Such is a typical night when Tripping Daisy performs in Deep Ellum--an event, a spectacle, so much more than just another local band performing in front of another local crowd. Not even touring acts draw such rabid, adoring, huge crowds; and of the local bands with major-label record deals, only Pantera could claim such mass devotion in one venue. And to top it off, tonight's crowd is extra large, extra revved up because Tripping Daisy is debuting material from its second album, I Am an Elastic Firecracker, which is due from Island Records on June 20.
For some, the concert is a chance to see how--or if--the band has evolved over the past year; for others, it is an opportunity to discover why Island Records has so much faith that I Am an Elastic Firecracker will be among this summer's most coveted releases. But for most, it's a chance to bathe in the spectacle that is Tripping Daisy, from singer Tim DeLaughter's manic performances to a wild-eyed crowd that shimmies between songs.
With all the elaborate lights--narrow beams dancing on the ceiling, huge hand-held spotlights aimed at the crowd, all of it blinding--and an enormous draping backdrop that resembles the red-and-white stripes of the American flag, the entire show is as evocative as a video; it is even more of an event without the psychedelic slide show upon which the band once relied, with the music and crowd and the interaction between the two now more a centerpiece than a distraction. And, damn it all, but what a centerpiece.
In concert, much more so than in the sonic sterility of the compact disc, Tripping Daisy's music reveals itself as neither brilliant nor banal, not revolutionary or even evolutionary. But it is never boring, never bad; rather, it's the sound made in the middle ground separating those who try too hard to please and those whose music is arrogantly inaccessible, the sound of happy accidents that come and go so quickly they must be seized or completely forgotten. It's like the cool breeze on the hottest day--to be enjoyed now, because the thrill does not last forever.
Tripping Daisy captures what can be so good about pop music--songs that dance upon the skin without piercing it, music that doesn't break hearts or stir souls but merely moves the body. TD's music stays right above the surface without ever going anywhere; it does not transport the listener out of the moment, it will not change your religion or force you to rethink your life or change the color of your eyes.
Rather, it is quintessentially slight, the very antithesis of that old aphorism once applied to the punk-pop of bands like Gang of Four or the Buzzcocks, who made "music to make you think while you dance." It is music you feel, but that does not make you feel; it is music that makes you move, but music that does not move you. More than the songs found on the band's 1992 Dragon Street debut (and subsequent first album for Island) Bill, Tripping Daisy's new material is more solid and more substantive all the way around--bigger, but somehow more intimate.
A song like "I Got a Girl," the first single from the forthcoming album, is terrific in concert--so unabashedly catchy and funny and even sort of sweet ("I got a girl who smells so sweet," DeLaughter sings, "I got a girl who loves her dog /I got a girl who blames it on her period / I got a girl who dances to disco"); as he sings it, DeLaughter--ever the spastic on stage, jumping even when standing still--seems so damned happy about his girl, unable to contain his enthusiasm. And the new "Rocketpop" is similarly wonderful, at least until DeLaughter ruins one guitar break by woooooo-ing all over it.
The Daisy's music is far from brainless or meaningless, no matter how slight it comes off. Like fellow revisionists Hagfish, whose terrific album ...Rocks Your Lame Ass will be delivered to stores a week after the Daisy's, Tripping Daisy are master craftsmen building their moments around engaging frontmen, time-honored hooks, indelible riffs--all of which add up to good songs, these nice moments that stick around for a while until they are replaced quickly by so many others.
If all of this sounds like a back-handed compliment, it's not at all; indeed, as someone who has never been won over by the band, having long thought the off-hand comparisons to the Beatles wrong-headed and offensive, I finally understand why they persist. At their best, Tripping Daisy can come up with something reminiscent of "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" or "Love Me Do"--songs that are inherently simple but hard to shake, songs that are indestructible because they are built upon the most solid of foundations. If the album's half as good as the concert, Tripping Daisy ain't half bad.
