9.28.07: Home Place at the Guthrie

We’re not very comfortable with quiet. When the curtain came up last night on The Home Place at the Guthrie, the audience was alone with a verdant, mysterious, very quiet landscape. We waited almost a full minute until an actor even appeared, and when she did, she quietly folded laundry. We all started twittering nervously, fidgeting, shooting each other puzzled glances in the dark, doing anything to avoid asking, “What’s going on here?”

We eventually learned that here is a mansion on a hill in western Ireland; we’re perched on some kind of Anglo-Irish Baronial situation in Donegal, in the latter half of the nineteenth century; sometime after the famine and before Irish independence, when the Fenians running around the Celtic woods started trouble that would eventually become The Troubles. But even before we learn exactly where and when we are, we learn that, like most Irish plays, The Home Place is about colonialism.

Colonialism makes us all pretty squeamish too. I’m speaking more generally now, using “us” as a term that goes beyond “my Guthrie audience,” but not too far beyond. Brian Friel’s play examines the colonial idea of home—the anxiety of being in a place where you don’t belong. And there are easy contemporary parallels to draw—Iraq, of course. But this play isn’t about Iraq.

Any Edina resident can relate to The Home Place because it focuses on the Anglo-Irish, a race with a similarly problematic definition of “home.” Exiled from their own homeland for centuries, doomed to lord it over a people they come to detest while harboring nostalgia for a bygone home place—in this particular family’s case, Kent—where they wouldn’t really be any more welcome than their dirty Irish tenants. When the rich landowner’s son, David Gore, daydreams about whisking his love away to some other corner of the empire—Glasgow, or maybe Kenya—I had the romantic thought, “Right now, some high school junior is making this speech to his girlfriend in some Wayzata bedroom!”

Friel’s portrait of the Anglo-Irish is much more sympathetic than my homegrown stereotypes about western suburbanites. At times, he even seems to say, “Give the English some credit, at least when they conquer a place, they exhaustively catalog everything in it.” (According to recent reports, our accounting in Iraq has been, like everything else, a mess.) For instance, generations of Gores mapped out every botanical species on their land years before they started, post-Darwin, to map out every human species on their land too.

But this is an Irish play. Friel is dubious of well-meaning Anglos. The magnificent Richard Iglewski is cast as Dr. Richard Gore, the Gore family’s eccentric anthropologist cousin. Iglewski plays the best pompous ass in local theater, and fittingly, Dr. Gore is a man devoted to the pseudo-science of cranial measurement, a man who believes that by mapping out physical characteristics we can crack an “ethnic code we can’t yet decipher.” The play climaxes in a scene between Dr. Gore, the English man of science, and Clement O’Donnell, the sentimental Irish drunk (played just gallantly enough by soap-star–turned-Guthrie-hero Charles Keating). When O’Donnell credits Irish poet Tom Moore with “taking the measure of our nation,” you would think a crackpot like Dr. Gore, a man devoted to ethnographic measurement, would, at the very least, Google “Tom Moore” after O’Donnell leaves the room. Instead, he turns to his cousin, “Well, well! What a grotesque! And the reek of whiskey off him! Or was it ether?”  

9.27.07: Dhafer Youssef at the Walker

Last night I had the pure privilege of experiencing Dhafer Youssef’s first concert in America. The Tunisian-born singer and oud (Arabic lute) virtuoso, appearing with a string quartet and percussionist, launched Walker Art Center’s New World Jazz Series.

It was also, according to Youssef, the first public performance by the band, which featured violinists Todd Reynolds and Daisy Jopling, violist Caleb Burhans, bassist Mark Helias and percussionist Satoshi Takeishi. It was a spectacular debut, and it was thrilling to be a witness to what happens when Sufi mysticism meets jazz, rock and electronica—in the hands of a master. The experience defies a pat definition, but it’s somewhere at the intersection of chamber music, improvisation, and spiritual journey.

A long vocal meditation opened the band’s first number, with Youssef first chanting in drones that were seamlessly picked up and carried by the strings, then soaring off with long and richly ornamental melismatic lines characteristic of the Sufi tradition. There was a hush in the audience that I’m not sure I have ever experienced, as if he’d spun us into a trance with him.

His voice is honey and harissa—smooth and sweet, but complex and foreign—and it’s beautiful to watch him sing. He has a magnetic presence, seemingly as much with his band as with the audience. With one slow, graceful gesture that reminded me of tai chi, he indicated his wishes, and the others dutifully responded. And Youssef’s facility with the oud is like he came out of the womb playing it.

The second piece the band played was typical of the musical structure for the rest of the concert. A rhythmically complex ground bass in an off-kilter compound meter was laid out in part or in full and developed, then layers of melodies, harmonies, and rhythms were built upon the groovy foundation. That structural similarity offered a helpful framework for me to get acquainted with the music, which is intricate and mesmerizing, but unsettling. The fact that the rhythms were never in a typical two- or four-beat pattern (in other words, not a beat for walking or waltzing), created a crackling energy that drove the night. Plus, it leaves you wanting to discover how to move to it.

A few times during the concert, Youssef employed a fascinating vocal technique, blocking one nasal passage and singing in a strange falsetto into his cupped hand. The resulting sound was something I can only describe as a combination of muted trumpet, harmonica, and Beijing opera with a cold—otherworldly and utterly captivating.

On a couple occasions, I sensed a lack of comfort in the violins, mostly around the devilishly tricky entrances, but I’m sure that will pass with more public performances. There were some truly thrilling moments, like Reynolds’ wild improvisation in a trio with Takeishi and Youssef, or Youssef laying down the groove for Helias’ bass solo.

My kudos to Philip Bither, Walker’s performing arts curator, for introducing Youssef to this country. If the remaining concerts in the New World Jazz Series are half this good, the series should be a huge success.

9.26.07: Talking Volumes with Sherman Alexie at the Fitzgerald

Here’s a rarely glimpsed subculture: The Indigerati. But they were out in modest numbers last night—bookish Native Americans with long, well-groomed hair, bespectacled, wearing dark jackets or light cardigans, standing in the rush queue at the Fitz for last-minute tickets to MPR’s Talking Volumes, which opened its eighth season last night with The Most Famous Native American Author in the World, Sherman Alexie.

It wasn’t just the Indigerati who came out to support Alexie. The crowd was mostly that white, upper-middle-class–looking MPR crowd, mostly female actually. The place was packed, and there was that anxious crowd murmur thing going on that always happens in a theater before a big show.

