Author: Andrew Earles

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Music Music Features

Flashback

As post-punk mainstay turned psychedelic music maven Julian Cope has been quoted, “In 1968, nothing but nothing in America and Britain sounded as brutal as Blue Cheer, except for the Velvet Underground.”

Though this is a case of apples and oranges, in terms of breaking sonic ground, Cope is right. Blue Cheer was a proverbial kick in the pants to the late-’60s San Francisco scene. The band might have been named after a strain of LSD, but Blue Cheer most likely fouled more than a few trips predating the harsh darkness that hippiedom would nurture at the end of the decade (Altamont, Manson, etc). With the band’s 1968 debut, Vincebus Eruptum, Blue Cheer predated all of the now more-famous bands (Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, MC5, Stooges) credited with forming the blueprint for heavy metal, proto-punk, or (very) hard rock. The hyper-distorted album contained the band’s only hit, a needle-in-the-red version of Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues.”

Purchasers of the 45 version of that single were greeted with quite the head-scratching moment when the single was flipped over to unleash the B-side “Out of Focus” (also on Vincebus), a no-fidelity sucker punch of loose and loud fuzz of a kind that wouldn’t resurface until the early days of Seattle’s pre-Nirvana Mudhoney. Vincebus Eruptum also boasted what some listeners of the day possibly saw as a bastardization of Mose Allison’s “Parchman Farm,” flipping the over-covered number inside out with disjointed grooves and low-end rumble.

Blue Cheer’s original lineup of Dickie Peterson (bass and lead vocals), Leigh Stephens (guitar), and Paul Whaley (drums) would only last for one other LP (Outsideinside, released the same year as Vincebus), and these guys were far more adept at pushing the limits of blues rock than they were at competing with the virtuosity peddled by Jeff Beck or Jimi Hendrix or the production values of any contemporary. Due to constant lineup changes and, perhaps, the understandable desire to veer from the velocity and volume of their early sound, Blue Cheer would carry their particular proto-metal power-trio torch for about two and a half albums before smoothing things out with more accessible white boogie and rootsy pop until a breakup in 1971.

But, despite the constant lineup changes, the band still managed to release an astonishing six albums in less than four years. After dialing down the distortion a tad for Outsideinside, Blue Cheer would undergo a notable change with 1969’s New! Improved! Blue Cheer. Each side of the album features a different guitarist — side one with Bruce Stephens and side two with Randy Holden. Side one also negates the trio approach with piano player Burns Kellogg, and the band’s expected sound is thrown further off course with some misguided country rock. Side two, written entirely by Holden, is 14 minutes of an altogether different Blue Cheer. A largely unsung guitar god, Holden was a West Coast surf and garage veteran, and his three tracks on New! Improved! stand as some of Blue Cheer’s strongest material, especially the mournful and minimal yet suitably heavy “Piece of Mind.”

The last three albums in Blue Cheer’s initial run, Blue Cheer (1969), The Original Human Being (1970), and Oh! Pleasant Hope (1971), found the band attempting several styles of the era that are anything but heavy, notably treading a more musically accomplished ground shared by the Band and late-period Byrds, with touches of rhythmic prog rock. When the band got loud on these albums, the attempts were easily lost in a hard boogie world that was now saturated by higher profile acts such as Mountain, Humble Pie, and Grand Funk Railroad.

After a hiatus that lasted most of the decade, Peterson and Whaley re-formed Blue Cheer in 1979, eventually releasing a 1984 comeback album, The Beast Is Back, on metal safe house Megaforce. The band stayed fairly active (sometimes with Peterson as the only original member) through the ’80s and ’90s, releasing live and studio recordings. It was during this period that the band had a knack for attracting rather odd touring bedfellows. Danzig, Biohazard, and ’80s goofball skate-punk footnote Mucky Pup all toured with Blue Cheer, making for, if nothing else, surreal live bills. Since 1990, Blue Cheer’s lineup has been mostly static: Peterson, Whaley, and Duck MacDonald on guitar.

It’s been a busy two years leading up to Blue Cheer’s current fall tour. Last year, the band entered the studio with members of heavy-metal stalwarts Raven and Pentagram (release pending). Performing as part of this year’s Vice magazine Intonation Music Festival, Blue Cheer was placed alongside radical rappers Dead Prez, Japanese noise band the Boredoms, and trendy Brit-rock band Bloc Party. Once again, one can only imagine it a surreal day of music. Saturday’s show at the Hi-Tone makes a little more sense; if there were two local bands that have lovingly updated the metalized hard rock that Blue Cheer, well, invented, the Joint Chiefs and the Sonsabitches make the cut.

