Blessed Be the Curse (Les Savy Fav, Warsaw)

Above:  Les Savy Fav's Tim Harrington rocks the party that rocks the bodystocking.  (Amazing pic from the back of Warsaw’s stage by modest micah; click photo for full size)

Tim Harrington is everything Rock and Roll should be. 

Indulgent in the right ways, he’s impulsive and energetic, generous and unguarded, intelligent without being obnoxiously clever.  And all kinds of crazy.  Seriously, all of them.  He veers from pleasantly eccentric to full-on-mania the same way his band’s music lurches between its dancey, spare post-punk roots and loud punk-punk assaults.  Harrington’s like one of those flawed Norse gods on whose favour no man in his right mind would rely, one whose praises are sung only in embarrassed whispers and empty-flagoned slurs.

I’m late to this party:  Les Savy Fav (myspace) has been making music for over a decade, and this was only my second time seeing them.  Last year I looked on with a visitor’s shock and awe; now I’m part of the congregation.  I jumped and banged and screamed for almost the entire show.  They made me, for a couple hours, a much younger man than I am (then morning came and made me that much older).  The mumbles of retirement and the slowed musical output – their last release was the 2004 singles collection/art project Inches – only serve to underline how special each and every LSF performance is.  As long as they keep going and keep ticket prices honorable, I hereby pledge to see them every time they’re within shouting distance.

If they’d do this every week, I’d be in much better shape.

*

Wha’d they do?  Musically, it was again an Inches-heavy set.  There was a new song Harrington said they wrote during their recent Australian tour; a sequel-of-sorts to AC/DC’s “Big Balls,” it grabbed the sniggering original by the sack and turned it into a Masque of the Red Death.  One line went something like “No one’s allowed to get sober until the liquor’s run out!”

Before this turns into a list of antics and wardrobe items – because Harrington’s like Jackie Chan with the props and like Diana Ross with the costume changes (at one point, I think he was actually trying to look like Diana Ross...) – a quick shout of amazement for the talented and unflappable musicians in the band.  Guitarist Seth Jabour, bassist (and French Kiss label-founder) Syd Butler, drummer Harrison Haynes, salut.

*

The Warsaw is one of the best venues in the city.  Not for the sound – if you’re not in the front third of the room, things get muddy – but for the character.  Blintzes and pierogies aside, there’s a real identity to the place, a homey integrity older acts recognize and utilize.  It’s not some quickly-adopted LES vacancy.  It’s the Polish National Home, representing pre-hipster Pole-dominated Greenpoint.

Harrington lives in the neighborhood.

He crawled up out of the crowd looking professorial:  Three-piece suit, sienna-tinged throwaway sunglasses, mortarboard.  As the rest of the band warmed up, he lit a pipe and welcomed us to “this convention of body re-imaging” (or something along those lines).

Not two songs in, he’d tossed aside all pomp, lifting up his “Please Feed This Man” t-shirt so someone in the front row could suck his nipple.

He was in and out of clothes.  After getting down to red undershorts, he pulled on some pink sweatpants and a baby blue T, wrapped himself in a (faux, I’ll assume) fur cape, sleeved his arms with rainbow-striped legwarmers, and piled on headgear:  A rugby helmet sat atop a raggedy black wig and a square of aluminum foil.  Before that worked back down to nothing, again, he left the stage and returned in a Visible Man bodystocking on to which someone had magik-markered organs and such.  Scrawled on the back, “Everybody Has a Body;” across the inside of the crotch, “Less Detail – I’m Shy.”

Harrington was in and out of the crowd just as much.  I happened to be near some Vice Records schmoe when Butler accused him of reneging on a promise to go shirtless; Harrington charged on over, took the guy’s shirt off him, then tried, unsuccessfully, to wear it himself.  He left the stage for a while to bounce around the cafeteria/merch room.  He jumped in at the end to join the crowd in its encore chant... and actually led it, pulling a mic stand over, dragging it to the edge of the stage by its chord so he could beg one more song of himself.

He stuck an open water bottle in the crotch of his leotard and peed spring water onto someone’s head.

He mounted a small, round table he’d dragged in from offstage and awkwardly sang from it, Fabulous Baker Boys-style.

Stupid gut tricks:  After flexing his flag at the front of the stage, he laid down on his back and tried, unsuccessfully – for a solid half-minute – to spring to his feet.

One at a time, he took the two giant flags – American and Polish – from the sides of the stage and waved them over the audience like he was auditioning for Les Miserables.

Hedidhedidhedid.

There is no question when you’re watching Tim Harrington you are watching someone completely in and of The Moment.  That’s what live rock music should be, and Harrington is its standard-bearer.

*

He certainly takes care of his fans:  Early on, despite feeling the band had “a pretty good vibe going” – he pulled a totally wasted audience member up on stage who had asked for help.  The kid had come all the way from Norfolk, Virginia with his girlfriend on the Chinatown bus... but had missed the last one home, and had no place to stay.  “Can anyone put him up?” Harrington asked, and saw several hands.  “There.  That guy with the vest?” he said, pointing into the crowd.  “You’re staying with him tonight.  He looks trustworthy... ish.”  Norfolk then drunkenly leapt/stumbled/spilled back offstage.

*

Brooklyn Vegan was there, as was Who’s Driving the Bus?; both have pics.

*

Openers Foreign Islands play decent Go4-style post-punk.  They get a lot of mileage – and momentum – playing call-and-response between their two guitarists.  Only caught the last four songs from them, wouldn’t mind hearing more.

*

Awkward middle band Free Blood (myspace) has a song called “Quick and Painful.”  That’s a half-accurate description of their set.

Billed as a !!! side-project – that band’s percussionist/horn player John Gorman plays bass, here – they’re embarrassing and insufferable.  A three-piece, Gorman’s the only one playing an instrument; the other two, a male and female vocalist, press the playback and spend the rest of the time on stage hooting and hey-ing and mock-wooing each other.  As far as I can tell, the entire point of the enterprise is to make you appreciate just how boring a bass player’s life can be.

The female vocalist looked to be pregnant; I’m surprised the fetus didn’t self-abort just to disassociate itself from the act.

*

I’m not the biggest Arctic Monkeys fan – I bought that Mercury Lounge ticket because I liked the goofy name – but the second half of their second Saturday Night Live number won me over.

It helped that it was their best song – “A Certain Romance” – and that it contained the last of a series of ignominies.  Already the NewsChannel 4 anchors had announced them, giggling, as “The Arctic Monkey!”  And already, Don Pardo’d omitted them altogether from SNL’s opening credits.  They’d snottily sleepwalked through “I Bet You Look Good on the Dance Floor” and were doing the same to “Romance” when lead singer/guitarist Alex Turner sneered off camera at someone and said, “That man’s yawning.”

They used it as an excuse to rock the fuck out.

Then tossed their shit down and walked off stage right in front of the cameras.

If only they didn't need to find an excuse to do so.

I’m sure, like everything these days, it’ll wind up on YouTube.  And then NBC will order it off.  If they’re smart, they’ll put it up on their own site; these monkeys belong on the Internet what birthed them. [UPDATE: (via) Prefix has it.]

tags: arctic monkeys  les savy fav  free blood  tim harrington  foreign islands  saturday night live  

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