Did I mention this was a book event?

MPR’s Kerri Miller was hosting and her interview with Alexie would be simulcast on air. Alexie came out wearing a gray European-cut suit and horn-rimmed glasses. His jet black hair had that thick, just-cut look; like a newly shorn black sheep. You don’t see Indians like him around either—maybe in some PBS documentary about early American Indian Policy or something, but never in real life. He sat down next to Miller and somebody yelled out, “Native Pride!” He shot back, “Custer had it coming!” and then turned to Miller and said, “We’re going to go through all the indigenous bumper stickers.”

Five minutes after good-naturedly deflating Native pride, Alexie was on a rant about “white, Ivy League educated types with German-designed eyeglasses quoting colonial white elitist crap like Thucydides or Horace.” Over the next hour and a half, he went on several tangents fueled with this kind of lucid rage, aimed at all sorts of targets: vegans, the humorless, humorless vegans, Diaz/Frey/Leroy and the fake memoir, Native American Literature’s overuse of talking animals, John Steinbeck’s misogyny/homophobia/social consciousness, the cult of the film director, and Nike’s new shoe designed for the indigenous foot. All of this with a bewildered Kerri Miller hopelessly along for the ride, her radio laugh losing its tone and sustain as the interview went along. Alexie has a fantastic, dexterous mind, and he can talk interestingly or wickedly about whatever he wants. When he told us that he aspires to be “the lovechild of Emily Dickenson and Richard Pryor,” he was pretty much right on.

But he was here to talk about himself. Alexie was promoting two books, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and Flight, both stories about conflicted, wounded Indians—basically both incorporating various versions of himself. Alexie has been fictionalizing different versions of his tragi-heroic “rez to riches” story since his first book, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (’93) and his first movie, Smoke Signals (’98). This time, he’s calling his story “an immigrant story” even though his country, the reservation, is inside another country. And while Alexie has taken criticism about being “repetitive” in the past, he acknowledged that these two newest books have received mostly positive attention on their media circuits. Not that Alexie is taking that “repetitive” thing sitting down: “How come when I do it, I’m ‘repetitive’ and not ‘obsessed’?” he asked. “How come Faulkner wrote all his books about four square miles and nobody calls him ‘repetitive,’ even though he was?”

9.25.07: The Wedding Singer at the Orpheum

I must admit that I am not a big fan of Adam Sandler movies. Too often, he takes low comedy to subterranean depths. The Wedding Singer is different. It is an endearing film that, if it doesn’t cry out to be made into a musical, at least stands up well to the transformation. The result, now playing at the Orpheum, is a charming confection.

The show closely follows the plot of the original. Set in 1985, Robbie is the lead singer of a band that primarily entertains at weddings, and he’s dumped by his own fiancé on the eve of their nuptials. He finds consolation in the friendship of a waitress, even though she is engaged herself, but to a real jerk. The inevitable fact that the two will end up together is never in question.

Writers Chad Beguelin and Tim Herlihy transplant whole scenes from the movie into the musical, which should not be surprising given that Herlihy wrote the original screenplay. The book is sweet, but also quite smart. Such a story cannot help but be sentimental, but its wit helps it avoid being treacly. The use of pop culture references from the 1980s adds much humor. From Billy Idol and Cyndi Lauper to Flashdance to big hair and glam rock, the show gently makes fun of the superficial decade. And the elaborate physical production does it full justice.

The original film uses actual eighties hits in its soundtrack. The faux-eighties songs by Matthew Sklar and Chad Beguelin are innocuous and forgettable, but they do capture the style and the energy of the decade. The strong dancing chorus is the propulsive force behind the show. The homage to eighties dance styles is particularly amusing.

Unfortunately, the two leads are the weak links. Whatever else you might say about Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore in the movie, they had personality. Merritt David Jones and Erin Elizabeth Coors are rather bland, whitebread knock-offs with none of the individuality of the originals. It doesn’t help that the show is written in much broader strokes and with far less subtlety than the film. Jones and Coors sing well and make the love story touching, but too often they melt into the background.

The show really gets its energy from the supporting cast. As the second bananas, a bandmate of Robbie’s (Justin Jutras) and his sort-of ex-girlfriend (Sarah Peak) are two tough streetwise kids from Queens, and their non-stereotypical performances almost steal the show. Penny Larsen as Robbie’s sexually voracious grandmother, John Jacob Lee as a Boy George wannabe, and Nikka Wahl as Robbie’s ex are also standouts.

The Wedding Singer belongs to a long line of shows, including Grease and Mama Mia, whose impulse is primarily nostalgia and, from the demographics of the opening night audience, it’s transgenerational nostalgia. The Wedding Singer clearly wouldn’t exist without the model of those earlier, superior shows. Five minutes after leaving the theater, it’s hard to remember a single tune, but for the two-and-a-half-hour duration, it’s pleasant entertainment.

The Wedding Singer plays through September 30 at the Orpheum.

9.24.07: Ivey Awards at the State Theatre

One thing can be said for sure about the Ivey Awards (our local version of the Tony Awards): They’re a lot more fun than the actual Tonys.

Now in its third year, the Ivey Awards celebrate achievements in local theater, and judging from last night’s gala at the State Theatre, the Twin Cities theater community is starting to get the hang of this celebration thing. For many, the evening began at a VIP pre-party at the Chambers Hotel, where free martinis were flowing like Budweiser, and the number of stiletto heels raised the collective height of the women by a good three or four inches.

Thus lubricated, the party then moved over to the State Theatre, where the award ceremonies turned into the sort of good-hearted orgy of self-congratulation that only theater people can do with a truly good heart. And an after-party at Mission Kitchen & Bar extended the festivities until midnight or so.

Not bad for a Monday night.

The congenial atmosphere of the Ivey Awards is aided considerably by the anti-competitive ethos of the event. There are no set categories such as “Best Actor,” and there are no nominees. You either get an Ivey or you don’t. If you don’t, the very least you get from the evening is a few hearty laughs and a slight hangover at work the next morning.

That said, here is a list of the last night’s Ivey Awards winners:

+ Michael Matthew Farrell, for his choreography in the Children Theatre Company’s production of High School Musical.

+ Thomas Jones II, for his multiple-role performance in Yellowman, at Mixed Blood Theatre.

+ Ed Williams Jr., for his outstanding performance as Molina in Minneapolis Musical Theatre’s production of Kiss of the Spider Woman.

