Saturday night's Lite Brite Indie Pop and Film Test festivities at the Southgate House were more sparsely attended than the previous evening's bill, which drew a sold-out crowd to see headliners Jimmy Eat World. But the fare was a little more substantive on Saturday night for the courageous souls who jockeyed for road and parking space with Reds fans and Macy's Festival attendees.
The Roky Erickson documentary, You're Gonna Miss Me, was an amazing if somewhat slow-moving account of the tragic decline of the Texas guitarist (most famous as a member of the 13th Floor Elevators, and later the frontman for his own band, The Aliens) after a 1969 pot bust led him to be committed to a hospital for the criminally insane, where he was diagnosed as a schizophrenic and subjected to heavy doses of electroshock therapy. More than a rehashing of that oft-told tale, You're Gonna Miss Me reveals Erickson's early life, the clearly troubled household he was raised in, the contributing factors to his continued decline and his hopeful rise through the eventual guardianship and support of his youngest brother.
In the time that has elapsed since the point that the documentary stopped telling Roky's story, he has gone back into the studio and recorded new compositions and has appeared in some capacity during the past few South By Southwest festivals. The rights to Roky's catalog have, at long last, been returned to him, so the best happy ending for him would be that the exposure from this movie leads to a rise in his profile, more new albums (and the re-release of old albums that will finally benefit him) and the kind of financial stability that a seminal music figure of his caliber deserves.
The first band of the evening was Aloha, a truly astonishing quartet from, well, all over really; they've called a number of places homebase over the past decade, including Bowling Green, Ohio, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Washington DC, among many others locales. Starting their set with a pair of keyboardists, a bassist and an astonishingly musical drummer, Aloha launched into a compelling set of Punk-fueled art Prog/Pop that danced delicately between R.E.M.'s melodic beauty and Radiohead's dissonant fury. Early in the set, frontman Tony Cavallario switched from keys to guitar and right before the end of the set, drummer Cale Parks (who released a fascinating one-man album last year titled Illuminated Manuscript) and keyboardist T.J. Lipple traded places, an impressive move by the audience's standards but also a nifty little razzle dazzle for Park's parents, who live in Cincinnati and were in attendance (they had apparently never seen their son perform in this capacity). The crowd showed their enthusiasm for Aloha's energetic and dramatic set, enhanced by the video images of barbed wire fences and computer simulations of the International Space Station.
After a film about aliens among us with an ending that was just a little too cliche and a local documentary about cicadas (featuring noted cicada maven Gene Krivsky), New York 12-piece The Sharp Things took the Southgate stage for 45 minutes of orchestrated Pop bliss. As the band settled into their spots (on what they noted before the show as being one of the more spacious stages they've played on), guitarist Jim Santo cracked, "This jacket is made of cicadas. I ordered it 17 years ago and it just came in." The jacket in question was a pink/white/gray medium-wide striped affair that looked exactly like a pair of pants I owned in the fifth grade when I used to endure a variety of beatings on a weekly basis. I don't think the pants had anything to do with the beatings, but seeing Santo's jacket was a powerful memory cue for all of the things I had found a way to block from my fifth grade experience.
Luckily, The Sharp Things' symphonic Pop soothed those savage beasts right back into the Pandora's brain box of my repressed childhood recollections. Sounding like an Indie Rock orchestra as arranged by Burt Bacharach and Jimmy Webb, The Sharp Things laid down a groove that swelled with the exquisite sound of a trio of lovely violinists who doubled as back up singers (Aisha Cohen, Janis Shen, Andrea Dovalle), a pair of crack guitarists (Jim Santo and Michelle Caputo), a skilled trombonist who also blew a mean hooter (Brad Madsen), a second keyboardist with nimble fingers and a strange resemblance to Bob Saget (Bob Byrne) and a rhythm section as solid as God's alibi and as slinky as black lace lingerie (bassist Rich Holst and drummer Steve Gonzales); sadly, the band was without their gifted cellist Bob Smolenski, who would certainly have injected a gorgeously sonorous atmosphere into the proceedings had he been able to make the trip. Led by keyboardist/frontman/songwriter Perry Serpa, The Sharp Things breezed through selections from their three albums over the past four years — 2003's Here Comes the Sharp Things, 2005's Foxes & Hounds and the recently released A Moveable Feast — and converted the Southgate House stage from venerable Rock venue locale into venerable Rock orchestra pit.
