Three songs into last night's Ten Hands reunion at Club Dada, lead singer and pianist Paul Slavens (current host of 90.1 at Night on KERA-90.1 FM) launched into "East Coast Jones." How convenient. The song from 1992's Be My Guru begs for an eventual reunion, complaining about short-lived fads and shouting, "Tomorrow has the reek of yesterday." Thing is, with so many 20-somethings hopping and dancing to the funk-jazz-rock-huh of Ten Hands, you'd have no clue whether it was yesterday, tomorrow, 1991 or 2006. Where all of these young dancing women who knew every Ten Hands lyric came from, I'm not sure, but more power to 'em.
You couldn't do much better for a Sunday night club show, let alone a Sunday night club show with a long-gone band. Slavens and the rest of the final original lineup (as in, no Earl Harvin on drums, duh) were far from phoning the show in, giving the ample crowd all the enthusiasm their sweaty, tongue-wagging, cowbell-banging asses could muster. The smiles and giddiness were flat-out cheesy at times, though Slavens was at least aware of it: "This many years later, our lyrics are still as stupid," he said with one of his many huge laughs of the evening. -Sam Machkovech
