Something is brewing on the streets of San Francisco's Mission District, something more than angry gang members and junkie chic. If you're lucky enough to be at Leed's shoe store on Mission and 22nd every Saturday night you just might find the phenomenon that is Rube Waddell. The band, not the actual baseball player. He's dead. Rube Waddell the band is not dead, but maybe they are something spawned from an undead creature, or even Lucifer himself. The Satanic undertones are not from any kind of death-metal frenzy, but from the sheer fact that when you see Rube Waddell live, especially on the street, you have so much fun that it can't possibly be holy. With a battery of homemade instruments (part Doo Rag, part Sesame Street), these boys stomp around and make a damn fine bluesy noise. Captain Feedback, with his old-fashioned aviator goggles, looks like a hipster bug, the main tour guide through a battery of musical influences. Mahatma Boom Boom is the calm Zen-esque figure with the funny ponytail on top his head, the guru of goofiness. Then there's the Reverend Wupass who looks like he has more fun when he jams out on xylophone than a kid at a free waterslide park.

Harmonicas blow, washboards are scrubbed and musical genres are pillaged. From blues to waltzes to polkas to Mack the Knife with sophisticated visual accompaniment, Rube Waddell, the band, manages to bastardize them all with its own particular New-Orleans-meets-Sanford-and-Son stamp. "The Rube Yelp" is the best band theme song since the Descendants'. At the end of a song they'll pass the hat and exert a strange magical power to actually coax spare dimes, quarters, and sometimes dollars into their possession„in a city hardened by a non-stop homeless chant of "Spare some change?" Maybe Rube Waddell, the band, could change society by giving music lessons at the shelters enabling street people everywhere to improve their quality of life. Or maybe not. But their charm worked on me enough to actually buy their album where their charisma is captured on one side of vinyl encased in a big ziploc bag for protection.

What band would be considerate enough, not only to include a zine full of lyrics, instructions on how to assemble your very own One-String Guitar, witty and interesting facts about Rube Waddell, the baseball legend, but also to include delectable recipes for okra gumbo and catfish? Obviously, this is a band to experience with more than one of the five senses. 'Cuz even though the album is fun and frenzied, their visual street performances is where they shine, channeling an energy that must seep up from the concrete into the soles of their worn-out shoes. If one would have to highlight songs from the album, I'm partial to "Metal Circus" which seems to refer to the metal in their kitchen sink instruments and not to a Judas Priest and/or Husker Du influence. And "Six Feet Down" is as rich in images and narrative as Easy Rider in the graveyard sequence. You know, to tell the truth, the song would surpass that scene in terms of narrative. Make yr own head-movie to this romp.

IÍve started to notice that these guys are beginning to hoe-down their way into more respectable clubs and move off the streets. The word is out on the hipster grapevine that Rube Waddell, the band, fucked shit up at South by Southwest music convention this year, driving the audience into a "Bacchanalian frenzy." Wow! Will Rube Waddell's album, Hobo Train, be the next staple at swingers' orgy parties everywhere? I doubt it. But it would make a mighty fine accompaniment to your next drunken BBQ. I also doubt that theyÍll entirely abandon their sidewalk melees for a full time life indoors. Rumor has it that they are so committed to their Leeds performances that they actually wrote a letter to the store, posing as concerned citizens, asking the establishment to keep their display window lights on later to chase away crime. Thus giving Rube Waddell, the band, their first true light to bask in.

Hobo Train is available for $9 through Vaccination Records, P.O. Box 20931, Oakland, CA 94611. Read stuff about them (and Rube Waddell, the baseball guy) at www.VacRec.com

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