Dockter amazed us with his sticks. Brooks Lindner cranked his awesome bass as Andy Spall proved a percussion ace. And for extra spice some sit-ins were nice. My buddy Bob Hemenger blew his sax and Robin Davis fiddled down some tracks, and the audience always begs for the mean harpist Deggs!
In short, Ragwater made a complete spectacle of itself!
We were spellbound.
Then I was bound…
After the show I was driven to Pueblo, where I was committed at the State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. My shrink took away my new Ragwater CD, Shifting Shades. He claims the album was hindering my recovery. No worry! The music is still playing in my throbbing head, non-stop, probably for the next “29 years.”
Listen if you dare @ ragwater.hearnow.com