CONCERT REVIEW: Asylum Street Spankers June 22, 2006
Radio Radio - Indianapolis, IN
Despite some rough weather, this turned out to be a blessed night to be seeing a show in the historic Fountain Square district. Club Radio Radio has been open for a year or two now, and it's kind of crazy that I'm only now getting to check out a joint named for an Elvis Costello song. Even besides that coolness, it's just a really nice smallish, intimate facility. It's all clean and new seeming still, and has a decent actual bar. This is definitely a preferred venue to see a band, particularly an intimate acoustic act like the Asylum Street Spankers..
Heck, they even came up with a really good local opening act. These Born Again Floozies are some kind of crazy freak show. Only they're a highly musically skilled freak show, like Spike Jones or the Asylum Street Spankers. In theory, I would almost compare them to the Spankers- except that they don't even quite use any of the same instruments, for starters.
The Floozies basic sound is one electric guitar and a tuba player, plus a tap dancer, natch. I note that Miss Amy Gilmore has her own little maybe 4x4 metal tap stage which is specifically miked. For starters, she ended up being a surprisingly musically effective percussionist- along with a few assorted minor rhythmic instruments. Besides which, she had a fairly simple but highly effective deadpan stage presence- not particularly hamming it up, but cheerful and poker faced. There's also apparently a second tap dancer name of Libby Milliken, only she just gave birth to a little floozie within the last few days, so they had to get by without her.
Anyway, Joe Welch in the center of this mess plays some fairly fancy guitar that's a little tough to describe, but unique and highly expressive, and Ben Volkits blows some mean tuba that makes me not miss a bass player one bit. They can actually credibly cover Sly Stone.
There's a pretty high humor quotient to the act, as you might imagine. Just on the basis of the title, you have to appreciate the tale of the "Small Penis Compensation Vehicle." I was more taken though by the curious ruminations about a cemetery with a marquee sign, and what kind of person would have such a job as writing the quotes. Best I can tell, the title was "If You Were Dead, You'd Be Home Now."
They also do a mean version of "Highway to Hell," though their studio recording is apparently being dicked around a bit by some AC/DC lawyer types. As it happens, it was only halfway through their set that the Spankers showed up at the back door. Rough weather- but we'll get back to that. Anyway, Wammo himself comes walking in the back door during this performance, and has to stop for a moment to listen and nod appreciatively to this unique and surprisingly effective arrangement.
I end up writing about the humor stuff because it's words, and easy to communicate. But the better parts of the show were instrumental pieces. You just have to sit and listen to Joe and Ben work out that jam. This has to be about the best opening act I ever saw, other than maybe absolutely Brian Wilson opening for Paul Simon. I need more Floozies in my life.
I pause briefly to drop in a howdy for my new concert buddies that I met at this show, a delightful young couple named Sean and Poscha. I'm sure the spellings there are all wrong, but I refuse to be held responsible for deciphering the myriad versions of Sean. I derived the spelling "Poscha" on the basis of the explanation that it was pronounced "the way they'd say 'posture' in Boston." She's just a sweet 24 year old womanchild with a bit of ink and a couple of darling piercings. Master Sean is apparently fairly new to our fair capitol, and seems to be doing pretty well for himself, judging by the company he keeps. His gently combed up Mohawk was just the cutest thing sitting next to her. They're about the cuddliest little pair I've seen in awhile.
Back to the weather. I was about to get annoyed before the doors opened, as it was pouring rain and we're huddling under inadequate awning. I was thinking about having been disappointed that yesterday did not rain, allowing me to get literally at the sentiment of the current Paul Simon song that "it's a blessing to wash your face in the summer solstice rain." But then I decided that it was the day after solstice, which is pretty much the same thing and just as good. In short, I embraced the experience of getting a face full of warm summer rain. Paul Simon was right. I recommend it.
The Asylum Street Spankers however had a rather rougher time coming south from Fort Wayne, if I'm understanding their schedule right. From the stage, Christina Marrs reported on having driven through a tornado coming down. They apparently saw it pick up a semi in front of them, move it across the median, and plunk it back down on all eighteen wheels- which was better than some of the trucks they saw blown off the road.
None of which slowed them down from putting on a full and focused professional show. That's pretty impressive right there. Me, if I saw crap like that, I'd probably be a little off my game for the rest of the day.
They're touring currently as a six piece outfit, led of course by Christina Marrs and ever lovin' Wammo. Nevada Newman is the quiet man, along with PB Shane on the bass and Scott Marcus on drums.
The big standout though was the new kid Sick, whom I'd first become familiar with via the Re-Assembly video. That kid with the Mohawk was a mean fiddle player, but he's new and taking secondary place behind all the longtime alumni of the band in that show. Plus, as he explained to me after this show, he'd only been in the band six weeks when that was filmed.
