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VELCRO LEWIS AND JARED WHITHAM

A year ago, I wrote about Jared Whitham, an insane artist who managed to take over 5 huge television channels in NYC and broadcast himself to everyone in Manhattan 24 hours a day for about 6 months last year.

Now, Jared has brought his cousin Andy Slater, a huge blind man from Chicago, to play music with him at Union Pool tonight. The show will be elaborate and feature Jared fighting with a life-size replica of himself as part of an intricate plot I don't totally understand.

Andy fronts a wild band of enormous sweaty Chicago giants called the Velcro Lewis Groupwho all scream and stomp and play wild bad-ass music that sounds like gnarly fermented Mountain or Grand Funk, with a lot of mutant Beefheart-esque call-and-response business. They are absolutely my favorite live band on earth. You will never have more fun.

Anyway, I strongly recommend you come out and see the strange family interplay of Jared Whitham and the Velcro Lewis Group tonight at Union Pool with the Weird Fantasy Band and Flaming Fire, or tomorrow at the Staten Island Second Saturday Art Fair.

PATRICK HAMBRECHT

PS: Here's a song from Velcro's new album, "White Magic Summer."
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