Concert Review: Tanka Ray
Tanka Ray, with Outlaw and 8ighty 6ixed
Saturday, February 16th
The Record Bar
By FLANNERY CASHILL
Tanka Ray‘s Saturday night show at the Record Bar honored the first birthday of a family friend, Penelope. Her father held her in his arms as strangers cooed and smiled, but Penelope, in her velvet dress and earplugs, looked unimpressed. At one year old, she’d already negotiated the reunion of one of the area’s longest-lived and most fondly-remembered punk bands. She had persuaded their guitarist to fly down from South Dakota for her first-ever birthday party. No wonder she snubbed her buttercream cake with such easy disregard.
Reunion shows can be problematic; like inside jokes, you either get them or you don’t. It’s hard to guess how many of the attendees knew Penelope, or were able to make sense of the pink banner announcing “The Big 1” onstage. The big-haired, spandexed regular? The drunk girl doing that lazy, arrhythmic wag in the corner? It didsn’t matter. Nearly 200 people crowded the Record Bar Saturday night, some of them family, some of them practically family, many of them neither.