Blue Cheer, with the Joint Chiefs and Sonsabitches

The Hi-Tone Café

Saturday, November 18th

Door opens at 9 p.m.; admission is $12

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Music Record Reviews

A made-in-Memphis indie-rock touchstone gets a lavish re-issue.

To date myself, I remember the release of every Pavement album (barring the first singles and the Perfect Sound Forever EP). I remember the youthful enthusiasm as my not yet jaded ears were blown away by Slanted and Enchanted in 1992 and my indifference to 1994’s Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (which was corrected by its 2004 reissue). And I remember absolutely loving 1995’s Wowee Zowee.

Now Wowee Zowee gets the same lavish treatment those earlier records have received, an extras-packed double-disc reissue with a massive liner-notes booklet. As what was probably the last great Pavement record — a nice snapshot of a heady time for indie rock and the beginning of the end for this band — it earns the royal treatment.

Recorded in Memphis at Easley-McCain Studios, Wowee Zowee replaced Crooked Rain‘s country-musings and worship of Mark E. Smith and the Fall with disjointed pop, great pop, ’70s white avant blues, and blips of punk aggression. It’s almost as if the band knew that the world might get sick of them — that there was nothing to be done about that possible inevitability — and just threw everything on the table. Wowee Zowee is still a stronger album than its predecessor, though that assessment was quieted slightly when it was revealed that some of Wowee‘s strongest tracks (“Grounded,” “Flux = Rad”) started life as prospects for Crooked Rain. “Grounded,” along with “Kennel District,” are the distinct pop that Pavement did best, a style almost avoided entirely on Crooked Rain.

Though the curious, the fans, and curious fans should give Wowee Zowee the first or second chance it deserves, it’s the bonus material that will be a deciding factor. Naturally, all of the seven-inch B-sides are here, including “Mussle Rock” (B side to “Father to a Sister of Thought”), a song so Pavement-perfect it boggles the mind as to why it failed to make the album proper. Elsewhere, “Sensitive Euro Man,” a couple of outtakes, and Pavement’s contribution to a Descendents tribute album lead up to some BBC sessions and energetic cuts from a show in Australia.

Wowee Zowee closed a trilogy of Pavement releases that stands on its own as an audio textbook of how indie rock was done correctly in the early-to-mid ’90s. — Andrew Earles

Grade: A

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Music Record Reviews

Indie-rock icons get epic on their best record in years.

As if its title weren’t a dead giveaway, this is not your garden-variety Yo La Tengo album. Actually, this is the Yo La Tengo album that happens once every eight or so years. In 1997, the Hoboken-based band released I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One, a career watershed and the close of a four-album run that placed the band in the upper echelon of indie rock.

I Am Not Afraid of You … sounds nothing like I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One, but both are successfully ambitious double albums that are more about the music that the band collectively loves — and loves to put the Yo La Tengo stamp on — than sounding like what the world expects them to sound like (i.e., their previous three albums).

The opening “Pass the Hatchet, I Think I’m Goodkind” gives Ira Kaplan an 11-minute reason to go bonkers on the guitar, something he is very good at but hasn’t exercised in years (at least on record). The light pop of “Black Flowers” blatantly lifts from the White Stripes’ “We’re Going To Be Friends,” and “Mr. Tough” is more than likely a product of bassist James McNew’s Prince fixation. Sure, I Am Not Afraid of You … has boring moments; it is, after all, 77 minutes long. The piano ballad “I Feel Like Going Home” leaves no positive or negative aftertaste, and the seven-plus minutes of “Daphnia” are all minimal ambience that goes nowhere. This is excusable when balanced by a track such as “The Room Got Heavy,” which sounds like nothing the band has ever attempted: a menacing tropical mood piece with more than a passing resemblance to the Brit-pop electro-funk of the late ’80s.

I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass lifts Yo La Tengo from the quagmire of existing only as a critic’s band or the favorites of NPR programmers, putting the band’s formidable chops on full display once again. — Andrew Earles

Grade: A

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Music Music Features

Just Like Old Times

By 1993, the creative arc of straight-ahead indie rock had crested and was beginning its descent against the backdrop of post-Nirvana chaos, when indie bands were getting snapped up by a major-label feeding frenzy. There was an abundance of faceless bands popping up, inspired by a Superchunk album from 1991 or the stripped-down simplicity of the riot grrrl movement. But Built To Spill blew onto the increasingly homogenous scene with a sound and vision all their own: a maximization of indie rock, a widescreen ambition that made guitar excess credible again through a frightening ability to craft solos that, for lack of a better term, sounded amazing.

