Concert Review: Throw Rag at the Jackpot

If there were any doubt as to the power of rock ‘n’ roll, it was erased on Friday night. The Jackpot played host to those pirates of the Salton Sea, Throw Rag. From the moment Sean Doe and company hopped on stage, launching into “Swingset Superman,” the audience went crazy.

Now, Throw Rag has a tinge of country to them, as well as a little rockabilly. However, those are just tastes — bits of seasoning, if you will. It was the focus on the band’s first album Tee-Tot, but in the years since that release, Throw Rag has gone from incarnations as large as six or seven folks onstage on once to the lean, mean, four man rock machine that was on display Friday.

Much like a live and in-person version of the video for “She Don’t Want To (She Don’t Care),” by show’s end, Doe was down to a pair of briefs and a sailor’s cap. In the intervening time, the band went through a tunes from all of their albums, with Dean McQueen pulling out guitar licks that should be illegal. “The Beast In Me” tied for highlight of the show with “Lady Boo,” with the audience singing “whoah whoah whoah woo whoah woo hey” as loudly and lustily as they coul.

The band’s encore, after much fussing and yelling from the crowd, ended up being a cover of Merle Haggard’s “The Bottle Let Me Down.” The bottle was actually pretty good to the band, because I saw women dancing in the crowd, men flailing about as if possessed by the Devil himself, and at once point, I had my head on the monitors, doing nothing more than throwing horns while the room spun around me.