THE GREAT GADFLY:

Hypermediocrity



I've been a pretty lucky guy, at least where my concert-going history is concerned. I've seen some pretty good stuff in my day. My first concert experience was Prince & the Revolution's Purple Rain tour, complete with Sheila E. and three days of subsequent hoarseness. I've seen Tricky open for a grotesquely glammed-out P.J. Harvey. I've seen David Bowie sing duets with Nine Inch Nails. I've seen Kelley Deal sing duets with Sebastian Bach. I've seen Peaches simulate masturbation and I've seen Chicks On Speed rip tiles out of the ceiling. I've seen Courtney Love chain-smoke through a show, only to end it in a huff, warning the city of Indianapolis against ever touching her nether regions. Alternately, I have felt the love with Le Tigre, I have felt the grooove with Deee-Lite, and I have felt the funk with George Clinton. I've seen Diamanda Galas cover Johnny Cash at Carnegie Hall. I once had the privilege of sitting right smack dab in front of Thurston Moore for the entirety of a Sonic Youth concert. I have ushered in the New Year with Debbie Harry singing "Rapture" at a legendary defunct New York nightclub. I've seen Lux Interior growl through an entire Cramps show wearing nothing but a g-string, black pumps, and a gushing head wound caused by a microphone toss gone wrong. Hell, even when my mom dragged me to a Moody Blues concert, I was able to dig on the old geezers playing "Knights In White Satin" with a gorgeous symphony orchestra accompaniment. I've had sunshine in a bag at a Gorillaz show, I sat in the Mercy Seat at a Nick Cave concert, and I've not given a damn about my bad reputation at a Joan Jett show in Central Park.

And I loved it all. Yes, I have been a lucky boy.

Sometimes, that luck has to run out. And run out it did last night.

Fischerspooner. Well. Damn. What can I tell you. Seeing them seemed like a good idea at the time.

When I'd first heard of this band/troupe/collective, I wasn't exactly in favor of them. I remember feeling they were the result of an ostensibly refreshing electroclash craze gone too far into the self-conscious blue, kinda the equivalent of buying an organic chai tea latte at McDonald's. But hey, I had only heard the hype and not the music, and fair is fair, right? So I gave their album a listen - great packaging, free DVD jam-packed with pretty pictures, and the US release was nice and cheap. I was starting to warm up to Fischerspooner.

"Emerge" smacked me upside the head, as it is known to do. Other songs on the album oozed into my consciousness, and I eventually grew to believe this hipster outfit could be a bit more nuanced and perhaps even more visionary than I'd originally suspected.

Then there was last night. Sometimes a person should trust his initial instincts.

Let me make two attempts at balance before the axe-grinding commences:

1. It was the last show of their first tour.

2. Their opening act, Kenna, was absolutely fucking amazing.

Actually, let's talk about Kenna for a moment. If you haven't heard this guy's music, put him on your list. I have a feeling that seeing him last night will lead to future conversations that will begin with, "I remember seeing him back before he was the next big thing..." The creativity of his music bounced off the walls, and his energy was off the map. His backing band didn't just LOOK as though they were having fun - they WERE having fun. You wanted to like these guys as you watched them spazz their way through the set, and they wanted to be liked. Watching Kenna explode, twist and contort through his performance was a post-punk hoot, which I mean in the most undiluted way possible. You want stage presence? Forget the costumes, glitter and confetti cannons (more on these delights later) - just gimme someone who acts like he gives a shit about the music he's performing. Kenna was absolutely inspiring and infectious. Yum.

I guess that would bring me to Fischerspooner's performance. Did I mention that the show's venue, Chicago's House Of Blues, is a gorgeous structure? Did I mention the Cubs won some big important baseball game last night? Did I mention that Felix Da Housecat was in the audience last night?

Um, okay. Enough putting it off.

Fischerspooner sucked. Suck-o-rama. Suckalicious. Sucky-suck-suck. I would say they sucked ass, but that would be a slap in the face to analinguists. They sucked sagging elbow with scraping teeth, how about that?

Fischerspooner's performance troupe was made up of three lip-synching dancing girls, a pair of lip-synching divas who looked like Laurel and Hardy in drag, and the two lead performers, who were kind of a glam-rock incarnation of Siegfried and Roy by way of David Lee Roth and Andrew WK.