+ Mike Hallenback, for sound engineering in Emigrant Theatre’s productions of Kid Simple and Hunger.

+ Mixed Blood Theatre, for conceptual creativity and originality in its production Messy Utopia.

+ Sally Wingert, for her standout performance as Peggy Guggenheim in Minnesota Jewish Theatre Company’s one-woman production, Woman Before A Glass.

+ Theatre de la Jeune Lune, for the company’s skill in handling multiple musical scores in Don Juan Giovanni.

+ John Arnone, for set design in the Guthrie Theater’s Private Lives.

+ Chris Nelson, for his eerily accurate performance as the late senator Paul Wellstone in Wellstone, at the History Theatre.

 

+ Love, Janis at the Ordway, for music by bandleader Raymond Berg and musical direction by Barbara Brooks.

+ The Emerging Artist award went to set designer Kate Sutton-Johnson.

+ The Lifetime Achievement Award went to Sheila Livingston, the Guthrie Theater’s Director of Education and Community Programs for the past thirty years.

9.22.07: A Masked Ball at Ordway Center

It’s nice to see Minnesota Opera staging Un Ballo in Maschera (A Masked Ball). It’s one of Verdi’s masterpieces and should be better known. Though ostensibly the tale of a tragic love triangle, it is actually a profoundly political meditation on the responsibilities of a ruler.

As such, Minnesota Opera’s decision to return the opera to its original setting in the glittering court of Sweden’s King Gustavus III was apt. (The censors in 1859 Rome forced Verdi to change the location to colonial Boston, with the king demoted to colonial governor to avoid representing regicide onstage, despite the improbability of a masked ball in Puritan Massachusetts.)

Amidst an atmosphere of unrest and threats of assassination, the mercurial Gustavus loves Amelia, the wife of his dearest friend and closest ally, Count Anckarström. The king is struggling with conflicting impulses, represented by the two men closest to him, the aristocratic and virtuous Anckarström and the flighty and pleasure-loving page, Oscar. As a monarch with absolute power, Gustavus chooses to pursue Amelia. His noblest nature wins out in the end, but not before Anckarström misinterprets the flirtation and exacts revenge.

Director James Robinson clearly takes the work seriously. From the opening curtain, he created a palpable sense of menace. Allen Moyer’s immensely inventive set has Gustavus’s chamber buckle and break apart, making it as if the fortuneteller, Ulrica, has emerged from the bowels of the earth to prophesy Gustavus’s death. And the claustrophobia of the scene in which Anckarström confronts his wife heightens the drama. However, the surrealistic representation of the gallows in Act Two was distracting, and the final masked ball—typically a spectacular showpiece—was something of an anticlimax, in part because of James Schuette’s drab, gray costumes.

Robinson was particularly effective in using the chorus, staging them with telling detail. In many ways, the chorus is the star of this production, and they responded with some robust singing. But Robinson seemed at a loss in the great Act Two duet in which Gustavus and Amelia admit their love, leaving the actors stranded on an almost completely bare stage. In the final act, Robinson also chose to upstage the pair’s final duet with a distracting puppet show, an odd choice that was out of character with the rest of the production.

Conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya was best at building toward grand climaxes. Elsewhere, however, the music tended to lose momentum. Charles Taylor sang quite elegantly as Anckarström, though he lacked the kind of dark sound required to fully exploit the character’s rage. And his acting was mostly a collection of stock operatic gestures.

Cynthia Lawrence made her Minnesota Opera debut in 2000, in the lyric role of the Countess in Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro. Pushing her voice to meet the requirements of heavier, spinto roles such as Amelia has left a noticeable break between her chest and head voices, along with a shrill and wobbly top. But her singing was frequently thrilling, whatever the ultimate cost.

As Gustavus, Evan Bowers was full-throated from his first entrance. He handled the music with finesse and created a dashing character. But he lacked that last measure of nobility to truly convey the character’s self-sacrifice. His death left me unmoved.

It was Nili Riemer, in the trouser role of Oscar, who delivered the most satisfying performance. Her quicksilver soprano made easy work of the punishing tessitura and demanding coloratura. What’s more, she made the foolishly self-important youth a delight at each appearance.

Jill Grove’s Ulrica was in the same class. Her dark, cavernous voice seemed to emerge from the bowels of the earth. Along with a thrilling top and eerie stage presence, she made the fortuneteller mysterious and captivating.

For all its faults, much of this production was stirring and did the great composer proud. And in the end, Verdi won out. His humanity and depth of feeling carried the day.

A Masked Ball runs through September 30 at the Ordway.

9.21.07: The Pillowman at the Guthrie's Dowling Studio

Among the many fears that afflict fiction writers is the fear that they might one day be held accountable for all of the perverse, diabolical things their imagination has conjured. Stephen King has had plenty of fun wrestling with this demon, and Frank Theatre’s latest play—The Pillowman, by Martin McDonagh, at the Guthrie’s Dowling Studio—has more twisted glee at a writer’s expense than even King could ever imagine.

Jim Lichtscheidl plays Katurian, a writer who has been detained for questioning by police in a nameless totalitarian state. When the police officers (played brilliantly by Luverne Seifert and Chris Carlson) begin their interrogation, Katurian professes to be nothing but a humble storyteller. He has no idea why he is being questioned, except for the dimmest inkling that it might have something to do with his stories, which happen to involve lots of maimed and murdered children.

You’ll get no more plot details from me, because I don’t want to spoil the fun (though people with more delicate sensibilities might have a different word for it). The Pillowman is one of those dark, disturbing plays that pulls off the neat trick of mining its own inherent tension for lots of laughs. In style and tone, it’s an amusing cross between Harold Pinter, Franz Kafka, Law & Order, and Fellini—a clever whodunit with just enough literary and theatrical heft to make you think seriously about some of the issues it raises about free speech, modern parenting, cycles of abuse, and the role of stories in a politically repressive environment.

Frank Theatre director Wendy Knox often tackles projects that are long on spectacle and short on plot, but The Pillowman is precisely the opposite—a taut, well-acted play that fits the Guthrie’s Dowling Studio space perfectly. In lead roles, both Lichtscheidl and Seifert turn in bravura performances—particularly Seifert, whose unnerving but hilarious detective Tupolski keeps things off balance just enough to creep you out while you’re laughing at everything he says.

