It's hard to write -- or even care -- about the reunion show of a band that you weren't around to see during its first run. But I'm glad I saw Mongol Beach Party get back to the jam after 15+ years of dormancy, especially considering I came with zero personal expectations -- just the recommendation of people whose taste I trust. Cody Wyoming, for example, told me earlier in the week that MBP was one of three local bands that he would sneak out of the house to see when he was a kid (the other two were Sin City Disciples and Nine Lives). To risk getting grounded to see a band -- now that's some youth gone wild.
Click on photo for slide show.
Young, the Mongol Beach bums were not, but they were pretty youthful, especially considering that when I caught them late on Saturday, it was the final round of the two-night, two-sets-a-night weekend. Based on what I'd heard on MySpace plus a cursory listen to the group's 1991 (and only) album, Toast, which was just reissued, I wasn't planning on liking this band at all. The music seemed like whiteboy, pre-Phish jangle-funk with silly lyrics -- kinda like what my first high school band aspired to play, realized.
And while that's more or less true, MBP is more than that, luckily. It's a melange of sounds from a particular moment in the late '80s early '90s, after R.E.M. had broken the college radio market and before Dave Matthews ruined all other men for the fratboys and hippies; when They Might Be Giants were still heroes to young nerds; when Paul Simon's Graceland brought African music to the songwriting intro-spectrum and Bobby McFerrin was beloved by grade schoolers and hated by their parents but listened to by both. As Lawrence-based rock critic Iain Ellis has observed, the '90s were a great time for weirdity in music, and MBP were clearly a part of that.
Gray as any old punk, barefoot singer and percussionist Christian Hankel channeled the histrionic creepiness of the guy from Oingo Boingo without overdoing it. The five-piece band behind him (guitar, bass, drums, trombone and sax) juggled the Party's quasi-worldbeat rhythms with little strain on the part of the musicians -- these guys have all grown into seasoned players since MBP's early days. Scott Easterday, who now is best known for his role as brooding singer and rhythm guitarist for Expassionates, wielded his headless, fretless (again, that's HEADLESS FRETLESS) electric bass like a bouncy, beardy, balding Blue Turtles-era Sting. The group's Talking Headsy instrumental "Kokracha's Homecoming" prefigured the gypsy raids of Gogol Bordello by over a decade. Other songs, like "Jigsaw Man," "It's Wrong," and "White Elephants" and most of the songs on Toast are big, goofy, almost-catchy party tracks loaded with noodly bass, rapidly strummed guitar, overcaffeinated drumming and occasional, soulful horns. It's better suited to a live setting than at-home listening, unless you're listening to it in the background while cleaning your Rube Goldberg machine.
A guy I talked to at the bar called it "quirk rock." That seemed about right.
-- Jason Harper
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