rube waddell

11 Things: Rube Waddell

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Rube Waddell is Freddi "Mahatma Boom Boom" Price, Kirk "Captain Feedback" Lombard, Larry "Reverend Wupass" Henderson and Max "A.Million" Baloian - men bold enough to play anywhere, playful enough to be eccentric, eccentric enough to be crazy and crazy enough to share the following words with us:

1. The man: In 1903, Rube Waddell won 22 games for the Philadelphia Athletics, logged 302 strikeouts, wrestled alligators in the off-season, played left end for the Business Men's Rugby Football Club of Grand Rapids, Mich., starred in a play called "The Stain of Guilt," courted, married and separated from May Wynne Skinner of Massachusetts, played marbles with kids, saved a drowning woman, did cartwheels to the mound, accidentally shot a friend through the hand and was bitten by a lion.

2. The band: In 1996, Rube Waddell began playing "Live at Leeds" in front of the (now gone) Leeds Shoe Store at 22nd and Mission.

3. The music: Rube Waddell is "The Three Penny Opera" interpreted by George Jones, Harry Partch and Little Walter after a three-day binge on rye whiskey and monkey face eel.

4. The freshness: Rube Waddell smells better than most bands.

5. The effect: When Rube Waddell passes by, rivers flow backward, clouds vomit burning sulfur, engines cease to function and birds become incontinent with fear.

6. The provocation: Rube Waddell can outwrestle, outfish, outpitch, outdrink and outtalk any other band in San Francisco. We submit this as an open challenge.

7. The history: Rube Waddell, trapped in a Chevy van on Donner Pass in January 2001, killed and ate Bay Area musician-composer Mark Growden, wasting no part of his body. From his bones we fashioned crude snowshoes and tennis rackets, from his skin, tepees and cloaks, from his teeth, dice, guitar picks and other trinkets.

8. The truth: Rube Waddell has logged more miles pushing its gear to shows in shopping carts than any other band in North America.

9. The ability: In addition to blowing your mind with tuba-driven, accordion-friendly, steel-guitar-bangin' junkyard folk ditties, Rube Waddell will predict your future and help you design a custom plan for the inevitable apocalypse.

10. The legend: Albert Einstein may have put it best: "The time will come when men will scarce believe that such a band as this, ever in flesh and blood, walked this earth amongst us."

11. The show: Rube Waddell (the band) plays Saturday night at Cafe Du Nord with Vermillion Lies and Agent Ribbons. 9:30 p.m. $12-$15 (21 and older). 2170 Market St., S.F. www.rubewaddell.org.

- Tim Sullivan, tsullivan@sfchronicle.com

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/24/NSVR105A12.DTL

This article appeared on page G - 3 of the San Francisco Chronicle