Appearing in the Guthrie’s Dowling Studio is an important step up for Frank Theatre, which often has to make do with makeshift spaces—such as abandoned grain factories—that aren’t exactly ideal for theater. The artistic stamp of approval on Frank’s work is well-deserved, and in The Pillowman those who haven’t experienced Frank in action have an excellent opportunity to see why Knox is one of the most versatile, interesting directors around. She just knows how to make a play work—and my advice is to get over to the Guthrie and let her work work on you.

The Pillowman plays the Guthrie’s Dowling Studio through October 14.

9.19.07: BodyCartography's Holiday House #2

There’s a lot to be said about BodyCartography’s remount of its 2006 Momentum show, this time staged in the holiday house itself—the duo's own south Minneapolis home.

First, though, some background: BodyCartography (Olive Bieringa and Otto Ramstad) is a pioneer in the newly exploding field of dance film. Bieringa and Ramstad pursue a space-based, improvisational, and visually acute version of dance film, meaning that they don’t make a dance and then film it, but rather explore the space through movement, then cut and splice these improvisations together. This same process is active in their live work: what you see is improv within set limits, with certain set moments that themselves most likely arose from improv.

Why does it matter? Because what you see is at once brilliantly planned—lighting, angles, perspectives clear as cinema—and breakneck.

First, that cinema. Early on, you stand on the lawn, looking toward a side patio, but also up at the corner of the large old house. Bright maroon, with stained-glass details, the house juts out as if in an early scene from a horror film. Meanwhile, on the patio, someone is moving, limbs flailing, lit by tiny star lights.

Initially, it’s a bit frustrating to get only glimpses of movement, but then you begin to feel the pleasure of these stolen moments: a woman jumping on a mattress in a royal blue room, giggling, while another woman hovers, mostly out of sight. The performance ends in the alley behind the house, where projections and live dancers interact. At times the dancers run all the way to the end of the alley and you watch them jerking and jumping from a long way off; this isn’t a view you can get in the theater. Instead of the theater’s flatness, Holiday House has the three-dimensional grasp of reality—albeit a beautifully lit and planned reality. At one point a curious neighbor, not a performer, came around the side of one garage: transfixed by light, he became a performer. The pleasure of viewing is so intense here, so fun as to be nearly guilty.

Then there’s the dancing itself. The perspectives from which we view are planned, but the movement feels dangerously unhinged. Morgan Thorson and Otto Ramstad throw each other around within inches of the audience; Kristin Van Loon crashes her bike into every impediment she can find; three dancers fall to their knees over and over again. Outside the confines of a theater, within a house, where people generally follow certain proscribed paths, all this virtuoso flight feels especially and thrillingly risky. It’s as if BodyCartography and their dancers have just now discovered this house and are exploring it with no notion of its use or purpose.

In fact, the house, which is truly an odd one, seems increasingly bizarre as the performance goes on. Each space, each object morphs as the performers “misuse” it. Also, as you are led from room to room, some performers remain behind, lying or dancing, which gives the house a haunted feel.

But it’s difficult to say who’s haunting—you or the performers, who seem unaware of the audience. The wrongness of being in a strange house, watching its inhabitants as they enact their strange exploration—again, it’s a guilty pleasure, a thrilling risk. (There’s some literal risk here too. Holiday House #2 is only for those who feel comfortable ascending and descending strange staircases in near darkness. And don’t even think of wearing heels.)

One thing’s for sure: your own home will never feel so dull as when you return from BodyCartography’s Holiday House.

9.16.07: John McLaughlin at the Dakota

For an hour last night—and only an hour—several hundred Twin Citians got to be in the same room with guitarist John McLaughlin, the demigod of machine-gun jazz.

McLaughlin’s stop at the Dakota was among the first of what’s being billed as the “Live USA 2007” tour, which includes a band—the 4th Dimension—and a dozen or so rapid-fire guitar breaks interspersed with some equally blistering breaks on bass, keyboards, and drums. At times, the playing was so deliriously fast that it sounded less like music and more like an exercise in how to cram as many notes as possible into a given point in space and time. The musical statement of the evening seemed to be, “The fourth dimension is out there, and we’re going to find it, damnit.” In the meantime, those of us back in the third dimension got to watch their fingers move. 

And move they did. Really, John McLaughlin ought to do an Aleve commercial. The guy is in his mid-sixties, but it’s clear his finger joints are greased with some sort of age-defying lubricant. He’s got fabulous hair too—a thick white mane of gray blow-dried all the way back to the 1970s—so maybe there’s a shampoo commercial in his future too.

I only saw the first set but, musically speaking, the truth of the matter was that it was a hit-and-miss set from a group of stellar musicians who are still trying to figure out precisely how they fit together. The group only had its first rehearsal together less than a week ago, on September 11, and is now embarked on a national tour—which says something about their collective confidence. Besides, rehearsing together may not matter in this case, because the official slogan of the tour is “Just Improvise,” so what people are really watching is one of McLaughlin’s many musical experiments in progress.

The vibe is all electric this time, with some computer high jinks thrown in. McLaughlin appears to have rediscovered the whammy bar on his electric guitar, at times playing around with some woozy space sounds, and keyboardist Gary Husband had some sampling fun on his Roland, particularly during an eerily convincing flute solo.

The surprise discovery of the night for Twin Cities jazz fans was twenty-three-year-old bass phenom Hadrien Feraud, from France, whom the jazz press has already anointed as the rightful heir to Jaco Pastorius’s gilded crown.  He, too, can play extremely fast, and when he and McLaughlin go head to head, tossing riffs back and forth like a hand grenade, the result is the sort of thing that musical speed junkies live for.

Feraud is one of those sickeningly talented kids that the gods of music produce every now and then to taunt everyone else in the world who is trying to improve through old-fashioned practice. Feraud plays like he was born with the history of bass in his fingers, and it doesn’t help that he looks like he hit puberty on the flight over from Paris. Tellingly, the first items to sell out at the merchandise kiosk outside were Feraud’s CDs, and this tour is sure to raise his profile in the U.S.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that McLaughlin and crew may have played their way into some sort of intergalactic wormhole where time stopped and it felt like they were playing for six hours, but an hour was all us spiritually inferior earth-dwellers got to see. If first-setters wanted more McLaughlin last night, they had to pay for the second set. There was no encore, either, just a friendly bow and a few blown kisses.

In the fourth dimension, apparently, they don’t do dessert.

