Reverend Shine Snake Oil Co

Date/Time
Date(s) - 09.04.2012
22:00 Uhr

Location
White Trash Fast Food GmbH Berlin

  Reverend Shine Snake Oil Co. kommen aus Kopenhagen, ihre Wurzeln liegen jedoch in Amerika, zwei Bandmitglieder stammen ursprünglich aus New York. Sie verneigen sich in ihrer Musik vor den Ursprüngen der amerikanischen Rock- und Popmusik: Blues, Jazz & Swing, Bluegrass & Folk, Gospel & Soul, Rocksteady & Afrikanische Polyrhythmen. Dabei vergessen sie nicht, dass sie im hier und jetzt leben. Sie spielen moderne Musik im Duktus der Vergangenheit, reduziert bis auf die Knochen, leidenschaftlich und seelenvoll. Nie auf den billigen Effekt schielend, immer gradling, zeitlos und aktuell zugleich. Ihre Texte sind moderne Märchen, die von Hemmungslosigkeit und Erlösung erzählen. Kraftvoll und aufsässig ist die Performance von Frontmann Claudius Pratt, welche von der Band in höchster Qualität getragen wird. Musikalische Medizinmänner, die alte, mysteriöse Heilmittel für moderne Beschwerden anbieten. Bei ihren Konzerten ist Magie im Spiel: Schlangenöl wird in heilenden Balsam verwandelt!

The story of
  When asked about minstrel shows and the like, most people think of America in the 19th century, lampooning blacks in disparaging ways. Some recall traveling horse and buggy teams peddling miracle medications and other products. Yet others go back even further to the professional entertainer of 12th and 17 century: The juggler, acrobat, storyteller, secular musician and instrumentalist. But I will tell you a tale of magnanimous proportion that will expose the true origin of the minstrel.

  See, the minstrel is older than time, for the minstrel is time and timekeeper. Let us examine time: „the Swiss manufacture it, the French hoard it, Italians squander it, Americans say it is money and the Hindus say it does not exist…“ Replace the word time with God or the Devil and you would probably find the same attitude from each of the respective cultures. These Archetypes (Time, God & the Devil), these icons and symbols are all gifts from the „MINSTREL“, for he is the Great storyteller, the first storyteller, who sang the world into existence. Go to Africa now and you will see him sitting there in a cool earthen room pounding his rhythm out on a gimbrie singing his story, the oral tradition.

We at REVEREND SHINE’S SNAKE OIL Co. were born into this same tradition and have come to spread the light, cooking up food for thought in our Soul Kitchen and spreading the word through our medicine show, selling our elixir everywhere we go. We are a Flea Circus of Magicians, Court Jesters, Musicians and Storytellers.
 
The true origins of REVEREND SHINE SNAKE OIL Co. are shrouded in hearsay and conjecture. It is however a story to be told and as the name suggests, it is anything but simple.

Primitive and grounded, folk-tales connect seemingly disparate genres into a single curbstone philosophy „Soup Box Music“. Converging African polyrhythms with punk-rock dissonance. Combining swing, rock-steady and rhythm & blues. Sarcastic and sentimental; Agitated and serene — REVEREND SHINE SNAKE OIL CO. is a throwback to the Negro spirituals and the American folk tradition. They too are a salute to advertising and commercialism — raised together, like traveling horse and buggy teams, peddling miracle medications and their sundries to a stripped and intimate pulse.
– Claudius Pratt / The Plum Wine Poet