The Sharp Things set the tone with Foxes and Hounds' stupendous opening track, "There Will Be Violins," as much a mission statement for the band as a song. They followed up with my personal favorite track from A Moveable Feast, the anthemic "Through With Love," a lovely and powerful song in the studio that converts into a formidable presence live, particularly Santo's Mick Ronson/Ian Hunter guitar solo toward the end. In fact, everything The Sharp Things presented from their first two albums was likewise expanded in tone and density, partially because of the natural translation to the stage and partially because the band has continued to solidify and evolve since coming together nearly five years ago. All of that evolution is brought to bear when the Sharp Things revisit their earlier material and play it alongside the muscularly cerebral material found on A Moveable Feast.
“Storm King" is a case in point. On Feast, the track is echoey and distant, the sound of Jimmy Webb producing a Carole King composition as performed by an Indie Rock outfit tributing The Association. In the live setting, the Sharps push the song into much higher relief, the echo dialed back in favor of a more visceral sonic attack that thrills and elates where the studio version haunts and dreams. All of the Sharps' old songs have benefited from the band's newfound sense of unity and direction; anytime this many people can travel by van from New York to anywhere and not kill each other along the way, let alone put on a world class show for a few dozen people, this is a group with a very clear sense of purpose and inner fulfillment. Long may they rock, pop, roll and orchestrate. If it ain't baroque, the Sharp Things will fix it.
The evening's final performance belonged to L.A. sextet West Indian Girl, comprised of a couple of members from the late, lamented Wig, which — as was pointed out to me by local band veteran Bill Bullock — is an acronym for West Indian Girl, which also happens to be the name of a blazingly powerful type of LSD from the early '60s. DaVinci ain't the only one with codes, baby.
The band was a blend of sinuous space Rock, psychedelic Jam vibe and droning shoegaze shred, played at a level that nearly possessed the ability to alter heart rate and biorhythm and presented with a ferocity that was surprising considering the Lite Brite show was the last night of their recent grueling tour. West Indian Girl’s set was loud and raucous yet retained a very clear melodicism, courtesy of the gorgeous voice of lead vocalist Mariqueen Maandig and the support vocals of keyboardist Chris Carter. When Maandig and guitarist Robert James joined in co-lead vocals, it was like My Bloody Valentine's Space Rock tribute to X, a roiling, seething, lysergic sonic churn that was enthusiastically received by the faithful who hung around to the very end.
Although it would have been nice to see a few more bodies in place for Lite Brite's sterling second night lineup (and while we're about it, copious shout outs to Lite Brite organizer Dan McCabe for another spectacular confluence of music, video art and general coolness and to the Southgate for hosting in grand style as always), given the overwhelming amount of downtown/Newport on the Levee activity that obviously served to discourage casual attendance, it was a pretty decent turnout. And regardless of the numbers, three very different but uniquely outstanding bands proved it's not the numbers in the audience that make the difference but the conviction on the stage.
President Bush should study Aloha, The Sharp Things and West Indian Girl; their surge was obviously working well.
(West Indian Girl photo: Astralwerks)
- Brian Baker
If you missed Dandi Wind on Sunday, you really missed out. Think early 80s new wave / post-punk with a hint of industrial. Dandi's energy rivals Jane Wiedlin's in "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure".
Posted by: dj empirical | July 31, 2007 at 01:33 PM
YES! I was one of the 12 people there and Dandi was impossibly energetic. It was as much a dance performance as a musical one. I don't think she stopped moving for the entire set. And i loved the flapper dress!
Posted by: Breen | August 01, 2007 at 12:51 PM