9.15.07: Alan Jackson at Mystic Lake

Two minutes before country crooner Alan Jackson opened his concert at Mystic Lake Casino's new showroom, a digital countdown began on the two screens on either side of the stage, as well as on three giant screens behind the stage. The screaming audience maintained their energy for the entire ninety-minute show, offering many standing ovations and begging for autographs (which he gave—too frequently—during instrumental portions of his songs).

What better song to start a country show with than "Gone Country"? The show was pure spectacle, emphasized by the stage presence of ten musicians—acoustic, electric, bass, and pedal-steel guitarists, a banjo player, drummer, harmony singer, violinist, keyboardist, and singer Jackson.

Jackson has been in the top echelon of country musicians for two decades. Though he may be a bit older, tamer, and heavier, the man's still got his long blond curls and mustache, and damn can he sing. His wonderful baritone drawl is as powerful as it ever was.

Jackson's setlist (see below) balanced fast-paced, fun, pop country singles with heartfelt ballads of love and loss. Yes, it was cliché country music, but there's a reason Jackson's brand of it has stayed popular for so long—he's believable. For the most part, it's not over-the-top "lost my wife, my house, my dog, my truck, now I feel like chuggin’ some beer” music. Jackson's dramatic stories are relatable—falling in love, growing old, remembering your childhood. As he put it last night, they’re "songs about life and love, and everything in between."

There wasn't a bad seat in the sold-out house. The casino's new state-of-the-art, luxe venue has great sightlines, superb acoustics, plush seats, and lots of leg room. They made good use of the projection screens, showing both live and prerecorded video throughout the performance, and put on an exciting light show.

Jackson played eighteen songs in just under an hour and a half—the perfect amount to leave the audience craving just a little bit more. And I have to admit, I would've stayed for another set.

Setlist:
Gone Country
I Don't Even Know Your Name
Livin' On Love
Little Bitty
A Woman's Love
Summertime Blues
Remember When
Don't Rock the Jukebox
Seven Bridges Road
It's Five O'Clock Somewhere
Pop a Top
The Blues Man
Who's Cheatin' Who
Drive
Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)
Chattahoochee
Where I Come From

Encore:
Mercury Blue

9.14.07: Elvis Costello at Orchestra Hall

Elvis Costello only arrived in Minneapolis yesterday for his two-night stand at Orchestra Hall, which started last night and finishes tonight. This means he and the orchestra didn't rehearse together until yesterday afternoon, which may account for the lack of cohesion between Costello and the orchestra, as well as the uncomfortable feeling that this experiment in crossover music-making wasn’t working out quite as well as the audience, or the performers, might have hoped.

The concept of seeing a rock icon venture into classical composition is undeniably exciting. Costello is a Grammy-winning, Oscar-nominated legend who has conquered punk, pop, and alt-country, and dabbled in many other genres in his thirty-year music career. In 2004, he released his Il Sogno album, an orchestral piece originally written as a ballet score.

Last night, Costello appeared on Orchestra Hall's stage to introduce a suite from Il Sogno. Clad in a classic black suit, trademark black-framed eyeglasses and bolo tie, he said, "In my version of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Puck is a jazz fairy." Then he exited stage right, and the acclaimed jazz pianist Alan Broadbent conducted the Minnesota Orchestra in several selections from Il Sogno, jumping from a stately court bravado one minute to a funky peasant swagger the next.

Costello told Rolling Stone in 2004 that, "Structure should be liberating, not confining," a comment that sounds ironic given that last night’s structure felt so restrictive and forced.

After about twenty minutes of Il Sogno, Costello re-emerged and opened the next part of the show with "All This Useless Beauty," singing loudly—too loudly—while strumming an acoustic guitar. From there in on out, the majority of the show was pop songs arranged for orchestra. When the soft strings backed him, it was almost operatic, but the continual trade-off between Costello's solo work and an entire orchestra was jarring.

During the second song, "Still Too Soon to Know," it was apparent that Costello’s voice was off-pitch at times (he later commented on having a "croaky" voice due to spending time in a snowstorm in Buffalo, New York). Without a rock band behind him, Costello was exposed. And without a rock audience reflecting his energy, he seemed self-conscious and even a little anxious at times.

That doesn't necessarily mean the audience didn't appreciate the music, however. This was an Orchestra Hall audience—refined, respectful, awaiting their time to applaud. And the crowd did applaud, often. Costello even received a couple standing ovations after the last song and during the encore.

The Costello arrangements for the performance—including that of his wife Diana Krall's song "The Girl in the Other Room," (which Costello co-wrote)—should have been moving. Instead, Costello struck awkward poses—hand extended with palm facing the audience, eyebrows raised, staring at the ceiling—that appeared to trivialize the work of the orchestra seated behind him. Which raises the question: If he's not buying it, why should we?

In contrast, the final song of the first set was a cohesive, moving arrangement by Richard Harvey that was actually written for an orchestra.

The second half brought the arrival of pianist Steve Nieve, a longtime Costello collaborator. Nieve's energetic playing brought a much-needed jolt to the show right away during their first tune, "Veronica."

Costello's song "Scarlet Tide," which was nominated for an Oscar for Alison Krauss's performance of it on the movie Cold Mountain, brought the most intense moment of the evening. During his introduction to the song, Costello explained that it is a song of a war widow, and proclaimed that questioning authority is the act of a patriot, not a traitor. This provoked huge applause and hollers, and when he sang, "and bring the boys back home," another round of applause rolled through the concert hall. 

To close the second set, and to open the encore, Costello performed two selections from his Painted from Memory collaboration with Burt Bacharach—"God Give Me Strength" and "I Still Have That Other Girl." These were easily the highlights of the evening. If the Il Sogno pieces were anticlimactic, the Bacharach pieces were cathartic.

After encore song No. 2, "Accidents Will Happen," Costello sang his final tune. Singing all night into a microphone that amplified his already-loud voice to volumes that overshadowed an entire orchestra (a problem amplified performers often have in Orchestra Hall), Costello went mikeless for "Couldn't Call It Unexpected No. 4." It was during this last song that he walked offstage and into the aisles, prompting the crowd to hum along with him. "Just the ladies," he instructed. Then, "Just the boys."

In that same Rolling Stone interview from 2004, David Fricke asked Costello who he is making records for. His answer was simple: "Anyone who will listen." That may be a respectable, unpretentious attitude, but it raises more questions than it answers, and I definitely felt that same confused message last night.