Again, in the interest of balance and fairness, let me break down the suck from the scant traces of non-suck. The dancing girls were hot. They were in the moment, they worked it hard, and they gave us a dose of dadaist Rockettes-gone-crazy action that more often than not carried the show. Even the two lip-synching divas were likeable enough - even though one got the impression that their talents were wasted by not being given the opportunity to sing live, the pair did their best to radiate a sense of fun and spectacle to the event.

The dark cloud of the performance came from the ubiquitous limitation of lip-synching to a performance that was not necessarily justified to such a lazy method of performance. The even darker cloud came in the form of the show's ringmaster, namely the lip-synching David Lee Roth/Siegfried figure.

This pot-bellied wonder first rubbed me the wrong way when he called out a heckler by demanding security remove the offending audience member before any further naysaying could take place. This display was completely unnecessary and in bad form, not to mention most likely staged. And the (s)hits just kept on coming. Later in the show, pot-belly man instructed the audience in a bit of Crowd Surfing For Dummies, directing us to get him to his mark in the middle of the floor, where a revolving stage awaited for his next Puttin' On The Hits master(bation)piece, which amounted to a limp technoballad, followed by his spitting beer at the audience and declaring "THIS IS FUCKING ROCK 'N' ROLL!!!!"

Erm. No. No, it's not rock'n'roll at all.

Later in the show, we were treated to pot-belly man's views on Eminem, who according to Fischerspooner philosophy is a "faggot pussy-ass" who should be shamed for "co-opting black culture". This was followed later on by a diatribe on Gatorade's "Fierce Grape" flavor, and how the marketing of sports drinks would be the ruining of modern society. Then, pot-belly man attempted some Ziggy Stardust drag-queen kabuki with a flappy jumpsuit and a great big electric fan. It was about as glammalicious as an episode of "7th Heaven".

Oh, and somewhere in all that, pot-belly man's partner chugged a bottle of fake blood and spit it at the audience. That was pretty.

Every once in a while, confetti cannons filled the room with tons of tickertape. As far as charm and sheer spectacle were concerned, the boys in FS were easily upstaged by fluttering white scraps of tissue paper. At least this feature of the show was more easily brushed off than the memory of a crappy performance.

The show ended with a false start of "Emerge", followed by one last diatribe by pot-belly man, who interrupted the performance, cleared the stage, and returned with a bullhorn, demanding that the audience boo him because "we all suck".

Yes, well. Maybe. But some suck better than others.

One thing I hate about bad performances is when an artist verbally demands the audience acknowledge his greatness. A good performer doesn't need to ask. A good performer already knows. A band that kicks that ass can come out, smack you upside the head, and leave you spinning in the lurch, wondering what beautiful act of God you just witnessed. Fischerspooner seemed content to tell us - repeatedly - that we were having one of those transcendent moments, without actually putting up the goods. We were told to care that they were "sexy", we were told to care that it was the last show of their tour, we were told to think it was ever-so-hip that the pot-bellied ringmaster man was trashed out of his gourd. Hell, at least g.g. allin would get naked and fling his poop at the audience after going off on an onstage rant about his supreme almighty greatness. The only poop Fischerspooner flung was in the form of bloated ego and schtick gone gratingly wrong.

Meanwhile, the pretty lip-synching dancing girls just politely smiled and twirled.

Perhaps Fischerspooner could get its shit together and offer a better show. Perhaps they could strengthen their punk-Vaudeville concept if maybe they knew a bit more about Vaudeville (or punk, for that matter). Maybe they could get away with a 100% lip-synched show if they put some muscle into their presentation in a way that makes the audience forget we're not getting the real deal. Maybe they could at least offer new mixes of what they're lip-synching, so we could at the very least have an experience different from dancing around in front of our mirrors to their album at home. Considering the traces of talent in the show - the dancing, the costumes, the attempts at multi-media stage spectacle - maybe they could spend a little less time projecting something they're clearly not, and give us the opportunity to enjoy what they can really be. Maybe they should take their hip-as-fuck NYC influences - the Kembra Pfaler stage antics, the Justin Bond/Hedwig self-deprecating punk rock drag, the Warholian coldness, the CBGB's sleaze - and bottle it up into something that says "we get it" rather than "we want it".

Maybe Fischerspooner should reject the claim made in their strongest song...maybe one DOES need to emerge from nothing.

Or maybe Kenna should just start getting busy on that second album, as soon as damn possible.


2003-10-14 - Last Haiku
2003-10-09 - Don't Cry Out Loud
2003-10-09 - Sit Down, You're Making Me Nervous
2003-10-08 - I'm Sure Miss Thing, I'm Sure
2003-10-07 - Carbonated Water, Caramel Color, Aspartame

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