germuska@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Joe Germuska) (06/13/91)
sorry for the delays, but I'm one of the people whose system mails posts to the wrong address. Anyway, here it is: Tuesday, 4 June 1991 Lounge Ax, Chicago, IL POI DOG PONDERING w/special guests STICK PEOPLE Showtime: 10:00 SETLIST: Jam-->Living With the Dreaming Body The Me That Was Your Son I Got My Body Everybody's Tryin' Jackass Ginger * New Song * Ta Bouche est Tabou Thanksgiving Say That You'll Be the One * Lackluster, Lackluster Blood and Thunder U Li La Lu "A Song for a Broken Collarbone" The Hardest Thing Don't Make 'em Like That Anymore Postcard from a Dream--> Fruitless--> Wood Guitar--> Into the Mystic !!!!! (yep, Van Morrison) E: I Had To Tell You Christy Rag (? about the title, a Ronnie Lane song... see below) Freedom !!!!! (Yep, JIMI HENDRIX!!) Circle Around the Sun * Malford of Stick People sings backing vox on these OK, so we get to Lounge Ax around 9:40, or at least definitely before the starting time listed on the tickets... Stick People were already playing, and the place was _packed_. I saw a short Poi set here at Northwestern on Saturday with a few guest appearances by Malford and the Drummer of Stick People, and I had high hopes for them... I was a little disappointed, although the overcrowdedness and near-disaster when we got carded at the door had me pretty down... (thanks again Dave and Stacey for your golden tongues!!!) Also the pushing of people who had to go get a beer, and then _had_ to get back to the exact same spot they were was pretty annoying, but then, that's a special peeve of mine because when I get to a show, I never move away from the stage... closer, if a hole opens up in the crowd, but I never push through to get back to a spot... [off pedestal] sorry about that, anyway, they had a few nice songs with a good funk to 'em, they covered "Driven to Tears" nicely... Bruce Hughes, Poi's bassist, came out and sang backing on the last song, which sounded kinda like a cover, but I didn't recognize it... Anyway, so round about 11:05, Poi takes the stage. I'd figured they'd open with Living with the Dreaming Body, 'cuz I think Frank really enjoys playing with the tin whistle solo that starts it off, dragging it out and tweaking it while the audience is getting more and more excited... but they were doing a kind of grungy jam which suggested a few of their noisier songs (a la Wood Guitar and Fruitless)... anyway, the jam resolved itself into the beginnings of Dreaming and we were cookin'! Nice rendition flowing smoothly into a few verses of "Brown Eyed Girl" by Van Morrison... the band didn't really change the song, Frank just sang the lyrics. They followed this up with a hot "Me that was Your Son", a song that never struck me until I saw them perform it live last fall, but now it's one of my favorites... So far so good, but the same set as at NU on Saturday... the parallels continued as they brought out "I Got My Body", from the forthcoming album (just finished last week, due out August 20). This one is _great_. Has a strong reggae feel to it, typical awesome Frank lyrics -- "What good are all those things, if you ain't got your soul?" Nice little dueling guitar solos with Ted Cho and Adam Sultan, although they could open it up a _little_ [it seemed like they dueled a little longer at Northwestern, but I may misremember] After this one, frank picked up his acoustic again, and here we have the Poi.Parable... They played Everybody's Tryin', nice tender rendition, and this dickhead pushes through me and Dave with his beer, trying to get back to his place... Dave and I made our rude countershoves and comments at about the same time, and then the cool thing... at about exactly the same time, independently, we realized what song they were playing. "I know you're bitter, but why? / don't you know that two wrongs don't make a right? / It's not that simple / It's not that simple / Everybody's trying to figure it out..." and we relaxed and fell straight back into the groove! It was great... they followed this up with Three new songs, Jackass Ginger was quite a rocker (Jackass Ginger is "the mudsliding place" in Oahu where frank used to play when he was little!) ["come to me, come to me, set me free set me free... Jackass Ginger, Jackass Ginger"] The next one didn't have anything that suggested itself as a title, and they didn't announce it, so I'll have to wait for the album to find out which it was. The next one was written by a early Poi member, a frenchman... they translated the lyrics but left the chorus in french... a very nice song. Thanksgiving took us back to some familiar territory, I'd like to see Adam sing more songs, not for less Frank, but just because this one is so great! They followed this up with a _great_ new song, reminiscent of Motown stuff, "Say that You'll Be the One". Lackluster and Blood and Thunder both have more of a rock edge