Elvis Costello performs again Saturday with the Minnesota Orchestra at Orchestra Hall.

9.14.07: $99 Sale at the Soap Factory

Name recognition is worth its weight in gold in the art world. So it’s novel to think of relative unknowns side by side with art world fixtures, all identified solely by numbers. That’s the premise underlying the Soap Factory’s $99 Sale. All art may not be equal, but for two days, all artists are. The uniformly small size of the works plays on that egalitarian theme. Contributions by the likes of Alex Soth and Jan Estep rubbed shoulders with those of up-and-comers and under-the-radar art stars.

Billed as “an aesthetic mêlée, a bemused statement about the value of art, a snapshot of the Twin Cities’ art scene, and a fabulous fundraiser” the show featured works by 200 different artists across genres—photography, painting, collage, even embroidery. Trying to match artist with artwork proved an entertaining party game for some. But regardless of provenance, the show offered something for everyone, from nude studies to a collage covered in a thick layer of amber-colored laminate in which was embedded (among other things) a dead white mouse.

Perhaps it was this latter item that inspired a young boy to ask his mother, “Why would someone pay $99 for art?” Her reply: “Art has value . . . it’s mysterious.” In some cases, why someone would pay $99 is mysterious. But as for the art on view last night, $99 was in some cases surely a steal. If the $99 Sale is a sort of art lottery, last night’s winning numbers in my own personal and highly subjective system, where 88, 57, 36, and 12.

The pieces reflect the aesthetic diversity on display from 88, a whimsical painting of a yawning red cat in a yellow dress, to 55, an evocative photo of part of the Golden Gate bridge taken, it would seem, through frosted glass; gradations of gray and white punctuated by bits of rich, rusty red. And from 36, a cluster of tiny pencil drawings—revolving around an owl with “FBI” on its breast—connected through snippets of text and words that manage to suggest a rather troubling storyline; “Sunday school” and “You are a ghost” and “Syrup,” to 12, embroidered fabric with a decorative border, but in lieu of, say, a Bible verse, the text reads, “Why does it always smell like ass in here?” Thankfully, that sentiment did not apply to gallery environs.

The $99 Sale runs through Saturday at the Soap Factory.

9.13.07: Idigaragua at Bedlam Theatre

Like many nights, last night began in a reputable lair of capitalist decadence. Together with my girlfriend and another couple, sitting at Barbette in Uptown, gorging on gastronomy, adhering to gastronomic protocol by bitching about said gastronomy. I mean, three squash flowers for fifteen bucks? My friend agreed. “Yeah, they should have called it quinoa with tempura squash flowers—not the other way around.” He caught the waitress’s attention. “Excuse me, could we get the check?” She came over. “Sorry, we’re kind of in a hurry. We’re going to a rock opera.”

Rock opera. It’s a pretentious term, sure, but it’s the fun kind of pretentiousness. It’s not like real opera. But it sounds just a touch more important than a rock concert. It’s the kind of fun pretentious you feel compelled to share with your waitress. We were going to Idigaragua, the rock opera Fort Wilson Riot is putting on at the Bedlam Theatre on the West Bank. 

The West Bank: the home of college-age kids who dress like post-globalist hobos. These kids are fun pretentious too—the fun pretension of youth hopeful enough to make harsh criticisms that go beyond complaints about the number of squash flowers on a plate. And because of all these fun pretentious kids in such a fun pretentious place, the Bedlam has become the home of a fun pretentious movement. It’s the home base for bands like the Blackthorns and Fort Wilson Riot; skinny young people affecting Tom Waits poses, singing in veiled metaphors about unsustainable industry.

So Idigaragua is fun pretentious, but it’s also great. Fort Wilson Riot is a fun pretentious band with a terrifying amount of talent. But before Idigaragua, they reminded me of Trip Shakespeare—talented, but a little too fascinated with camp. Here, they take Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief and marry it to Cirque du Soleil’s Alegria on the West Bank of the Mississippi. Sitting there, in the dark Bedlam, watching the young actors dancing, lip-synching to the band playing on a stage behind them, manipulating gigantic puppet birds of prey and pulling down a disposable screen playing a psychedelic video montage featuring chickens being de-beaked—well, it’s bewildering. You’re not exactly sure what’s happening, but it’s impressive. You will buy Idigaragua the album when you leave Idigaragua the rock opera. You will listen to Idigaragua in the privacy of your own home and it will make more sense there.

Let me just give you one piece of advice anyway: show up early, and read the libretta before the rock opera begins. Otherwise, you might not be able to follow this story about a journalist drunk in a strange bar in a strange land, who sells his soul to a band of hipster pirates, builds first a family and then a modern civilization, is abandoned in the desert before ending up in another strange bar in a strange land toasting a giant demon cowboy . . . you might be able to follow it, you might be able to absorb some of the anti-imperialist themes, but it might just come off like hippies mangling Brecht; a co-ed freakout with dancing cacti and wolf-women in gas masks.

So read the libretta first. It’s just good form at a rock opera.

Idigaragua runs through September 16 at Bedlam Theatre.

9.11.07: Speed-the-Plow at the Jungle Theater

In the fourth episode of HBO’s Flight of the Conchords, everybody’s favorite new pop comedy duo from New Zealand performs “Business Time,” a song about making love, making love for two, making love for twooo minutes. The song is funny and sweet at the same time, because we all can relate to being so busy with work and so desperately out of touch with our sexual partner that virtually any mundane gesture is read as an invitation for a little “business time.” Near the beginning of the song, Jemaine, one half of the pop comedy duo, sings, “You turn to me and say something sexy like, ‘I might go to bed, I’ve got work in the morning’/But I know what you’re really trying to say, baby/You’re trying to say, ‘Awww, yeah, it’s business time.’ ”

Using business as a linguistic metaphor for sex is also funny because it inverts the primary artistic conceit of David Mamet’s career—using sex as a linguistic metaphor for business. For the last twenty years, we’ve watched Mamet’s characters demanding, “What, are you some kind of a f***ing p***y?” in plays and Hollywood movies so many times that sex as a metaphor for business has become standard: Glengarry Glen Ross, The Untouchables, and Speed-the-Plow have given rise to The Player, Swimming with Sharks, Entourage, and basically Aaron Eckhart’s entire career. We’ve seen Mamet’s metaphor played out on the stage and screen so many times, heard his language so often, that sex as business has become such an overbearing orthodoxy that a rudimentary inversion can make pop comedy duos from New Zealand famous overnight.

