Don’t Mess with Mr. In-Between (Dr. John, Rockefeller Park/‘Superman Returns’)

“We got a lot of music, n’ some hip guests, n’ there it iz.”

Dr. John (aka Malcolm ‘Mac’ Rebennack, aka The Night Tripper) ain’t about making no nothing look hard.  The N’awlins growler n’ key-tickler has been many things to many generations:  He caught the critics’ ears with his gumbo-tinged psychedelic R&B, the public’s with funk-based party tunes.  Once known for wearing outfits that’d make Elton John think twice about a thing or two, kids today are more likely to recognize him as the voice of a billion commercial jingles.

Even if you don’t know him, you does.  He was the main inspiration for Dr. Teeth.  He’s the guy who sang the theme song to Blossom.  Emerson, Lake and Palmer appropriated one of his lyrics for the title of their most successful record, Brain Salad Surgery; Beck sampled his “I Walk on Gilded Splinters” in “Loser.”  I first saw Dr. John on an SCTV rerun, back in the idontknowwhen.

For the past twenty-five years, as the crow flies, John’s done a lot of what a lot of artists do, when they get old:  Play music older than they is.  He’s hit the standards pretty hard, but there’s no cause to file some domestic disturbance complaint m‘bout it.  Feathers and voodoo be damned, it’s them big Cajun vocaleyezizations of his that make him iconic.  His tongue’s always been more about flavor than heat, it wraps nice around them same-ol’-same-ol’s.  They go down easyish.  His versions are distinctive, if not definitive, and better folks hear Dr. J than, say, Rod Stewart.

His Creole-English slanguistics (“ain’t no accent, it’s an accident” he sings; “Bluezheimer’s,” one of his guest-vocalists called it, last night) are, obviously, infectious.

John’s touring – I think he’s always touring – behind a record of mostly Johnny Mercer covers (it’s called Mercernary), and spreading/riding the wave of post-Katrina New Orleans musical goodwill (links to suggested charities – who “get money to real people,” he said – are on his site).  I’d never seen him, live; a free concert, as part of the River-to-River Festival, offered an opportune occasion to rectify that.

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Rockefeller Park’s got an odd little set-up for shows.  An open-air stage, there’s a roof on columns that doesn’t extend far enough to cover the performance area.  Positioned at the top of an incline, the back abuts the Warren Street entrance on River Terrace.  You can watch the performers from behind, or even from your River Terrace apartment, should you have one... but the front of the stage – where, presumably, the audience is meant to be – slopes away from the performers.  Rows of folding chairs are set-up directly in front of the stage.  A good many of the closest chairs had “Reserved for _______” signs on them; maybe 1/3 of the VIPs never showed, and those chairs were freed up a few songs into the set.  There’s room for blankets, etc., to either side of the chairs – and behind them, all the way back to the Hudson.

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There was a skull atop the piano, ‘long with a reading lamp dressed up like a snake, but WFUV’s John Platt (the same guy who bored everyone to death at The Nebraska Project) warned us that – unlike his recent Bonnaroo appearance – it was unlikely the Doctor’d be dragging out his old Night Tripper persona.

And he didn’t.  The set started, surprisingly, with the pianist’s biggest hits – “Iko Iko,” “Right Place, Wrong Time” – and a small bunch of middle-aged dancers gathered off to the side of the stage.

Including John – who had a piano and an organ set-up front-to-front, so’s he could reach back and play both at once – there were seven in the band (drums, guitar, bass, trumpet, tenor and baritone saxes); they refused to get too loose, or too tight.  Once the standards kicked in, they sometimes verged on schmaltz; solos didn’t really stand out.  John’s such a great piano player – he can woogie with the best of them – you wish he’d get a little showy.

It was, mostly, middle-of-the-road, mid-tempo, songs-over-showmanship.  It was a pleasant summer-evening show.

Dr. John – Accentuate the Positive (mp3)(buy)

Dr. John – I Ain’t No Johnny Mercer (mp3) (buy)

The band played a half-dozen songs or so – including “Come Rain or Shine,” “Blues in the Night” (bouncy, dropping the “big” to “give you the eye”) “Accentuate the Positive” (a Mercer track from an earlier record, In a Sentimental Mood), and the John-penned “I Ain’t No Johnny Mercer” – before guests started joining him.  Catherine Russell did an amazing job with “Moon River” (Mancini, not Mercer, but whatever); without strings, the song was less maudlin but lost none of its sweep.  Vegan taunt “Save the Bones for Henry Jones” was fun.

David Johansen – without either Poindexter persona or Doll drag – got a pair of tunes that would have fit perfectly in either: “Personality” (“When Salome danced/and had the boys entranced/no doubt it must have been easy to see/that she knew how to use her/personality”) and a rather over-funked “Must’ve Been a Beautiful Baby” (the second line became “You musta been a hip little kid”).

