Graceland is one of my favorite albums and so I was very interested in the evening presented by Boog City last night at Sidewalk. A gaggle of your favorite Antifolk stars gathered to perform that album along with Daniel Johnston's Hi, How Are You. There were many fine interpretations of Paul Simon's songs. I particularly liked the ones like those by Dan Fishback and Jesse Schoen that went a little against the grain of the original. But there were many fine moments by Casey Holford, and The Infringers, as well as Kathy Zimmer, who I thought stood out on Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes. The Infringers rewrote The Myth of Fingerprints so that it was about the petroleum leak in the Gulf. I wasn't so sure about that approach--I thought it came across as a bit of a stretch. But hey kudos to them anyway for trying something different.
I have not yet found the intrinsic identification with Daniel Johnston that seems woven among the songwriters and performers of the Sidewalk scene, although I suspect at some point I will get around to listening to his stuff more carefully since so many people whose work I admire are fans of his. In any event, although I don't have the same points of comparison as I did to the Simon album, there were lots of nice performances by The Trouble Dolls, Bob Kerr, Steve Espinola, Preston Spurlock and The Devil and Christy Davis. Steve played his electric tennis racket on one of the songs and used a reel to reel tape recorder to form a backing track on another. Christy Davis and her pals gave a particularly spirited performance including some theatrically recited lyrics.
I was testing out my new camera the other night--one that theoretically lets me photograph in much lower light than I have been able to previously. Here's a shot of Dan Fishback, who played Gumboots and You Can Call Me Al.
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