The Jungle Theater is putting on Speed-the-Plow this harvest season: this is the 1988 source (along with '84’s Glengarry), of Mamet’s sex-as-business metaphor. Back in the day, this play about one Hollywood exec betting $500 that the other Hollywood exec couldn’t get his temp to f**k him impressed audiences and critics and angered feminists. I have no idea if it felt new then, but when the Jungle’s version begins, it certainly does not. You’ve seen this scenario so many times—slick, cynical, Jewish (the characters are named Gould and Fox) Hollywood suits selling-out-art-for-crass-commerce—that for the first ten minutes, it feels so stale, so artificial, that you’re kind of annoyed the audience you’re in the middle of, way out here in some Podunk theater so far from Power Hollywood, even has the ability to chortle knowingly about these characters. That this kind of sell-out, greedy, who-cares-about-the-little-people, screw job is so commonplace at this point that you can’t even get close to mustering as much outrage as those feminists back in the '80s. 

But, in fact, that’s exactly where the f**k Mamet wants you. Mamet’s rhythm, as always, takes a little getting used to, even though the characters talk, ostensibly, in the same mode many of us do in America, 2007: profane, disingenuous, distracted. And even though the talk seems so cheap, not many of us can come up with as many great lines as he does: “Yeah, I believe in the Yellow Pages too, but I don’t want to shoot it!” Or: “Come on, Bobby, if you can’t summarize what it’s about in a sentence, it ain’t going in the TV Guide.” And the actors, Tim McGee as Bobby Gould, Steve Sweere as Charlie Fox, and Heidi Bakke as Karen, deliver all of them in that particular so-natural-it’s-unnatural Mamet way.

All three of them are great, but Bakke, as Karen, has the most difficult role. And she pulls it off, throws it down, and shakes it until her daddy moans "stop." She’s introduced as the naïve temp hottie; the pathetic mark with the annoying voice that Charlie bets Bobby can’t nail. In the first act, she’s barely one-dimensional. But in the second act, she fills out, asked to portray it all: feminine hope, feminine fear, feminine need, feminine sex. Then, in the third, she’s brutally reduced to one dimension again. In fact, Karen is reduced so ruthlessly, so logically, that the audience will be at risk of coming to the same conclusion as the men in the play. But don’t give in, you p***ies. Mamet is just f***ing with you. 

It’s business time.

Speed-the-Plow runs through October 14 at the Jungle Theater.

9.11.07: Buffalo Collision at the Dakota

You would never suspect that the music of jazz quartet Buffalo Collision is 100 percent improvised. The group's ethos dictates that they don't write songs, but rather they compose in the moment, spontaneously. It’s an interesting concept given its members' credentials.

A snapshot of the players' cred:

+ Tim Berne, saxophone
An avant-garde legend who also plays in Bloodcount, and who will play with the Prezens Quartet at the Walker in March.

+ Ethan Iverson, piano
Also plays in The Bad Plus and the Billy Hart Quartet. A classically trained pianist, Iverson was the musical director of the Mark Morris Dance Group from 1998 to 2002.

+ David King, drums
With Iverson, completes two-thirds of The Bad Plus. Also performs with Happy Apple, The Gang Font, and Halloween, Alaska.

+ Hank Roberts, cello
Violinist Mat Maneri usually plays with this group, but this time Roberts, who has a long history playing with Bill Frisell, filled in. What a treat.

I attended the first of two sets last night at the Dakota (they played another set last night and tonight finish up their run with another two sets at 8 and 10 p.m.). The intimate crowd got more than their money's worth.

Improvisation can easily self-destruct. Someone goes one way while another goes the opposite direction; the dissonance disagrees and it fails.

Not so with these four accomplished musicians who, well, collided last night in a whirlwind of improvised, free jazz.

Each tune grew and developed seamlessly. One person started a tune, another added to it, the growing narrative weaving and jogging to and fro, and then yet another person built on it, and another. Finally, all four were playing together, and a mammoth soundscape had been designed—with no premeditation.

The foursome physically played into one another. At one point, saxophonist Berne faced Iverson—as the pianist, he was the other melody-maker—and awaited his moment to quietly re-enter the musical conversation with a stream of airy blows and squeaks. While Roberts swiftly finger-picked his cello, the conversation wandered; a whisper at times, a screaming match at others.

Iverson offered a crisp staccato, Berne slowed his playing to a drawl, and Roberts coaxed a warble from his cello almost as if it were a musical saw. Meanwhile, King provided soft, echoing cymbal taps to create a haunting backdrop.

In an instant, it was Latin percussion and superfast sax melodies while Iverson and Roberts patiently awaited their next entrance. And in another flash, Iverson's lightning fingers picked up on the piano and a whir of sound buzzed across the stage.

Eventually, Roberts rejoined this seemingly chaotic, yet somehow controlled, fray. And round it went—the quartet in a universe of its own making, one conversation after another. And all the audience could think was, Where are you going to take us next, and how are we going to get there?

9.9.07: Average Family at Children’s Theatre Company

There’s a moment in the beginning of the Children Theater Company’s Average Family when you think, Hmm, maybe this isn’t going to be another one of those preachy, warm-hearted, message-driven plays about the joys and rewards of rediscovering one’s lost Native American heritage.

It’s a brief moment. Dad comes home from work and plops on the couch to take a nap. Mom isn’t home from work yet. The kids, a teenage boy and his younger brother and sister, start fighting. Dad loses his cool and starts yelling at the kids. They ignore him and keep fighting. Average family? Yep, that’s about right. Then Dad goes and blows the whole thing by signing the family up for a reality TV show in which the whole gang will live for an entire summer on the prairie as if they are living in the 1840s, competing with another family for a fabulous new . . . RV.

Setting aside the logistical difficulties of getting two working, middle-class parents to take three months off to tape a television show, the moment vanishes when it is announced—surprise!—that the rowdy Roubideaux family has been cast as “Indians” for this little excursion into the wilderness, and they will be competing against a family of “settlers,” the Monroes.

The Roubideauxs don’t know the first thing about being, ahem—Native Americans—except that mom, a lawyer, spent some of her childhood on the res. I don’t think I’m giving anything way by saying that, lo and behold, the Roubideaux family ends up learning a great deal about the forgotten knowledge of their ancestors, and this knowledge brings them together in the sort of preachy, didactic, warm-hearted way you (or at least I) tend to dread.

