| June 24, 2007 | Shows | Recipe Calendar | Archives |
Having shown you a variety of animals the last two outings (Melissa took Deb and Faith out birding on the lake this week; check out Deb's photos), here are two more: The Mammals and the Toughcats.
They played to a nearly full house last night. The Mammals are an alt-bluegrass edging into rock band. I saw them described once as a garage grunge band that uses hillbilly instruments. The Toughcats live on two islands off the coast of Maine and have invented their own bluegrassy Texas swing sound around excellent musicianship and oddly compelling visual humor in the form of an animated red-headed drummer.
The crowd was loving and enthusiastic with dancing in the aisles. I am fascinated by the audience, how they bond into a crowd for the evening, feeding off each other; and how the feedback loop forms between the crowd and the performers. I asked Mary Gauthier once how that rapport thing works and she said she beams love out to the audience and they beam it back.
The extreme of the crowd experience for me has been in the blues or gospel tent at N.O. Jazzfest when the tent is packed for someone like The Blind Boys. In ninety degrees with humidity enhanced by misting pipes, sitting shoulder to shoulder, you are actually electrolytically connected to others forming a giant single conductor, a wave pool for the huge sounds that fill up the tent. We could talk about massive parallel processing here, but I like the organic image better.
We think so different. They find it hard to grasp some things that come easy to us, because they simply don't have our frame of reference. I show 'em this can of Campbell's tomato soup. I say, "This is soup." Then I show 'em a picture of Andy Warhol's painting of a can of Campbell's tomato soup. I say, "This is art." "This is soup." "And this is art." Then I shuffle the two behind my back. Now what is this?
No, this is soup and this is art!
| ... Hey, what's this? "Dear Trudy, thanks for making our stay here so jam-packed and fun-filled. Sorry to abort our mission -- it is not over, just temporarily scrapped. We have ordered to go to a higher bio-vibrational plane. Just wanted you to know, the neurochemical imprints of our cardiocortical experiences here on earth will remain with us always, but what we take with us into space that we cherish the most is 'goose bump' experience." Did I tell you what happened at the play? We were at the back of the theater, standing there in the dark, all of a sudden I feel one of 'em tug my sleeve, whispers, "Trudy, look." I said, "Yeah, goose bumps. You definitely got goose bumps. You really like the play that much?" They said it wasn't the play gave 'em goose bumps, it was the audience. I forgot to tell 'em to watch the play; they'd been watching the audience! Yeah, to see a group of strangers sitting together in the dark, laughing and crying about the same things...that just knocked 'em out. They said, "Trudy, the play was soup...the audience...art." -- Jane Wagner & Lily Tomlin: The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe Or maybe the crowd was just high on light. Light, than which nothing can go faster. But a shadow is Nothing |