Something for nothing
After just a few weeks of speculation and interest from a handful of major labels, Deep Blue Something is the latest local band to sign with Interscope Records, joining Reverend Horton Heat, Toadies, and Brutal Juice. Though the deal was just signed, Interscope--which is part of the mammoth Warner-Elektra-Atlantic group, responsible for releasing more than 1,250 albums last year alone--is rush-releasing Deep Blue Something's major-label debut, Home. The album will be in stores in the next two or three weeks (around June 13)--an outrageous turnaround, made possible only because the album is already completed. In fact, it's the exact same album they released almost two years ago on the RainMaker Records label.
The band has already finished its photo shoot for the label and has completed its video for the first single, "Breakfast at Tiffany's"--which has been a moderate regional radio hit, along with the song "Halo." Deep Blue Something was signed to the label by Chuck Reed, responsible for bringing Possum Dixon and Compulsion to Interscope--and, once upon a time, best known for making Marky Mark famous. The deal is for an unspecified amount of albums.
Deep Blue Something will open for Duran Duran May 28 at Sundance Square at a concert to benefit victims of the Oklahoma City bombing.
Scene, heard
As soon as local drummer extraordinaire Earl Harvin (the Earl Harvin Quartet, Rubberbullet) finished touring with MC 900 Ft Jesus, he was offered a job behind the kit for Seal. Harvin, who is awaiting the release of his jazz band's debut disc (titled Earl Harvin Trio/Quartet) on the local Leaning House Records label, will be on the road with the Warner Bros. recording artist through the early summer, with a Dallas date set for July 7 at the Starplex Amphitheatre...
One-man band Homer Henderson--who's so far out there he plays in the key of H--has just released his fifth seven-inch single, "Nightclub Cancer/The Planets" on Honey Records. This time out, Henderson's working with a full-on band--the Dalworthington Garden Boys (and Garden Weasels), featuring the likes of Artie Turner on bass and Nathan Vinson on accordion and piano...
Ethyl Merman, which has just released a self-titled nine-song cassette on its own Thrift Towne Records label, will perform before and after a screening of Spike and Mike's Twisted Animation Festival May 26 at the Major Theatre. Tickets are $7 in advance, $10 at the door--though they're half price if you show up in costume for the tantalizingly titled "Parade of the Weird" to be held at the theater that night...
Ronnie Dawson has been asked to perform on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" on July 31, with High Noon and the ever-beguiling Lisa Pankratz as his backing band. Dawson will also headline the gargantuan greaser-rock all-star Fairmount '95 Rockabilly Festival (also known as "Hoodstock") from June 16-18 in Marion, Indiana, the birthplace of James Dean--one of the few men in this world as cool as the Blond Bomber himself...
Dean Lindsey of Babble Zoo is leaving town for two to three months to pursue his acting career, putting the band on hold for a while. He's moving to Ponca City in northern Oklahoma to take a small role in the film Twister, which stars Bill Paxton (One False Move, Aliens) and Mad About You's Helen Hunt and is directed by Jan DeBont (who helmed Speed). In the film, which was penned by Jurassic Park author Michael Crichton, Lindsey will play a tornado tracker--though he doesn't know if he's playing a good guy or a bad guy. "The band is still chugging away," Lindsey says, "but this is a break for me in other areas, so I'm going to pursue it..."
Three weeks ago, I wrote in this column about the death of Grover Lewis, the Oak Cliff native journalist who rose to fame and fell from the bar stool during a stint at Rolling Stone in the early 1970s. In that piece, I mentioned that Lewis was the father of former Observer music editor Clay McNear--now the editor of the calendar section for New Times in Phoenix, which owns this paper--and incorrectly wrote that the two men barely knew each other. In fact, from the time he was 25 and began writing his father, McNear kept up a fairly substantive correspondence with Lewis, and the two saw each other as often as they could; McNear also attended Lewis' funeral last month. "I knew him," McNear says of Lewis, "I was not a stranger to him."
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