Celebrating the Weed at the Doobie Awards

The evening began with Jackie "The Joke Man" Martling, who came out at 8 p.m. looking like he'd just?oh wait, Survivor references are no longer current?came out looking unwashed. He was the perfect host, accessible, yet famous enough to make you think you were at a real awards show. "Well, we started on time; that's pretty impressive, huh?" he offered.

Silence. Some in the crowd booed.

"Oh, shut up, you potheads, I'm doing this for free."

The crowd laughed, and from then on Jackie had them.

"Now, I'm told that the Doobie Awards recognize 'marijuana in music,' but we know that's just an excuse for you idiots to smoke your dope, right?"

Cheers from the crowd.

"We have 17 categories of award, most of which seem very similar to me, go figure: Best Rock Album, Best Stoner Rock Album, Best Hard Rock Album, Best Rally Album, Album of the Year..."

After finishing his list of hilariously overlapped categories, Jackie got offstage and the night's first "presenter" came on. The presenters at the Doobie Awards had no celebrity at all; they were random High Times employees who walked out holding envelopes and very large stainless steel bongs, attached to wooden bases. It took the crowd a while to realize these were the trophies.

"Our first award of the evening goes to Best Stoner Rock Album," the presenter said. (Will this become tradition? Like the Best Supporting Actor/Actress category opening the Oscars?) "And the nominees are..."

The lights dimmed. Stage right, a rudimentary projection screen blared images of the Best Stoner Rock Albums contenders, as the presenter read off their names. "Northern Lights, Sea of Green. Fu Manchu, King of the Road. The Atomic Bitchwax, The Atomic Bitchwax." The crowd cheered for Atomic Bitchwax, and justifiably. They were playing that night! They were on the bill; how could they not win the award?

"And the Doobie goes to...the Atomic Bitchwax!"

Yelling ensued as three perfect-looking stoner guys (guitarist Ed Mundell, drummer Keith Ackerman and bassist Chris Kosnik) came out from backstage. The tallest of them, Beatle-haired Chris, grabbed his Doobie and thanked the crowd. He was pleasantly surprised to find the trophy/bong preloaded with weed, so he borrowed a lighter and attempted to spark up onstage. The weed, however, was uncooperative and would not light, prompting Chris to manipulate it with his finger. It popped out of the bowl and fell into the audience, where some stoner kids snatched it up as Chris stood onstage looking sad and stupid. A High Times photographer (there were many of these in attendance) shook his head as he snuck by me to get a shot: "Rookie mistake! Ah, rookie mistake."

"I guess now you guys are going to play some music, is that right?" Jackie asked. He had reappeared with another beer. "Or are you just going to get stoned and spend 30 minutes trying to set up?"

"We're gonna try our best for you, Jackie," minor stoner-rock deity Ed said into his mic. Within a few minutes the band was set up and playing a rocking three-song set, highlighted by "Birth to the Earth" (featuring the Bitchwax's only lyrics of the night: "Cradle to the grave/Birth to the earth/Womb to the tomb/Aaaaaagh!").

Up next was Best Rally Band, a category most people wouldn't understand?these are the groups that play on the marijuana protest circuit. As before, of the three bands nominated, one was scheduled to play that evening, so there wasn't much suspense as to who would win: Tree, a hardcore act from Boston. They came onstage looking depressingly old and blasted through three songs. The vocalist impressed me by having two voices: an odd wail for verses and a tried-and-true rap-metal chorus scream. He got bonus points for getting all the way through a tune before I realized he was yelling "The answer my friend/Is blowing in the wiiiiiiind/The answer is blowing in the wiiiiiiind!"

Best Jam Band followed, with Gov't Mule taking home the Doobie. Then the Cannibus Cub Band came onstage led by one of the Top 10 Black White Guys I've ever seen, a guitarist/singer who serenaded the crowd with "Giuliani can't take away our weed!" and "Weed never hurt nobody, mon!" before playing mediocre reggae for 50 minutes. The Black White Guy punctuated the set with superhuman bong rips (out of his own apparatus, as the Doobie sat unused on top of an amp). Mic problems, intermittent throughout the night, plagued the Cannabis Cuppers, prompting "stoned sound engineer" jokes from Jackie after they got offstage.

David Peel and the Lower East Side were up next. Those of you who don't know David Peel would do well to stay away; he plays the worst sort of pot-induced crap, joke songs like "I like Marijuana" that lose their kitsch value after 30 seconds. He's very old and funny-sounding, so it was great to hear his nonsensical acceptance speech (it was unclear what sort of Doobie he won; Best Classic Rock Album went to Jimmy Page and the Black Crowes, while Lifetime Achievement went to Jerry Garcia). However, his set featured five guitarists, each slightly out of tune, playing the exact same chords. It was the only point during the Doobies at which I had to escape to Wetlands' lower-key basement area to keep myself sane.

(Later on I was told that the basement was full of hot girls, but I didn't see any, and I wasn't surprised. Hot girls and pot have been disassociated for two decades. Attractive women do E now.)

Charlie Hunter came on after David Peel, and, in delightful contrast to him, played one of the most musically skilled sets I have ever seen. Hunter is a jazz guru who employs a custom Novax guitar: a stunning instrument that combines a full electric bass with four guitar strings. When he plays it, he sounds like an incredibly tight bassist and guitarist comping together; he can solo while holding down complex basslines and just generally school any other string-based musician on the planet. Hunter's set (with two notable percussionists and a guest star's tenor sax solo) was one jaw-dropping half-hour.

Hunter left and a Doobie was distributed for Best Hard Rock Album. Surprise: NYC locals Dope got the award. They came out and played the tight-ass nu-metal; Charlie Hunter was the best musician in the place, but these guys will clearly be the most successful.

Dope has a great frontman in, um, Edsel Dope, an impossibly tall, awkward, whitey fifth-grader grown to manhood. He wore horizontal-striped tights and jumped with his knees above his head to accentuate his choruses. The three songs played were pounding industrial rants, with drum-bass-guitar functioning as one and a phaser making the vocals as scary as possible. The hooks were almost comical: one song went, "What about you?/What about me?/What about everythiiiing?" and the next, "What about tomorrow?/Fuck tomorrow!" Dope looked like a bunch of guys who got together, decided that rap-metal was going to be the next big thing and practiced their asses off for five years. They were like a decent Marilyn Manson, and they deserve the best of luck.

The evening was winding down, and I was tired of pot references, when the Kottonmouth Kings, the night's headliners, came on. They were more of a one-trick-pony than anyone else. Two men got onstage and rapped about weed while a third, Pakelika, a gigantic costumed individual, pop-locked and chainsmoked blunts. I guess there must have been a turntablist somewhere, but it didn't matter because the Kottonmouth Kings were bad, bad, bad; they were undeserving of my attention and, frankly, I had stuff to do. I left during their second song.

I play in a band called the New Mexikans, and the kind Wetlands people recognized us and let us into the Doobies for free?so I'm not sure if the awards show was worth the ticket price ($15). It probably was, if not for the music of Charlie Hunter and the other skilled acts, then for the reassurance that there are still stoners in New York City. Dirty, grungy stoners, without the class or attitude of coke- or E-heads, kind young men who just want to do their drugs and chill out and maybe talk politics. The kind of people I used to play Magic with in high school, all grown up. They're a great comfort to me.