The band’s 1993 debut, Ultimate Alternative Wavers, and its follow-up, 1994’s There’s Nothing Wrong With Love, are widely and justifiably regarded as classics within the genre. In the same way that Mercury Rev were piling every noise and sonic idiosyncrasy onto pop songs around this time, Built To Spill applied a similar approach to guitar rock. After a Lollapalooza appearance and the forming of the Halo Benders (primary creative force Doug Martsch’s side project with Beat Happening/K Records founder Calvin Johnson), Built To Spill signed to Warners in 1997 for the no less dense and intense Perfect From Now On. This album also marked what would be the more or less permanent Built To Spill lineup, with former Spinanes drummer Scott Plouf on drums and Brett Nelson for other duties, including bass.

In an age of far less Internet usage, and obviously before MySpace added an unprecedented variable to artistic promotion and exposure, Built To Spill had amassed a respectable fanbase, even if their major-label debut lacked a song under five minutes long or without multiple layers and change-ups. After the much poppier, succinct Keep It Like a Secret was released in 1999, the band found itself at what was probably the height of its popularity. The band released a live album in 2000, featuring the concert-staple rendition of Neil Young’s “Cortez the Killer,” and if there was ever a band qualified to cover that one, it’s Built To Spill. Another studio album followed in 2001 (Ancient Melodies of the Future), though the band seemed to have established a finite yet respectably sized fanbase by this point.

Doug Martsch’s seemingly innate expertise with the pop hook, and his ability to apply this to his instrument in a macro sense, didn’t just come out of the woodwork. Martsch was a founding member of the sadly overlooked Treepeople, a furious Boise-by-way-of-Seattle post-hardcore band that was great in a confusing, doesn’t-really-fit-into-any-genre way (and they covered the Smiths at least 10 years before that was de rigueur). Due to creative differences, Martsch claimed early musical retirement (only lasting several months) and moved back to Boise in 1993 (Treepeople would release a final and avoidable album without Martsch in 1994), but before exiting the band, the guitar interplay and songwriting that would trademark his reemergence as Built To Spill had become apparent on the Treepeople’s Just Kidding, the erratic but enjoyable release from the same year.

Jump to early 2006. Mike Scheer’s artwork for the latest Built To Spill album, You in Reverse, is a subtle but telling indicator as to what Martsch had in store for fans awaiting the band’s first release in five years. Scheer created the covers for all of the Treepeople albums, and if you smell “return to form” about to pop up in the next few sentences, well, you’d be half-correct. The album opener “Goin’ Against Your Mind” has the immediacy of a Treepeople song stretched into an uptempo nine minutes that never lets up. “Mess With Time” is coarse psychedelic pop, heavy enough to suggest the influence of Comets on Fire. “Wherever You Go” is the last word in contemporary Neil Young & Crazy Horse tributes, with Martsch’s sugary vocals set against guitars that sound like screaming seagulls. Then there’s “The Wait,” a song that skews the feel of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here into indie-rock balladry.

For a band that strongly informed the pop sensibility of younger bands like the exponentially more popular Death Cab For Cutie and Modest Mouse, Built To Spill returned to the fold with a very strong album, very strong within the context of their already formidable discography. Along with Yo La Tengo’s aptly titled and amazing I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass, Built To Spill’s You in Reverse proves that you can be around for forever and a day, influence a lot of bands that would become a lot more famous than you ever will, and still deliver a vital masterpiece. If an album is going to take five years to create, at least You in Reverse sounds as if every minute of those five years was used productively, and anyone who’s experienced Built To Spill live knows that once the band walks on stage, they’re in it for the long haul.

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We Recommend We Recommend

What Now?

When the Flyer last checked in with Tom Foster roughly one year ago, the underground artist had just released Midtown Sketchbook, and his artwork was soon to be featured on the album cover of the North Mississippi Allstars’ Electric Blue Watermelon, in a documentary about Cowboy Jack Clement, and in the feature film Forty Shades of Blue.