than most earlier Poi... They played U Li La Lu after Dave Max Crawford corrected someone in the crowd who was yelling something similar. They said it was the first time they'd played it on the tour. It was great, especially for the opportunity to change the lyric to "If I should die in a car wreck, may I have POI DOG on my tape deck!" (they sing Van Morrison). The next two new ones were great also, but hard to describe until further listenings... "They Don't Make 'em Like That Anymore" is perfect Frank sentiment, singing about old buildings with intricate details that take time and care to build, compared to new buildings that are thrown together... it opens with "Hey Frankie..." "What?" "Sing us a song" talk kinda like in the talking in Ancient Egyptians. It's only about 2 minutes long! From there, it was perfect... Postcard was beautiful, I would have liked to hear it go into Toast and Jelly, like on the Album, but Fruitless rocks so much that it was a worthwhile tradeoff (and I half-expected it, since they played it that way on Saturday) but the cool thing was that they pulled out Wood Guitar, which I missed on Saturday (although they medleyed fruitless and wood guitar in the fall so it wasn't a huge surprise) but the AMAZING THING was, instead of taking wood guitar into falling like on the EP and when I saw 'em in the fall, they played Van Morrison's INTO THE MYSTIC!!!!! It was fantastic, although less than half the crowd seemed to be as excited as I was... maybe they were all worn out, maybe they didn't know the song. It was a little more upbeat rendering than Van's, but it was excellent. Perfect way to end a set. So they come back out, since the crowd was absolutely roaring for more, and Bruce and Susan do a beautiful "I Had To Tell You" (the Roky Erickson song that they covered for a tribute album and put on the EP). Bruce got kind of emotional in the last verse, the "If you fear I'll lose my spirit, like some drunkard's wastin' wine..." part. It was very effective. Frank was playing congas on this one, moved over to the kit as drummer Darren Hess came up to sing a Ronnie Lane song, the title of which eluded me _again_... it sounded like "Christy Rag", but then, after the show, Darren told me it was something else, something _sanskrit_, and he claimed it meant "perfect gentleman"... I'm fairly sure he was fucking with me :-) After that one, which I thought was kind of uninspired, and even a little boring, John Nelson, the percussionist came up and the band BLAZED through Jimi Hendrix's "Freedom". None of their music is remotely similar to Jimi, yet they took it and completely rocked on it... amazing! They followed this with a big crowd-pleaser, "Circle Round the Sun", kind of a nice mellow down, but still up enough to dance to it. And as the song was winding down, Frank falls into the crowd and we passed him, superman style, to the back of the Lounge Ax. Although I didn't clock it, the show had to be over two hours long, and completely and utterly satisfying. The whole band has so much energy, and is so obviously happy to be playing (except maybe Ted Cho who doesn't smile much! but he jams, so... :-) The new songs are uniformly exciting, and I can't WAIT for the album, which Darren told us after the show would be out in August. We caught Frank outside the front door, he gave Dave a big hug! [dave's pretty recognizable, and he's seen Poi four times, and he always gets Frank's attention] we talked with him a little, he told us that they were just touring the middle of the US on this leg, down to Columbus after Chicago, then continuing southward; the only other city he confirmed was New Orleans, but if you live anywhere between here and NO, look for shows and catch this band!!! He also told us that after a short break, they'd head out to Europe for the summer, and after the album was released, they'd be doing a mega-tour of the US, playing _everywhere_. He also said that he was disappointed that "Circle Around the Sun" ended when he was still about 10 feet from the back of the club!! He wanted to make it all the way :-) so the summary of this review is that if you haven't heard Poi Dog yet, go out and buy an album, either album, they're both great, or you could go discount and buy the seven-song EP for Fruitless, with live stuff and covers of Roky Erickson, New Order and Canned Heat!!! And go see them when you can, they have so much energy, excitement and talent that I have a seriously hard time imagining someone not enjoying a show! "The only way to say it is the eloquence of passing time, the spoken word is a jacket too tight." -- from the "collarbone" song |----Joe Germuska | germuska@casbah.acns.nwu.edu | ---- (708) 864-5939 ---| |-Join the Peter Gabriel Mailing List:gabriel-request@casbah.acns.nwu.edu-| |"I could walk away, I could let this fly, go back home and start again.."| |"Would our paths cross if every great loss had turned out our gain? -PDP^|