It's not every weekend - or year, for that matter - that someone with the rock pedigree of Martin Bisi drops by Kansas City, guitar in hand. The longhaired New Yorker of Argentine descent has produced everyone from Herbie Hancock to Sonic Youth to Kansas City bands Be/Non and Season to Risk. Read our interview for more on that.
Unfortunately, his show Friday night at the Record Bar was beset by numerous problems. Bisi was scheduled to go on at 11, after the Medicine Theory, a local drums-and-guitar two-piece that played hammering, dull, repetitive, skronky and tiresomely simplistic noise rock for about 40 minutes too long. I'm all for dissonance, edge, minimalism, etc, but my theory is these pills are expired. After they'd lulled the sparse audience into a metallic torpor, poor Bisi began setting up. And setting up. And setting up...
Judging by these live photos, Bisi likes to put on an elaborate stage production, chock full of imagery from his new, classical-myth-referencing concept album Sirens of the Apocalypse. In Kansas City, Bisi couldn't seem to get one little guitar amp to do what he wanted. After bustling about the stage, setting up pedals and checking microphones, sporadically strumming chords for about 10 or 15 minutes, he said into the mic, "I think I blew my guitar amp." Ate the Greek goddess of misfortune must have attacked the amp directly because I didn't hear any amp-blowing sounds coming from the stage. But I guess I don't know that much about electronics.
After a replacement amp had been proffered and correctly adjusted, Bisi and his two cohorts, DJ Butterface on keys and samples and Adja the Turkish Queen on backing vocals, began a set that was light on the instrumentation and heavy on the spoken-word style sing-chanting from Bisi, which is basically the formula throughout Sirens. On a couple of tunes, local boy Wade Williamson of Olympic Size and the reformed Season to Risk, sat in on drums.
For a show this avant garde and just plain quiet to work, the mood needs to be set and the crowd needs to be giving its full attention. Neither of these things were anywhere near to being in place at this show. Bar chatter practically drowned out all sound from the stage. And that was probably why Bisi stopped after only five or six songs. I guess we the audience could have turned it around by shutting up and going down and paying attention, but that just wasn't going to happen. Based on his past work, Bisi deserves a crew of roadies bearing him on a pole-mounted divan, a room in a five-star hotel and a quiet, dark concert hall with a captive audience and winged goddesses in the rafters playing theramins and scattering rose petals. It wasn't the fault of the Record Bar owners, either, that the show sputtered. I guess it just wasn't in the stars. Next time, Bisi. Next time.
Salvaging the evening was ever-reliable, always charming Olympic Size. Regular bassist Chris Tolle had been sidelined with an ear infection, so former standby bassist and producer Dave Gaume stepped in and did just fine. The lights came down, Olympic Size administered its usual savage-breast soothers like "Fuego," "The Hardest Part" and "Friends," and everything was right with the world. The group has reportedly inked a deal with local label OxBlood Records and will be remastering and rereleasing its full-length You'll Miss Me When I'm Gone sometime soon.
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