So what’s Foster up to these days? Earlier this summer, Then and Again on South Main hosted a show of Foster’s nude sketches from his ’79-’81 art-student days, and this Friday,

August 25th, it will hold an opening reception for “Barbarian Records Survivors Presents: Moon Lake ‘N’ More,” which features work by Foster and his old artists-in-arms Jim Blake and Jim Dickinson. On display will be the “Moon Lake” series of photos, which kept the now-AWOL Blake from failing out of Baylor in the late ’60s, Dickinson’s atmospheric photos of rural, pre-casino Mississippi, and Foster’s own decades-long selection of watercolor portraits of Dickinson.

The opening is also meant as a precursor to future projects. “I’ve finished a comic book that illustrates the lyrics to the Allstar’s Electric Blue Watermelon. It’s part of a collaboration with Luther Dickinson that will also feature his art from his days as a student of mine,” he says. Another project in the works is a documentary on Barbarian Records, working title: Robert E. Howard Meets Memphis Music: The Barbarian Records Story. The much-whispered and tossed-about project fell to Foster when he realized how much material he had about the infamous label.

“I’ve got so much interview footage, I’m sitting on so much, I can call it The Art Director’s Cut,” says Foster.

Opening Reception for “Barbarian Records Survivors Present:

Moon Lake ‘N’ More” at Then and Again, 506 S. Main, 6-9 p.m. Friday, August 25th

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Music Record Reviews

Listening Log

Originally synonymous with a very particular branch of alt-country, Richard Buckner’s singer-songwriter model has since morphed into rustic pop-rock leaning more toward the adult-contemporary end of indie rock. Meadow is a pleasantly unobtrusive collection of personal, palatable Americana that sounds something like a hypothetical lost (i.e., shelved by a major label) “weird” Tom Petty album. In the end, it beats listening to the criminally overrated Steve Earle. Appropriate for house dusting on a Sunday morning, its lack of memorable songs won’t have you interrupting work to hit replay, and it’ll be over before you realize an entire album just played through. (“Town,” “Numbered,” “Spell”) — Andrew Earles

Grade: C+

Richard Buckner plays Proud Larry’s in Oxford Wednesday, August 30th. Showtime is 8 p.m.

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Music Record Reviews

The Obliterati by Mission of Burma

Though they did technically reunite, the term “reunion” should no longer be applicable to Mission of Burma. The Boston band should be viewed as having a Phase 1 and a Phase 2. Earlier in the decade, the arresting force of Mission of Burma’s shows put every original-wave punk-rock or post-punk reunion attempt to utter shame — it was as if you were seeing and hearing a brand-new band that just happened to be heavily influenced by Mission of Burma’s first, 1979-1983 run.

Then came the album of (almost) new material — the step that history has dictated as dependably pathetic in these scenarios. Surprise! It was great. Now for the ultimate coup: This one is better.

The Obliterati never lets up. It’s inventive in almost every way allowed within the constraints of guitar-bass-drums post-punk rock. In that sense, it’s the record that Sonic Youth have been trying to make for at least 15 years. The first three tracks, “2wice,” “Spider’s Web,” and “Donna Sumeria,” make for a triumvirate of signature Mission of Burma power that trumps anything from the old days. The entire album is aggressive, with no stretches of the pensive dirges or balladry that the band has been known for, and manages this without a hint of force or contrived anger. It is not an “angry” album, just a very loud, mid-to-fast-tempo album.

The Obliterati is a rock-and-roll success story: original lineup of men in their 50s blowing away bands half their age that they influenced. — Andrew Earles

Grade: A

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Music Record Reviews

“Happy New Year” by Oneida

Happy New Year

Oneida

(Jagjaguwar)

Though it’s the band’s eighth album, Happy New Year doesn’t sound like Oneida until track three. The first track, “Distress,” is equally OMD and Simon & Garfunkel. Oneida are one of the only active bands that could make something like that work. Track two, the title track, well, I’m not really sure what it sounds like, but it’s got a lot of keys and a great hook. It sets the mood for what is an overall sunnier outing for this wildly prolific Brooklyn band.

Yes, there are the driving, minimal songs that have become the band’s trademark, with their three to four notes, airtight drumming, and repeated lyrical phrases. Two of the best are track three, “The Adversary,” and the lengthy, pumping “Up With People.” Then the guys fool around with pretty, lilting pop songs before the affair concludes. There are surprises, and then there’s the sonic commonality that makes Oneida a candidate to one day be labeled “seminal” and be lavished with a reissue campaign.

