Flashback: King Khan & BBQ Show at Triple Rock (29 Nov 2009)

King Khan & the BBQ Show 2009 Tour Dates

To be perfectly honest, I wanted to attend this The King Khan & BBQ Show, at the Triple Rock Social Club, in Minneapolis, in late November 2009, because I was primarily interested in seeing Those Darlins. I’ve seen them before, and really loved them.
In fact, I would go on to see the band nine times, plus an interview with Jessi in 2013.

W♥M x Those Darlins:

Unfortunately, it’s sad to say that singer Jessi Zazu died in Sep 2009 at the age of 28 to cervical cancer.

Of course, I should add that I did love King Khan, the brown James Brown, and BBQ. This was the first time I’ve seen them (in 2009), and since then I’ve seen them as solo artist, or sometime being in completely different bands. But you never forget that first time, especially how impressed I was at the sold-out Triple Rock show and that incredible long line to get inside the venue.

I mentioned at the Triple Rock show that the duo was delayed at the Canadian border… not the first time they were detained at the border. They were also arrested “somewhere between Nashville and St. Louis”, according to Brooklyn Vegan. Basically, the St Louis show was headlined at the last minute by Deer Tick singer John McCauley, who happened to be Nikki Kvarnes’ fiancé (Nikki plays bass in Those Darlins).

Original Report:

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I was actually at last night’s Triple Rock Social Club to do coverage on Those Darlins. But staying for The King Khan & BBQ Show (the headliner) was a bonus. You see, in 2005, I was sent a live video clip of “I Love You So” by a duo called “BBQ King Khan” (the name that was listed on the video).

So, if you need to catch up on The King Khan & BBQ Show, they are an interesting modern band with minimalistic setup and plays a weird mixture of 50s doo-wop and Surf music. They’ve got a ton of fans, who lined up hours before the show.

I got the story between King Khan’s on stage antics and Jessi Darlin that prior to showing up in Minneapolis, that they were delayed and detained at the Canadian border (I think they had spent the last few weeks touring throughout Canada). This resulted in two things: “Unnamed peed in his pants” and last night’s show to be slightly delayed (the doors weren’t opened to the public until 9:30pm).

Some notable details about the stage costumes: BBQ uses his foot to tap the tambourine and Khan has a fox’s head over his crotch. They dedicated “I’ll Be Loving You” to “all the Orientals in the audience“, which probably only account to myself.

This was Those Darlins‘ third Minneapolis show. The first time they played, Kelley admitted that she did not know this city existed until they showed up to play – in which Nikki responded, “now you know Canada exist too”. It would seem that Minneapolis might be one of Darlins’ favorite city to play now – especially because I recognized some of the same dedicated group of fans that was at the 7th Street show at last night’s show.

“I’ll bring the p*ssy, you bring the d*ck”

They started off dirty with “Fun Stix Party” with naughty lyrics like “I’ll bring the p*ssy, you bring the d*ck“, followed by “Wild One”. They also played fan-favorites like “DUI or Die” and “The Whole Damn Thing” (aka the Chicken Song).

Their cover song, “Shakin’ All Over”, was their last song on the set… which actually went pretty crazy. See the last half of the song in the video.

Overall, I think Those Darlins satiated their existing fans, while perhaps gaining a few new fans. I overheard a few people saying how unexpectedly great their performance was. Their self-titled album is available now at Amazon.

PS, Those Darlins’ only male member, drummer Linwood Regensburg tried talking me out of buying their “Gay” V-Neck T-Shirt. He said that he made those V-Necks because someone had suggested it. Apparently, they weren’t very successful as they only sold a few of those shirts. So, as of this writing, I am one of the six people in the world that owns that V-Neck Darlins shirt.

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