For
most people, there’s just so much family you can take before you explode. So
’twas a packed Xmas night at the Bug Jar for the debut of The Isotopes’A Very Special Isotopes Christmas Special:
How The Isotopes
Saved Christmas. This was a low-budget, low-fidelity nugget of nerd-centric
hilarity. Similar in acting quality and tone to Where Is the Chesterfield King, this Isotopes
shortwas a little better because the
joke was on the band and not just the audience.
Plus
a little go-go girl exploitation to the sweet strains of Vangelis always does
my heart good. The movie was followed by a fast and furious set by the band
where the surf threatened to rust the metal guitarist Handsome B. Wonderful
threw in.
Preceding
all the yuletide Isotopocity
were The Blastoffs. They rocked hard, with the throttle, and apparently the volume
knob, opened all the way.
What’s
better than seeing mama kissing Santa Claus? Seeing Dick the Dancing Record playing
harmonica and singing “Gloria” at the Record Archive Christmas party.
And we’re not talking the in excelsisDeo variety either,
but The-Shadows-of-Knight,
mouth-harp-in-a-different-key-from-the-rest-of-the-band kind. It was way out.
I
left the Archive to catch Chris Beard and his band at the Dinosaur. More than the blues, more than soul, these cats
were all about the funk. Cool grooves and stinging guitar.
From
there it was off to the Bug Jar to catch Gaylord celebrate the release of its new album, Tsunami.
When people talk about the music of dreams, they’re usually talking about
what they wish dreams sounded like
— all light and airy and full of butterflies. The reality is dreams sound
like Gaylord: manic, weird, pleasant, funny, making little or lots of sense
simultaneously. Simply put, these guys are plugged in to what’s what and are
pure genius.
One-man
band Skull opened with a classic
metal set, pausing at one point to say: “I just love rock… so much.”
Eddie Nebula & The Plague followed with a smart-alecky set that included the classic
“Rochester Girls,” the chorus of which I think should replace that crummy “Rochester: Made For Living” slogan.
—
Frank De Blase
This article appears in Jan 4-10, 2006.