To be fair, however, there are plenty of teachable moments in Average Family, all of which you can take advantage of if you download the handy Teacher/Student Study Guide from the CTC website. And to be fairer still, this is a world premiere by playwright Larissa Fasthorse, so maybe it’s too much to expect anything close to, say, a Native American August Wilson. (Compare its treatment of culture and heritage to anything August Wilson wrote, though, and the play’s abundant flaws will quickly become apparent.)

The good thing about Average Family—the thing parents may want to know—is that it sends all the “right” messages about learning to live with your fellow man, working together as family, the spirit of generosity, et cetera. It’s got some funny parts, too—like the fact that Mom and Dad spend just as much time away from home scrounging for food on the prairie as they spend at their jobs in real life. The play makes some laudable attempts to dispense with stereotypes of Native American families in contemporary culture, but ends up exchanging them for a bunch of other stereotypes, so the score on the stereotype sensitivity meter is about even.

Average, you might say.

Average Family runs through October 6 at Children's Theatre Company.

9.7.07: Rotten Sun at MCAD

Part of the fun of going to opening receptions at art shows is listening to people talk about the art. In the case of last night’s show at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, the eavesdropping payoff was compounded by hearing art students discuss the work of faculty.

Comments overheard at last night’s opening for Rotten Sun: On the Grotesqueries in Art and Design: “It just really jars me. I don’t like it . . . I don’t see any reason to it. I can’t even look at it.” And later in the evening: “The finger shoes are so disturbing!” referring to Design Chair Tom Gannett’s Deadly Pumps, graphic collages reminiscent of 1950s-era advertisements, except the pumps are made of beetles and razor blades instead of patent leather.

One could have a thoroughly entertaining evening following around a particularly vocal and opinionated group of young people on a “guided tour.”

Rotten Sun features recent work from two dozen Minneapolis College of Art and Design faculty members. The show’s name refers to an essay by French writer and philosopher Georges Bataille in which he describes the “life-giving sun as actually a monstrous ball of fire”; the smooth and shiny surface turned inside out to expose dark inner workings.

The grotesque in art can be obvious. But more often it’s subtle, producing a sense of unease rather than outright revulsion. Mary McDunn’s diptych of a polar bear floating in a tank of water falls into the latter category. Titled Around . . . and around . . .  and around, the black-and-white photos hint at animal despair and the futility of life in the manmade world.

Several artists follow a similar thread offering highly detailed images of animals that draw you in with their beauty, but stir up dissonant feelings with their subject matter. Pam Valfer subverts the pictorial process with Highway 35 and County Road V. Her landscape in oil depicts a forested landscape with the smallest scrap of highway visible and a deer laying lifeless in the foreground, the certainty of its state punctuated by an unnaturally bowed leg. Katherine Turczon’s American Crow and House Sparrow, close-up highly detailed black-and-white images of dead birds, offers incredible depth and beauty along with a helping of morbidity. Then there’s Linda Wing’s Hannah’s First Trout, a taxidermy fish lacquered in sparkly pink nail polish and mounted on a pearl-studded plaque. The description next to Wing’s piece sums up well the mixed impulses at play: “There is a special and perverse place in [Wing’s] heart for wildlife.”

Dead animals may strike a more obvious chord of the grotesque than, say, Allen Brewer’s colored pencil and ink drawings. His portraits of 1950s teenagers—girls in fitted sweaters, boys in ties and thick glasses—are taken out of context, isolated from their surroundings. For Brewer, the grotesque in his work has to do with the idea that representation of the past, of a person’s life, always feels like a “chunky, cheap rendition” that does not live up to our own memories.

Rotten Sun runs through October 7 at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

8.31.07: Happy Apple at the Artists' Quarter

Minneapolis improv jazz trio Happy Apple released its seventh record, Happy Apple Back On Top, on Tuesday. Last night was the first of three CD-release shows this weekend, and though it will be hard for the band to outperform itself at the Saturday and Sunday night gigs, it wouldn't be unheard of if they did. One of the best things about seeing this group is that you never expect those inspired moments to occur quite as frequently as they do.

In the band's eleven years, the lineup of its players and the pace of their playing has morphed, but the last several years have proven that the current trio is a force to be reckoned with. On its face, standing room only for an avant-garde jazz trio seems unlikely. But it happens just about every time Happy Apple plays the Artists' Quarter. The group draws a mixed crowd; there are lots of teenagers and twentysomething hipsters from the artsy crowd, but there are also thirtysomethings, fortysomethings, and older fans sprinkled in. Having seen this band live numerous times over the years, I was actually surprised at how many thirty-plusses there were in last night's crowd.

The music is highly emotive. Last night, the band opened with "The Broad Side of the Silent Barn," a new, unrecorded song with a fast bass line, muted brushes on the drums, and soft sax. The setlist continued with most of the tunes off the new record, including "The New Bison," the turbo-charged "1996 A.D.," and my personal favorite from Happy Apple Back On Top, "Very Small Rock."

But there's more to a Happy Apple show than the music. In his introduction for the band last night, Davis, the AQ's doorman, called it "the most entertaining group in jazz." Hard to argue with that. I've sometimes wondered if some of the crowd comes just for the tongue-in-cheek comedy of drummer Dave King, whose witty banter between songs offers a welcome breather both for sax player Mike Lewis and audiences still reeling from their latest exploratory journey.

The funniest, and definitely the most surreal, part of the evening came after the set break, when King asked his father to model the band's new T-shirt, which he did—while dancing across the stage. Apparently a self-effacing sense of humor runs in the family.

My companion to this show was sketching during the first set—a common occurrence at these shows, as the music is inspirational. It's complicated music that seems fully improvisational—and there is improvisation—but the skeletons of these songs are very carefully composed, and often melodic. No matter how out there the tunes venture, Happy Apple's fans eat up their brand of jazz, screaming for every song.

Happy Apple performs again tonight and tomorrow nights at the Artists' Quarter.

Friday's setlist:

The Broad Side of the Silent Barn
The New Bison
1996 A.D.
Very Small Rock
Crème de Menthe Quasar
Calgon for Hetfield
Coordinators of the Gate Control
Rise! Marc Anthony

[Set break]

Hence the Turtleneck
New Things at New Hope
Wishing Book
Koala Bear Wearing a T-Shirt with Your Corporate Logo
Most Popular to Succeed
Feeling Good Is Good Enough

Encore:
Salmon Jumpsuit