WFMU : Freedom is Freeform!

The first time I experienced Captain Ahab was also the first time I experienced Friends Forever, Animal Collective, ZS, Rose4Bodhan, Mr. Pacman and Rubber-O-Cement at this totally epic festival dubbed Neon Hates You back in 2002 -- a truly life changing, epic event.

I honestly had only heard of like 2 bands on the bill and was just kinda along for the ride, but after being assaulted by a home made bass wielding alien fly in an animated cardboard world of sonic madness, then dodging flaming tennis balls thrown from guys paying synths in costumes stolen from the set of Power Rangers, trying to navigate the twists and turns of a militaristic flying V double jazz trio form hell, watching a dude with a dolphin on his head turn the venue into a ball pit and finally seeing 2 dudes in masks from Brooklyn in hold a room just by banging on some old pvc buckets and messing around with a broken guitar, this show without a doubt set my standard for what I want from musicians and performance artists, complete sensory overload, no matter your budget.

Smack in the middle of this was Captain Ahab. A dude with hair down to his ass that kinda looked more like he was headed to Ozfest than this DIY one. After apologizing for being sick he told us that he was going to have someone else dace for him that night. He proceeded to dive into hyper-intelligent, angry as fuck, slightly homoerotic, electronic grooves that included covers of Avril Lavigne's Sk8r Boi and J-Lo's Jenny on the Block. We had no choice but to dance, and if you had the balls to front and pretend that you didn't want to be a part of this party, his dancing sidekick, looking like he was straight out of a Tom of Finland sketch, wrangled the jaded stranglers to the center of the floor to be harpooned by Ahab's mighty beats. I was in love.

Almost ten years later, a few world tours, a concept record written as a 14 year old girl, song placements in The Office and Snakes On A Plane, Captain Ahab is still going strong and is not afraid to attack his audience's senses from all sides, but he is no longer content with making genre bending dance music that has the power to unite all walks of life in sweaty shirtless harmony. Ahab wants to end all of our preconceived notions of what is good or bad, wipe the slate clean, and start taste all over again. He bought some friends along to help, and they have created a shadow puppet/video extravaganza to help usher everyone in to The End of Irony.

So with that. I'll get out of the way and let you aboard that ship that will I am pleased to present. Captain Ahab live on WFMU complete with integrated video and puppet show:

Get the full story from their mouth with the post set interview here and check out more tunes from Captain Ahab here on the Free Music Archive