OFF: Pink Dots in Cincinnati

[Keith Henderson]

Hi Folks...

Got back late last night from a quick trip down to Cincinnati to check out
the Legendary Pink Dots show.  The venue, Bogarts, is a place I'd seen
mentioned a zillion times as it generally gets all the same bands coming
through that also come here to the Newport in Columbus (but not this time)
and either Peabody's or the Odeon (or the old Empire club) up in Cleveland.
But I'd never been there (Bogarts) before, but discovered it's very similar
to those other places, though the ceilings are only half as high as at the
Newport, and twice as high as at Peabody's.  It's right across the street
from the U. Cincinnati campus, and hence is dominated by local
face-metal-alternakids.

Jerry Kranitz went along and brought the fresh-off-the-presses October issue
of Aural Innovations.  For the first time, *all* the art, graphics, and
photos came out looking great!  The issue is again longer this time, up to
32 pages, plus with some smaller fonts being used, much more info can be
found within its pages.
After a beer at BW3's, we entered the club just before 8 pm, when things
were scheduled to start.  It musta been dollar-off goth night, as it seemed
as though anyone not totally dressed in black (like me) or wearing WWF-style
makeup were looked upon with disdain.  Either that, or people were getting
an early start on Halloween.  And for whatever reason, everyone seemed to be
smoking clove cigarettes, which I will now state as being the most
disgusting f*cking things ever invented.  I may have to burn my clothing now.

The opening act was billed as the 'Twilight Circus Dub Soundsystem.'  When a
crazed dude wearing a feather red boa came sauntering out, I knew this was
the guy from the Dots that Christian was talking about in his review (Oslo
show) in the last issue of AI.  It was Ryan Moore, who plays drums (and
occasionally bass guitar) in the full band.

TCDS is kind of a joke, or at least I hope so.  The music is almost entirely
piped in, to which Moore gyrates around and generally acts like a total
lysergic freakazoid.  Inane commentary into the mic, some triggered sound
effects from either a keyboard and some hand-held device that looks similar
to the floor pedal that Ron Tree uses, and some bass "playing" or totally
incompetent drumming all accompany the reggae dub music programmed in.  It's
the kind of act that one might have expected from Andy Kaufmann, and I admit
it was entertaining, but not in any serious way.

After about 45 minutes of this bizarre display, there was a short break, and
then the proper Dots came out.  A five piece, there's lead
singer/keyboardist Edward Ka-Spel, main keyboardist/audio generator Phil
Knight (aka the Silverman), sax/flute meister 'Hornblower' (don't know his
real name), a guy on guitar/bass, and then Moore on drums/bass.  The name
LPD has been known to me for quite awhile, but I hadn't heard any of the
music until perhaps 4-5 months ago, when I picked up a used CD (The Maria
Dimension, from 1991) after seeing Pam Wheaton's recommendation of LPD
music.  [I'd since picked up two others, The Lovers from the mid-80s, and
the one from 1992...can't remember the title off-hand...Neither of these
were as good.]  I was generally pleased with this stuff, though I wasn't too
keen on Ka-Spel's voice and singing style.  I would characterize his voice
as a nasal mix of Daevid Allen and Neil Tennant, or more simply, like
fictional hero Austin Powers....i.e., a ridiculously sappy, heavy
British-accented voice (though I'm sure he can't help it).

After about 45 minutes of LPD's set, I had to admit to myself that this was
an extremely disappointing show, and hence I was souring greatly on LPD as a
band.  Up to then, most of the music had been lifeless,
avant-dreamy-poetic-pop schlock with Ka-Spel's whiny yap going on and on and
on....  [His voice characteristics aside, part of the problem with his
singing style is that the lyrical lines are nearly continuous (a la Eric
Idle's character who never shuts up), and so you get that incessant whine.]
The only interesting thing was Hornblower's great sax (he'd play both alto
and bass sax at the same time!) and occasional knob-twiddling psychedelic
weirdness coming from the Silverman.

But then, in the biggest turnaround in my concert-going history (about the
time I had decided I'd need to send a very nasty e-mail to Christian
indeed), everything picked up suddenly, and the sonic blitz version of LPD
beamed in from outer space. It all started with Hornblower (complete with
headlamps) jumping into the audience (of perhaps 200) and jamming on his sax
(a tenor this time?) while strolling through the crowd.  From then on, LPD
were ON.  We quickly got one of the cool tracks I'd heard on a compilation
tape (The Legendary Pink Mix) Jerry gave me which really smoked, and then
that segued into the totally crazy 'The Saucers are Coming,' with
introduction by Ka-Spel that was right out of the
Calvert/Turner/Bloom-Godzilla manual on panic-inducing ranting.

A little later there was a brief respite from the insanity with an acoustic
something that I thought might be the title track from the Lovers, and then
a fabulous energetic and totally freaked-out version of the Grain Kings, one
of my favourite tracks from The Maria Dimension.  That turned out to be the
finale, but then two encores of at least two songs each ensued, and much of
that material was quite strong as well.  By this point, Silverman's audio
generators were fully charged up and things got a bit out of control on the
screechy side.

As far as the band goes, Hornblower is the true star, in a very similar
manner as Bloomdido in Gong.  Ka-Spel in an eccentric guy, but well outdid
by his own drummer (who during this set kept his antics subdued, and proved
to us that he truly *wasn't* an incompetent musician, though he's still
undertalented).  The guitar player (who of course, played quite a bit of
bass as well) "disappeared" for large portions of the show, but occasionally
put forth some really cool material.  Silverman, as stated above, is a true
knob-twiddler kind of synth player.

With Ka-Spel's oft-annoying singing, this is a band that can never (in my
book) attain greatness (they've had plenty of time to work on it) but this
show was definitely worth seeing.  Just be prepared for a mixed
response...some things just don't work.  But they really are different from
any other band I've seen.  The Gong comparisons are numerous, but on the
surface only.  The space rock qualities of the music really sound more like
the sonic attack of a band like Pressurehed, but the writing style is more
like the PsychedeliDreamPop bands of the UK.  And that's what sometimes gets
a little sickening.  In fact, they should have just lopped off the top
portion of the set, and started out smoking as they could have done.

The North American tour is just underway, so many of you will have a show
nearby (it goes for at least a month still).  I posted the tentative dates
awhile back, which I got from their website.  I'd post the URL if I had it,
but you can probably find it yourselves easily, by searching UBL or something.

On the way out, I did pick up the two CDs from 1995 and 1997 that Christian
had recommended (title names fail me now).  I had actually heard a couple of
these songs on that same tape (Citadel was particularly exciting) so I knew
there was good material to be found therein.  A new 1998 release is also
being sold (along with a flood of Ka-Spel's and Moore's solo material),
called Nemesis (something?).

An interesting night...very different indeed.

Keith H. (FAA)