Bob Log III / Wax Mannequin

Having not seen Bob Log III play live for about four years, I was immediately floored and refreshed not only by his stage presence but by his wild, fancy and free slide guitar playing. In fact, Bob Log III proved himself to be one of the trickiest, fastest, wildest and thrash-iest slide guitar playing blues hounds around. Arriving on stage dressed in almost neo-burlesque attire that consisted of a blue rhinestone-studded spandex jump suit and an old school biker helmet with a telephone receiver (operating as a mic) welded onto the helmet's visor, and attempting to sip scotch from a glass without exposing his face, it became apparent the this man was about one thing: reinventing those trash talkin' blues. Thumping a bass drum with his right foot while pounding a cymbal and one of two drum machines with his left, all the while singing and playing some mean slide guitar, this raunchy one-man rock machine proceeded to destroy our own era's somewhat tired notion of modern rock. Bob Log III's performance seemed more intent on entertaining the audience with a show that was as physically raw and as ambiguously sarcastic as possible. In fact, not only did Bob Log III manage to get half of the room dancing to his wild and skanky blues beats, but he also worked to effectively reinstate some sort of freakish ambiguity back into ambidextrous multitasking. Opting to apparently employ only the guitars that nobody else would buy, one thing is certain: that the raucously comedic shtick involved in Bob Log III's live performance, as hilarious and as wicked a testimony to the blues as it is, could easily be outlived by that faster than fast and smoother than smooth slide guitar playing of his.