Fiddle Me This!

Chopsticken - Barrage (mp3)

Life ain’t nothin’ but a funny funny riddle.

This week, my fine wife and I took our children to a special performance at another private school in town. The school played host to the musical “fiddle-fest” known as Barrage.

You take some Stomp!, you add a little Riverdance, and you center it around some kick-ass violin-playing, preferably by disarmingly charming young adults who can sway some mean hips, and you’ve got a totally entertaining spectacle that dares to suggest that fiddle-playing is neither stiff nor nerdy.

Granted, what cannot be removed from any musical spectacle where the description includes “Riverdance” is what we like to call Velveeta, as in highly-processed cheese product. The cheese factor with Barrage is high, and if you don’t like cheese on your musical burger, then you were bound to be a little put off by their schtick.

But children love cheese. Teenagers, in the right setting and mood, love cheese. And adults who don’t cotton to Beethoven or Puccini can handle a little cheese if it lets them enjoy some fiddlin’.

Barrage was born in 1995 and has gone through several member changes, much like Menudo or other groups where the performance is more central than the performers. (I just like writing the word “Menudo.”) Without doubt, energy, sensuality, and flair are all essential concepts to their performance.

The act centered around four hip and happenin’ violinists, two of each gender, all of them phenomenally talented at pickin’ the fiddle and playin’ it hot. The two guys were each charming in their own ways. Justin from Arizona had this kind of Justin Timberlakey feel to him, curly hair and big smiles and imminently comfortable with himself on stage. Mark was the bigger and slightly clunkier stage presence (probably because he was the newest member of the troupe) who could play bagpipe! Both seemed very comfortable connecting to the audience, although Mark’s approach felt like the guy you’d rather have a beer with. You grab a beer with Justin, and he’s too busy scamming on the girls or the guys (whichever way he leans) to pay you much attention.

The girls were a mixed bag. Annette was from Germany and lacked a bit of stage polish. Her biggest handicap, however, was having to perform anywhere near the presence of Christine.

Christine is the kind of presence around which you build an entire show.

Alec Baldwin, in Glengarry Glen Ross, says ABC means Always Be Closing. If real estate is about closing a deal, then stage performance is about opening. Create desire, or create connection. Put yourself out there in some way that makes as many viewers as possible connect you to something they need or want. Seem accessible.

The best stage presences open themselves to the audience and force the audience to take account of them. Wish you were me, or wish you were with me, or believe I’m that friend you never had.

Christine is a highly trained dancer with a focused background in ballet, according to their web site. Her body was its own instrument, and she wielded it with incredible skill. Every movement had purpose, and every position had reason. Everyone else moved a little stiffly. And why shouldn't they? They’re violinists, not trained dancers. That they were pretty damn good at all was pretty damn impressive. The others moved from Point A to Point B; Christine flowed.

She made eye contact with dozens of audience members, as if she was trying to communicate telepathically with us. She didn’t look as often at the guys, probably because they were all drooling, which probably gets annoying after a few hundred times.

But when she did deign to look at the men, her eyes said, “Jenkies, I know you’re drooling, and gosh I’m awful sorry I’m doing this to you, but gee willikers you have no idea the kind of damage I could do to you in 20 minutes.”

My daughters were also awestruck and waited in line for autographs mostly because they wanted Christine’s. On the way home they said more than once, “She looked at us!” If you can make the moms think you’re inviting them for coffee, the dads convinced you’re making goo-goo eyes, and the daughters think you’re the coolest aunt they never had, all done merely with the use of your eyes while you’re shaking your hips and playing some seriously nasty violin chords, then you are an exquisite stage performer.

Bigger than any performer, however, was the joy of watching almost 100 students from grades 6-12 on stage, performing to a captive audience, having enjoyed a lengthy afternoon workshop with some really cool and talented guys and gals. The look on those faces as they walked back off the stage, having participated significantly in the show’s second act, was... well, a barrage of glee. The song "Chopsticken," composed by one of the group's founders, is what they all played together.

The Greatest Performance of the Greatest Rock Song Of All Time

Lou Reed--"Sweet Jane (live)" (mp3)

Imagine it’s 1974. I know you probably can’t, but try. You are a junior in high school, spread out on a loveseat in your basement, your dark, cool basement. It is your abode­--pool table, refrigerator, minimal furniture, except that loveseat, where you do your homework.

Oh, yeah, and the stereo is down there. It’s where you listen to music. Back then, of course, the bigger the better, so you have a stack of stereo components and four speakers and quadraphonic sound, supposedly, though it’s never really worked, though, still, it’s four speakers and you get a lot of sound anyway.

You’re listening to the radio, probably WDVE in Pittsburgh. FM back then, at least the rock stations, is full of impossibly deep-voiced men (and women) who, in the FM sensibility of the day, say less, rather than more, and string together long sets of music with few commercial interruptions. The commercials are all about "head shops" and a place called Heads Together Underground Mall in Squirrel Hill that has midnight sales where you can get three albums for $9.99, by far the best deal in the city.

And then the DJ says in his understated, laconic way, “Here’s a little Lou Reed.” You know Lou Reed as the “Take A Walk On The Wild Side” guy, a song you kind of like, but you don't really get it. You are definitely not cool enough to know anything about the Velvet Underground. No one is. Rather than being a band with amazing cult status, they are simply a band that no one listened to or heard of. One of your friends stole their “Live at Max’s Kansas City” album, but for naught, since no one ever took it out of the wrapping.

And then the guitars kick in, two of them, playing different, but perfectly-complementary parts­high, soaring, and melodic­an extended interplay that is in no way a duel. Instead, it’s like encountering two gods instead of one. The bass playing is just as good. It keeps going on and on, and you stare at the green lights of your amplifier, all that you can see in the darkness, wondering what this is and where it is coming from. Then the guitars make the transition from soloing to chording and you recognize the chord progression. Wait, isn’t that “Sweet Jane?” Didn’t Mott The Hoople do that? The crowd starts to cheer, and almost as an afterthought to the greatest song introduction you’ve ever heard in your life, Lou Reed steps up to the mike and sings, “Standin’ on a corner/ Suitcase in my hand…..”

It’s a good thing that all of Lou’s live album, Rock and Roll Animal, rocks so hard, because otherwise you never would have figured out that whole androgynous rock thing. Your brother had a bunch of Bowie, and you arrived at that slowly, maybe a little too late, because Lou had actually played Pittsburgh on the tour that produced Rock and Roll Animal, but he played at an ice rink on the far side of town with little promotion. Ironically, 4 years later, your parents would own that ice rink, now reconfigured as tennis courts, as part of a racquet club they opened, and one night late, after everyone was gone, you and your friend Scott would take your guitars and amps out to the center of those courts and jam as loud and as well as you could, trying to awaken the ghosts of Lou Reed and company, who had once played there.