I wasnt sure if we were good or not (I was too busy playing and singing and crucifying the last chord on Candy), but I trust Brian Bakers review today in City Beat (thanks to Fred Kraus and my sister, Debbie, for the heads up). We owe Brian a Zip Dip soft serve. ***************** Before I review the psychodots Bunbury debut, perhaps a history lesson is in order. A good many years ago, music mogul and purported industry genius Clive Davis sauntered into Cincinnati with the stated goal of checking out The Raisins and perhaps offering them a lucrative and much-deserved contract. When Davis departed from our fair city without signing The Raisins, he explained the lack of a deal thusly: Theyre an embarrassment of riches. Please allow me to read between the lines and translate that five word headscratcher into laymans terms. What Mr. Davis was so obtusely attempting to convey was this: The Raisins are a stellar band and I dont have the slightest idea how to market them without making them as smooth and textureless as Gerbers babyshit and as lame as a beggar in the Bible, essentially stripping them of the elements that make them unique, and if you think Im going to dismantle and destroy this band or permanently stain my sparklingly legendary resume with the ugly reality that I was unable to sell the music of a gifted band to a quality-starved public simply because I didnt understand the complexities of either one, youve got several unpleasantly aromatic things coming in a flaming bag on your front porch. Of course, The Raisins famously broke up, reassembling as the Bears with guitarist Adrian Belew and refashioning as psychodots without Belew. So in a very tangible sense, we owe the existence of psychodots to Clive Davis short-sighted inability to recognize their root bands brilliance. I was devastated that The Raisins didnt make it and, after the dots loosely tight/tightly loose set at Bunbury, I am relieved beyond measure The Raisins didnt make it. Success would have come at a great and terrible cost, and we would not have enjoyed 20+ sporadically splendid years of psychodots Power Pop bliss. There may have only been 100 or so bodies at the Amphitheater Stage to witness psychodots fabulousness (Fitz and the Tantrums were sucking up bodies like a UFO set to harvest, and rightly so) but the dots never give less than 89%, and they were in full charge mode on Friday afternoon. There was Rob Fetters squiggly guitar magnificence (Id put him up against any guitarist in the history of Rock, and hed be only mildly uncomfortable at being up against any of them), Bob Nyswongers bass conjuring, using his instrument to evoke lead guitar and keyboard mayhem (and by instrument, Im still talking about his bass) and Chris Ardusers master class in How to Drum with Power and Grace and Still Maintain a Smartass Attitude. It was a delightfully eclectic set, with a number of old favorites (Master of Disaster, Living in a Lincoln, complete with Fetters mom-inspired balloon-on-the-strings gimmick), a few quasi-oddities (Candy, the rarely performed The Problem Song) and a handful of non-dots nuggets (She Might Try from Ardusers exquisite The Celebrity Motorcade, The Bears Veneer from their last album Eureka, Play Your Guitar from Fetters patently perfect new solo album, Saint Aint, The Raisins fist-pumping Fear is Never Boring) and the bands always entertaining banter (Fetters apropos of everything: Is anyone tripping?; Bob Nyswonger after Ardusers observation that the evening was balmy: Balmy, stretched langorously into two words). It was, in a number of words, a standard psychodots show, which means one of the best shows youll ever see, local or otherwise. Long may they reign.
Posted on: Tue, 15 Jul 2014 19:30:08 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015