Whereas he was in full effect in Indianapolis. He got rid of the Mohawk, so you can't really trace it to any outlandish appearance. Nonetheless, he was far freakier than that video. He's not particularly acting weird or overtly acting, but he's got a really strong natural stage presence. He seems to be hell on pretty much anything with strings. Plus, he's got this seemingly unselfconscious way of enthusiastically acting out the songs a bit as he's singing.
Brother Sick has as much presence as anyone on that stage. His main noteworthy original song centerpiece is a new thing he's working on called "What I'd Like." Talking about it after the show, he described these songs he's working on for his solo album as "thrash folk." Listening to the demo CD that he was personally selling, I'm digging on the songs, especially "What I'd Like." I've had this song in my head ever since. I don't know if I'd call those recordings "thrash folk" though. These jazzy songs wouldn't sound too far out of place mixed in with some Jack Johnson, though Sick is certainly rather more colorful.
Naturally an all acoustic band based on 1940s musical styles has to have a Nine Inch Nails cover somewhere in the set. Sick sang the lead for this bluegrass-y rendition of "Closer." Being the Spankers though, about the time Sick start expressing the desire to have sex with you like an animal, Wammo starts with the sheep and goat noises. Pretty soon the whole band are dropping in at least a couple dozen different species. But being the Spankers, it wasn't just random squawking. The animal sounds were musically orchestrated, part of the arrangement. That musicality is the difference between ASS and a comedy band. Naturally, Wammo is orchestrating the goat humping.
Watching the Re-Assembly show, I had worried that Wammo would corrupt this poor kid. Seeing them at Radio Radio though, I fear he's dragging Wammo out even further into depravity and unnatural acts with the livestock.
I was really pleased to watch the professional demeanor of Wammo, and how he works it. He's wearing his cowboy hat and waving his freak flag high, and all that. He's making something of a point of drinking onstage, and is happy to deliver his barbed diatribes like "Winning the War on Drugs," which has to be considered one of his couple of main signature compositions. He gets up a particularly good rant with the totally revamped Tony Orlando re-write about sticking a magnetic yellow support-our-troops ribbon on the bumper of your gas-guzzling SUV.
Wammo's best song ever though was "Hick Hop," his unique combination of country murder ballads and gangster rap. That's just a catchy tune right there, and it works particularly good as something live that he's sort of acting out.
The funny part with Wammo though was the way he turns the Wammo thing on and off. He'd step up and do his Wammo bit, then just sit quietly and concentrate on blowing harp or filling out his part of a vocal harmony. For putting on his drinking show, he seemed to quit drinking when the show was over. He was quietly reviewing photos from the show and such stuff, taking care of business.
But Christina Marrs is the queen of this brood. It's her world, and all these fellows are privileged to live in it. They were previewing songs from an upcoming children's album, including a particularly tender and earnest note of devotion from Christina wanting to be the "Sidekick." This falls stylistically perhaps in the range of the girly Disney ballads.
Partly, that song gains a little effect simply by being a straightforwardly dramatic song dropped into all the Spanker shenanigans. But the best piece of the show for me was the most atypical, the gospel part. Nevada Newman had a gospel song, but it kind of got lost with the crowd amidst the general merriment.
But any idea of humor or distance vanished when Miss Christina started "The Last Mile of the Way." This has become a particular favorite personal song to me in the last year or two, mostly from the classic performance by Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers. It's not even fun bacchanalian gospel, like some rousing Jerry Lee Lewis Pentecostal jam, but a quiet meditation about walking in pathways of duty.
As it happens, I'm the kind of fellow what would have Soul Stirrers CDs in the vehicle with me, and I ended up leaving the show hungry for gospel. It was a soul stirring trip home, starting with "The Last Mile of the Way." I don't want to say that ASS did the song quite as good as that- that really would be a miracle from heaven. But they were pretty close. Plus, there's something about the live communion with an audience with gospel music so that this was the difference between watching a mass on tv versus being in the cathedral with the priest personally placing the wafer on your tongue. I'm just saying it was a particularly fine spiritual moment. I felt more touched by the spirit at Radio Radio than I have in any church recently.
Thankfully though, the Asylum Street Spankers would not be sending you off into the night too completely churched up. Having put the band through all the proper paces, and showing off classic and groovy new material, we got one good long encore as Christina explained at length about the trials and tribulations of a kitty cat. Let's just say that her hot, wet, tight, sore, bald, free pussy had a long day.
Da official Asylum Street Spankers website
ASYLUM STREET SPANKERS RE-ASSEMBLY PICTURES 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
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