Oneida releases albums on a pretty-much yearly schedule, and this follow-up to 2005’s The Wedding was originally planned as a triple-disc monster. But the band lost their longtime studio to condo development. (In Brooklyn? Nooo!) Perhaps the setback resulted in this introspective yet undeniably more uplifting disc, though that’s mere guesswork. Regardless, Happy New Year should hold everyone over until 2007’s eight-album box set of new material — or maybe I’m just trying to start a rumor. — Andrew Earles

Grade: A-

Oneida plays the Hi-Tone Café Friday, July 28th, with Birds of Avalon and Black Taj. Doors open at 9 p.m., admission is $8.

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News News Feature

On the Fly

Fly fishing remains an underdog in the South. We favor skill-negating gadgetry, obscenely powerful boats with ridiculous metal-flake paint jobs and names like (I’m guessing) The Bassassinator, and flashy tournaments that are essentially NASCAR for the angler world. But this could quietly change with the efforts of Mid-South Fly Fishers, a Memphis-based organization of 700 members (incorporated in 1977) that holds a little-known distinction: It is the largest fly-fishing club in America.

Numbered are the days of the sport as a long-reputed insular society of obsessives turning down their noses at any other form of fishing. With the hosting of the Home Waters Expo (along with Germantown Parks and Recreation) at the Germantown Performing Arts Centre this weekend, MSFF hopes to broaden awareness of fly fishing as an increasingly accessible sport, open to those of all incomes. “People have often thought of fly fishing as a gentleman’s sport that required a lot of money,” says Mike Isom, vice president of MSFF. “Now you can get into fly fishing for around $200. Ten years ago, it would have been $1,000.”

Casual observers almost always associate fly fishing with cold, moving water and target fish being trout or salmon. Actually, you can fly fish for just about anything. “A five pound bass on a fly is just as exciting as a five pound trout. With sinking lines and other advances, we can fish the bottom just like everyone else,” Isom explains.

“You could take a full month and still not fish all of the ponds, lakes, and watersheds in the Memphis area,” Isom says. “Shelby Farms in particular is a great place to fish.” In fact, MSFF is “sponsoring” Beaver Lake, one of the park’s larger ponds, by clearing out the brush that runs along the eastern shore.

The Home Waters Expo ’06 has dual focuses: introducing fly fishing to newcomers and promoting fishing in the warm waters of Arkansas, Tennessee, Louisiana, Missouri, North Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, and the Gulf Coast. Rod and reel manufacturers, fly-tying experts, casting experts, fishing guides, regional and national vendors, additional conservation organizations such as the Wolf River Conservancy, regional fly shops, and fishing lodges will be among the attractions. Highlighting all of this will be the appearance of two legends within the world of fly fishing: Lefty Kreh and Cindy Garrison.

It’s possible that every outdoor magazine in existence has at some point carried Kreh’s byline during his 45 years of writing. He was the outdoor editor of The Baltimore Sun, has penned several books, and is an accomplished nature photographer. With a place in the Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame and with several prestigious awards under his belt (Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Sportfishing Association, to name one), Kreh has fished wherever there are fish.

Garrison belies her age (34) with an outdoor resume that seems the stuff of grizzled elders. After a stint of ski instructing and guiding fly-fishing trips in Alaska in her early 20s, Garrison settled in Africa for several years where she founded Safari Anglers, a guide company for anglers seeking one of fly fishing’s holy grails, the African Tiger Fish. When ESPN2 was looking for new locations for its series In Search of Fly Water in 2002, Garrison was hired as a guide when the show filmed in Botswana. She was subsequently asked to host the renewed 2004-2005 season of the show and, beginning this month, will be hosting her own outdoor adventure program, Get Wild With Cindy Garrison!.

Garrison illustrates another attraction of fly fishing that other forms of angling most certainly lack: gender balance.

“It seems that at least 50 percent of our members, and fly fishers in general, are women, and if you take any fly-fishing situation with men and women, the women will out-fish the men,” Isom says. He goes on to relate an anecdote in which a close friend is always stretching the truth with regard to the number of his catches. The wife doesn’t bother, Isom says, “and you can bet that she caught 20 more fish than her husband.”

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Music Music Features

A Real Go(o)d Time

Fourth of July, 1998. It was on this evening that I witnessed the Danielson Famile play to around five people at the now-defunct downtown venue, the Map Room. It must be said to those unaware of the collective’s affiliation that I was knocked off of my feet by what was, in their unique and isolated way, a Christian-rock band. I did not abandon my secular ways, but the band’s exuberance and lack of cynicism had a lasting impact. Every avid show-goer keeps a mental list of his or her all-time top five performances, and this one makes my list.

