Handsome Boy Modeling School
Handsome Boy Modeling School has a pair of guest-heavy albums based on an episode of the wisenheimer '90s sitcom "Get a Life." The goofy concept from producer- whizzes "Prince" Paul Huston and Dan "The Automator" Nakamura shines on their hip-hop-flavored records, but their Sunday gig at the 9:30 club was like a "Mad TV" skit gone horribly wrong and excruciatingly long.
Paul (known this time around as Chest Rockwell) and Nakamura (Nathaniel Merriweather) sauntered out with faux mustaches. Soon after, Nakamura declared, "It's time to shave," and both men pulled off the artificial hair to scattered chuckles.
Things didn't get better, as the duo tried their darndest to illicit laughs using the Handsome Boy theme: For a $60 fee, one can become attractive through their course. It's all a joke, of course, but regrettably for Paul and Nakamura, the sophomoric gags fell flat. Talking often eclipsed the tunes, as audience members were plucked out to be made better looking or catwalk-ready in overdrawn segments.
Unfortunately for fans of their discs, most songs featured simplistic computer animations of singers or rappers projected onto a screen, including Jack Johnson on "Breakdown" and De La Soul on "If It Wasn't for You." When "A Day in the Life" played, the same computer-drawn character lazily portrayed different people -- rhymers AG and RZA. A few real-life performers showed, including rhymer Casual and crooner-bassist Josh Hayden.
A three-piece band rocked over the mostly recorded fare, as Paul and Nakamura scratched records or tossed out oodles of horrendously cheesy jokes. Their albums may be rife with eclectic and intriguing jams, but in concert Handsome Boy Modeling School gets a failing grade.
-- Craig Smith
Wolfram Koessel and Benjamin Hochman
Cellist Wolfram Koessel possesses a heart that beats in tune with romantic music and a nose for underplayed repertoire, both of which served him well in his concert with pianist Benjamin Hochman at the Phillips Collection on Sunday afternoon.
Beethoven's Fourth Cello Sonata received the only sub-par reading of the concert, as Koessel and Hochman played up its dramatic shifts and emphatic melodies to such an extent that the genial moments of the work didn't register. Yet the duo showed they could tone it down in the evocative pastoral opening of Leos Janacek's "Pohadka (A Tale)," which in their hands had a fair amount of Czech lyrical ardor and an involving narrative arc over its three episode-filled movements.
Koessel really shone, with a bigger, richer tone and more poised phrasing, in two lesser-known works by big-name composers: Schumann's "Five Pieces in the Popular Style" and Richard Strauss's Cello Sonata. He had the full measure of Schumann's mercurial musical temperament, lolling around in the hiccupping rhythm of the piece marked "Mit Humor," unspooling the melodic thread gracefully in the "Langsam," and boldly articulating the fanfares of the "Nicht zu rasch."
An early work, Strauss's cello sonata represents the composer in full romantic hero mode, and Koessel played brilliantly in the dashing, expansive outer movements while bringing true nobility to the lament and consolation of the central chorale. Hochman provided sensitive support throughout. It was good to hear both of these works, and even better to hear Koessel and Hochman make such a strong case for them.
-- Andrew Lindemann Malone
Eddie Money
At the State Theatre on Friday, it was easy to see why Eddie Money was Joe Dirt's rock idol.
"I just got my license back!" Money told the rowdy crowd, after a slew of drinking-problem references. He boasted that this night was special because "I washed my hair!" He asked folks to buy his latest CD, but said the disc got its most favorable reviews "at Betty Ford!" Money turned his band over to his teenage daughter, Jessica, so she could cover Gregg Allman's "Midnight Rider," then introduced her as "Little Jessi Rehab!"
Yet for all his foibles, Money remains lovable. His dance moves, though as stiff as Boris Karloff's Mummy, are always on the beat. He thanked fans for standing by "the Money man," as he calls himself, despite the lengthy commercial blackout, and seemed perfectly content with his professional lot. With his mainly retrospective set, Money, who was marketed as a former New York cop when he broke onto the scene, reminded fans of that time when he actually split the difference between urbane, radio-unfriendly artists such as '70s Bruce Springsteen and Southside Johnny, and low-cred, all-hits acts such as REO Speedwagon and Journey that produced rock just for rock's sake. His best vintage tunes -- "Two Tickets to Paradise," "Think I'm in Love," "Give Me Some Water," "Shakin' " -- were at least as catchy as they were mindless.
Money embraced his oldies-act reality at every turn. Introducing his first hit single, he bellowed: "Hey, 1978! John Belushi! Gilda Radner! Eddie Money! 'Saturday Night Live!' 'Baby Hold On!' " The show also made it clear that, even when he was viable, Money was looking back: 1986's "Take Me Home Tonight" was carried by the vintage hook from Ronnie Spector's "Be My Baby"; and 1988's "I Wanna Go Back" found him both blowing a saxophone and leading the house in a chant of the chorus: "I wanna go back, and do it all over!" He wasn't alone.
-- Dave McKenna
Edie Sedgwick
Let's see, how to explain Edie Sedgwick? No, not the troubled 15-minutes-of-famer who planted herself in Andy Warhol's Factory and died, at age 28, of a drug overdose. The Edie Sedgwick in question here is a band. Or more precisely a one-woman show. Make that a one-man-in-bad-drag show.
At the Black Cat's small back stage Sunday night, Edie Sedgwick, the alter ego of local rocker Justin Moyer, delivered an hour-long set that careened between electro-clash concert and a piece of performance art. Though garbed in a silvery mini-dress, black tights and a short blond wig, the chain-smoking Moyer is about as womanly as Charlton Heston. That's part of the gag, no doubt. The better part is the songs themselves, two- and three-minute spasmodic gems, filled with bleats and blurts and buzzes, each one named for a different celebrity and all accompanied by video on a giant screen.
"Here's a song about the president," Moyer said, "a man I like to call Martin Sheen." The song called, naturally, "Martin Sheen" includes such lines as "I love living in the USA when Martin Sheen is president!" On the screen, Sheen was shown in his role as Capt. Benjamin Willard in 1979's "Apocalypse Now," wearing just underwear. Through the magic of video editing, he looked to be doing a herky-jerky dance to the thrashing beat. On another song, "Robert Downey Jr.," the only decipherable lyrics were the shouted two-word chorus: "Relapse! Recovery!" That's not a bad summation of the troubled actor's career. Other highlights included "Lucy Liu" and "Arnold Schwarzenegger."
The show wasn't just songs named after actors. There was also poetry named after cities (thankfully, they were all haikus, so this didn't last long). When the performance finally ended, the audience of a few dozen seemed both amused and perplexed, not sure what to make of any of it, but pleased nonetheless.
-- Joe Heim