Ann Hampton Callaway (who looks nothing at all like the photo on the front page of her site) was last, least.  She puts forward this aggressive, saucy lounge-singer presence – acts a little like Bill Murray’s accidental hook-up in Lost in Translation; it’s a bit boorish.  Before trading lines with John on “Makin’ Whoopee” (on Mood, Rickie Lee Jones does this to much better effect), she announced, “This song is about SEX!”  Jesus, somebody tell Wink Martindale.  Earlier, she complimented the Dr. on “his bedside manner.”  File under:  Arguments against Viagra, Inspirations for Fasting.  Still, she was smiles, hit her notes, was fine.

A bit too fine, perhaps.  When all three guests came out for the big finale – some spiritual number – John got downright irritated the crowd wouldn’t get up and dance.  Problem wasn’t so much the typical stoic New York audience – there was an elderly woman with a cane who danced, early on, more than most every hipster crowd I’ve ever seen – as the mood.  We were effectively chilled out.  John – who’s managed to be so many things, in his career – had a bunch of poisons from which to choose, and picked one of the slower-acting ones.

• Additional tour dates are here.  More pics at my Flickr account.


• Stream four tracks from his new CD, Mercernary (then buy)


• NPR is streaming three tracks from his Katrina charity CD, Sippiana Hericane


• Unofficial Myspace


• Hear more at Hype Machine

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Just a couple words about Superman Returns, which is also okay, fine.

I’ve never been a Superman buff – I’m a fan of flawed characters, and do-gooderism is only an interesting flaw when it’s a psychosis – so I didn’t expect an end-all be-all.  But I sort of expected some gung-ho heroism, some emotional involvement; I did forget that director Brian Singer seems to specialize in faux-smart.

It is, again, not-bad.  It moves along.  I liked Routh’s performance quite a bit – his Kent is really good – and Spacey’s good enough you wish he had more to do.  The 3-D husband was a nice touch.  Bosworth’s awful, and they did her character no favors by making her an idiot (sample dialogue:  Lane, looking at data:  “The blackout seemed to start in a central location.”  Kent:  “Where?”  Lane:  “I don’t know.”).  There’s too much on the plate, plot-wise – that’s the summer blockbuster formula, biggerBiggerBIGGGGGERMOREYESYESYES! – and that doesn’t allow the film of its elements justice.

The single biggest issue – file it under “Why We Need a Superman” – that goes underaddressed is 9/11.  Yes, there are falling bodies – when a movie spends this much time in the air, there will be – and flybys of lower Metropolis.  But the entire issue of Superman’s return – plot has him coming back after a talked-about journey to his native planet – is used as an excuse to introduce more plot (Luthor’s free, Lane has married and mothered); instead, the notion of what we, as a society, were missing, what we need back, is left unexplored.  You have an invincible character based in a country that, for a long while, thought itself as invincible.  He goes away, comes back to a nation reeling from insecurities.  We want to feel invincible again.  Save us, Superman.

There’s even a line where Perry White talks about “Truth, justice, all that other stuff.”  What, we’re not allowed to own our signature superhero, anymore (and I wonder if they wrote our country’s name out, out of concerns over the foreign box office)?  If there is any movie that had a right to beat its chest, wave its flag, try – just try – to make Americans feel good about themselves in some way, it was not War of the fucking Worlds.  It was Superman Returns.

But it doesn’t make you feel much of anything.

They work intermittently at underlining the Deus in the character’s ex Machina, showing our all-knowing, all-powerful hero hanging out cross-like above the planet.  There’s Supes as Father, Son, Great Cesar’s Holy Ghost... while Luthor poses as Prometheus.  Not bad ideas, but they’re not given the attention needed to make them good.

And they’re ideas already better explored in comicbookdom, already.  The superhero-as-God concept was brilliantly done by Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman in the tragically out-of-print Miracleman books.  Brian K. Vaughan’s Ex Machina series boldly has a superhero – who talks to machines – save one of the two towers, and put him in the NYC mayor’s office.

Yeah, fine, those are books, this is a movie, movies aren’t about ideas.  Well, then, movie:  Make me feel something.  Don’t futz with your little soap operas and your big set pieces and just assume I’m happy a franchise has been revived.  Singer and his Superman had a responsibility to be, not just bigger-than-life, but relevant to it.  To make things better, for at least a little while.  But the movie never really justifies its existence.  It just takes up space.  What is Superman Returns?  It’s two-and-a-half hours long.

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I did find it interesting that Singer used John Williams’ themes but didn’t have Williams score.  Similarly, the old swooping title sequence is there.  I once worked for R/Greenberg Associates – ages ago, but long after they designed that original sequence for Richard Donner’s first Superman.  These titles were done by Kyle Cooper, who got his start with the Greenbergs.  Fathers, sons, indeed.

tags: dr john  new york dolls  movie reviews  david johansen  concert reviews  superman returns  river to river  

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