Friday, February 13, 2009
If there was ever a foolproof way to get a bar crowd going, it's to get them chanting along with the band.
E.O.E. - or Equal Opportunity Employment, a reggae-influenced funk and hip-hop band from New Orleans - has this practice down to a science. With a couple of former Steamboat Springs locals in the band lineup, E.O.E. has the advantage of a built-in audience at downtown venues. But as the band showed in its show Saturday at Mahogany Ridge, E.O.E. doesn't take that audience for granted.
Instead, the band members do everything they can to get the crowd involved in the show and dancing, getting the audience in join in with "E.O.E." chants and anything else they can think of.
It's definitely worth seeing the band any time it comes around, especially in its full form with all four members, including rapper (and now, apparently, trumpet player), Koan.
The set has a tougher edge than a lot of regional bands that list the same genre influences as E.O.E. And even if I seldom understand what Koan is saying - he raps a little faster than I can keep up with in a crowded bar dining room - the energy and groove behind any E.O.E. performance is worth the $5-max cover charge that comes with it.
The band's song list seems to get better every time the group comes to town, so I'm looking forward to E.O.E.'s next trip through Steamboat.
If there were fireworks at last year's Winter Carnival Night Extravaganza (which if I'm remembering this right, there were), they would be embarrassed to be in the same room as the fireworks finale to Saturday's show at Howelsen Hill.
After the slight disappointment of the 2008 Fourth of July fireworks - still flashier than you'd expect from a 10,000-population town but smaller than the bunkers-worth of explosives that had been promised - the Night Extravaganza fireworks were a spectacular finish to a show that included two runs down Howelsen by the Lighted Man and lots of flare-laden slalom lines of Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club skiers.
My favorite part of Winter Carnival continues to be the ski jumping through fiery hoops that finishes up the night show, but that was closely rivaled this year by a couple of runs in Sunday's street events.