So that’s the name that they started out with, “Danielson Famile,” way back in 1995. The idea was that of Daniel Smith, who turned in the first proper Danielson Famile album, A Prayer For Every Hour, as his thesis when finishing up at Rutgers University. To help with the album and touring, Daniel assembled a group (the youngest was 12 at the time) from his hometown of Clarksboro, New Jersey. Acting as a sibling unit (it remains unclear who is actually blood-related), the band went on to record their second album, 1997’s Tell Another Joke at the Ol’ Choppin’ Block, with noted producer and then-head of Shimmy Disc, Kramer — a change that demonstrated the indie-level attention the band was beginning to attract.

Danielson Famile songs are short, shambling, acoustic-based, and marked by a jarring vocal approach. While the girls harmonize like a children’s choir or a very strange ’60s girl group, Smith’s lead is characterized by his clipped, infantile falsetto, sounding like the absolute highest-pitch moments of the Pixies’ Black Francis/Frank Black. Smith manages to make his unorthodox pipes endearing and incredibly catchy. Live, the band wears doctor and nurse outfits and deploys loosely choreographed dance moves. The band’s Christian element, which is more a message of “good” than one simply of “God,” is a vague, complex vision that is meant to offer a positive experience as opposed to preaching at an audience. Though they’ve done the circuit, achieving standing ovations at the Cornerstone Festival (the Christian Lollapalooza), they’re far too weird for some Christian-rock audiences, especially Christian radio.

Unsurprisingly, the band has a nonreligious underground following. There are touches of Neutral Milk Hotel, Captain Beefheart, Dr. John’s 1969 album Gris Gris, and outsider Christian artists. In 1998, Danielson released Tri-Danielson, a picture of things to come that was split into solo, “rock”-oriented songs and songs similar to previous recordings with the family. A sensible move from the Christian label Tooth and Nail to Secretly Canadian resulted in 2001’s Fetch the Compass Kids, a more straightforward album recorded by Steve Albini.

Some of the group splintered, and Smith went on as more of a solo act (often wearing a massive tree suit of his own creation), releasing Brother Is to Son in 2004 under the Br. Danielson moniker. It was at some point prior to this that Smith discovered and mentored an unknown singer-songwriter named Sufjan Stevens, who made appearances on Danielson records from the early-’00s. As an effort to bring together all previous members of the family and like-minded musicians whom Smith admires or has collaborated with, this year’s Ships is a success.

Released under the Danielson name, the album is as dense and varied as you’d expect from at least 20 guest musicians, not the least of whom is Stevens and practically every member of Deerhoof — a band that was clearly a sonic influence on Ships. The documentary Danielson: A Family Movie — four years in the making — was released earlier this year and is currently making the indie circuit.

If the live pairing of Danielson and Neil Hamburger, the self-proclaimed “worst comedian on earth,” makes little sense, at least take a look at the two things they have in common: Within their respective fields, both are anomalies, and both have released religious albums, though I’m not so sure Hamburger’s Laugh Out Lord falls into sync with any release in the Danielson discography. Hamburger, the performing alias (and character) of Gregg Turkington, has progressed from being a parody of sad-sack borscht-belt comedians into a provocateur of Andy Kaufman proportions.

Armed with a bottomless well of “What did … ” and “What do you call … ” jokes, Hamburger assaults the audience with a topical, absurdist version of the voluminous Truly Tasteless Jokes books that some of us sneaked as children. Two of my personal favorites: “Why did God create Alan Alda? So he would have a way to get Golden Globe awards into hell.” And “Why does Britney Spears sell so many millions of albums? Because the public is horny and depressed.” His multiple appearances on The Jimmy Kimmel Show make for TV viewing that surpasses the discomfort and/or hilarity of any reality show. The best are available on the addictive YouTube.com and are worth seeking out for the less-than-amused look on Yoko Ono’s face. Last year, Hamburger released Great Moments at Di Presa’s Pizza House, and the concert film, That’s Not Gold, It’s Dung, is forthcoming. Does all of this make for an interesting, bizarre evening of entertainment, the kind that comes around, at the most, once a year? I don’t know, you tell me.

Danielson and Neil Hamburger

Hi-Tone Café

Tuesday, July 11th

Doors open at 9 p.m.; admission $8