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WICKED CITY: By The Way, Which One's Pink?

by Woody Oats

     Many of the people who know of the relatively new regional band, Wicked
City, know them because of their Pink Floyd set. However, the group has so
much more of a musical menu to offer.

   Aside from the tie-dyed headband of Floyd, the band wears equally well,
the respective hats of "classic rock," "retro rock" and "alternative rock."

   "I think we do Pink Floyd very well, but I'll be the first to admit that
it's damn hard to sit through three or four hours of Pink Floyd music in a
club environment without slipping into a coma," laughed Michael Lubecke,
guitarist/vocalist and leader of Wicked City.

    "If we advertise or promote a certain date as being our 'Pink Floyd
show,' then we generally do a straight two hour set of Floyd music," he said.
"But for our regular club show, we generally start the night with a set of
uptempo '80s retro rock, followed by a pretty tasty set of '90s alternative
music, followed by the heavier classic rock stuff. Then, we close with our
Pink Floyd."

    Wicked City's keyboardist, Chris Lubecke, Mike's wife and musical muse,
contributes heavily to the non-Floyd sets. "I do stuff by Alanis Morissette
and Merideth Brooks," she says, "then dust off old favorites from Pat Benatar
and Lita Ford. Sometimes if I'm feeling real 'retro', I'll do my version of
Nancy Sinatra's 'These Boots Are Made for Walkin'.'"

    While disposable radio fodder by Blink-182, Matchbox Twenty and others
are performed for their audience, the songs comprising their classic segment
are there as much for the band as for those watching them.

   "We all get the chance to stretch out and play our instruments then," says
Lubecke of that set, which is heavy on richly orchestrated rock offerings
like Deep Purple's "Perfect Strangers," Black Sabbath's "Dirty Women" and a
variety of not rarely heard selections from the Led Zeppelin songbook like
"Kashmir," "Carouselambra" and "Friends."

     Those songs lead in perfectly to a block of Pink Floyd, which includes
material from the Brit band's most landmark releases - Dark Side Of The Moon,
Wish You Were Here and The Wall.

    "We have tons of authentic samples in Chris' keyboards, so when we do
material from The Wall, we've got all the sounds that you hear on the album,"
said Lubecke.   "We've got the children playing in the background, the
airplanes crashing, the babies crying and of all that."

    Anchoring Wicked City's rhythm is drummer/percussionist Brett Gallery and
bassist Scott Brown, who both met the Lubeckes in 1995, when all four were
members of the regional band Hyper-Tribe, a group that they are currently
resurrecting as the vehicle for their original music.

   "We want to keep Wicked City as our cover band," said Lubecke, "for going
out and playing clubs, for having fun and for making money.

    Hyper-Tribe is still together and is our vehicle for our originals,"
explain Gallery, "because as much fun as we have in Wicked City, all of us
have the desire to make our own music as well."