Five Days of Funyuns

So, Tracy Chapman was over for brunch the other day. I prepared omelets and pommes de terre au gratin. Tracy ate like a starved goat, not talking during the meal. Then, after wiping her greasy lips on the table cloth, she looked up at me with the ol’ stink eye and said, “Give me one reason to stay here, and I’ll just turn right back around.” I thought for a minute. “Well,” I said, “why don’t you stay and sing me that ‘I Got a Fast Car’ song?”

And that’s how I got married to Tracy Chapman.

Seriously, though, this weekend was full of more rock than a has-been adult contemporary blues-pop singer can bring in a lifetime, and it’s still going strong. I’ve been out every night since last Thursday, and tonight I’m going to check out the Pomonas at Balanca’s. This Lawrence band has been around a while, but I never heard them until a CD of theirs, an incomplete version of the upcoming full length When Your Electric, drifted across my desk a couple of weeks ago. From the opening bass riff of “Cub Astronaut” (listen yourself here), I was hooked. It should be a good show. If you can’t come tonight, they’re playing the Sleeper Cellar on Friday.

30 Minute Recess

You read and loved my feature on 30 Minute Recess last week, and I’m happy to report that the band’s show Saturday night at McCoy’s was a success. There may be no frontman in town as boyishly excited as Dan Talmadge proved to be throughout the band’s mammoth three-hour set. Learning that much bad ’90s music to play in one night, that’s downright masochistic. But the young Talmadge, his boufant hair parted on the left, his un-muscular chest heaving under his button-up-shirt and denim vest, was still at full throttle at around 1:30 in the morning (the show started at 10:30) when it came time for him to holler and rhyme the male vocal parts in “Bring Me to Life” by Evanescence. (Not a ’90s song, one notices, but too awesomely lame not to include in the band’s technically post-1990 repetoire.) Extra nu-metal scream-outs to the girl who climbed up on stage to belt out the lead, the sultry mega-ubervixen (and McCoy’s server) Beckie Trost.

The best thing about the show, however, was that the majority of the bar crowd wasn’t in on the joke. In fact, many of them looked unhappy and confused. After all, who spends a Friday night at McCoy’s? Jocks, yuppies, and the women who love them, that’s who (and sometimes me and my wife, when we’re hungry for Skillet Dip�). So this portion of the crowd recognized 30 Minute as being almost the type of cover band they’re accustomed to — only this band was playing excrutiatingly bad music to a very excited crowd down front. The fact that so many people were dancing and singing along — most of whom were probably direct acquaintances of the band members — really confused the jocks. It turned a mirror on them. They had never before considered how terrifying it is when masses of people devour shitty music. Surely, many a shorn-headed, polo-wearing douchebag went home that, cradled his Rob Thomas CD in his trembling hands and broke down weeping from the disillusionment.

Maybe that’s a little extreme.

Let’s ask Tracy Chapman.

JASON: Tracy, baby.

TRACY: What!?

JASON: Am I being, you know, unfair in my stereotypes of uptight white pricks and hoochie mamas with lower back tats?

TRACY: Get me some Funyuns, bitch!

Well, I think that settles it. I’m pretty much in the clear.