THE HYMER TOUR

4/26

Landed in Zurich at 7AM, met up with Frank, had a three hour snooze, then met Eveline who was coming in from Bern with our amazing super-camper. Huge, brand new, modern luxury camper that sleeps six and has all kinds of gadgets and gizmos, including a full stove, fridge, and bathroom with shower. Sweet! We call it the Hymer. We went to the practice space of Phillipe from Fingerpoke and had a five hour rehearsal. It was the first time that Eveline and Heather had played with Frank, and it sounded really good.
We were completely fried and exhausted, but it was time to meet the friends for dinner. Had a big delicious dinner with many bottles of wine, then went to a bar to have "one last drink." We were falling asleep standing up, went to bed.

3/28
Next morning, Eveline picked up Daria at the airport, suntanned from her vacation in Mexico. We meet Tom Rist and have a breakfast at a café, then get it the Hymer and drive to Bern. Beautiful sunshine everywhere. Check in to the Hotel National, then Heather, Frank and I walk around lovely Bern. We go to the large cathedral and walk up the little circular monk steps to the very top, about 200 meters up, where we can see the whole city. Next we walk over to the "Barengraben," the bear pit which was built about 500 years ago. It is a circular pit made of stone about 20 meters deep, and inside there live three or four bears. It is weird and barbaric, and the people of Bern are ashamed of it, yet it is a tradition in the city and so they keep it. The bears seem healthy, but they are obviously bored, and they wait all day for tourists to throw down carrots and fruit, which you can purchase at the stand next to the pit. We were fascinated and watched the bears for about an hour. The good news is that the city of Bern has decided to expand the bear pit, and a plot of land about 1KM long is being cleared and developed right next to the existing bear pit, which will be the new bear territory. Afterwards we walk back to the place where we were playing that night, a large open hall in an art association building. We are playing as part of the 20 year anniversary of the Progr Art Association. In the city of Bern, it is a huge festival of art. It is kind of like CMJ for art. Eveline has an installation in the show, a huge archway made entirely of fabric woven from huge teabags. This is her home town and she is a star. It is the most stunning and inventive piece in the whole show by far. We have our soundcheck with Phillip, the very professional and competent soundman, and it sounds great. It is the first time the five of us have played together and it sounds great.
We play our show in the big echoey hall. At first the people are reticent, just checking us out, and we feel a little stiff. But then the Melomane magic starts to flow and the room becomes a warm bath of love. People are dancing, cheering, clapping, asking for more. It is a fantastic show and a great way to start the tour. Afterwards we meet a couple from Solothurn who have been Melomane fans since they saw us in 2001. They have all our albums and came from Solothurn to see us. While we're loading our equipment into the Hymer, a group of gorgeous drunk giggling Bernese women invite themselves into the camper and share some Jamesons and coke with us. They ask us to join them at the "Kornhaus," a nightclub around the way. It is a loud, crowded, expensive disco, so we sit in the lobby and chat with Simon Ho, a very cool piano player/composer who plays with the likes of John Zorn, Mark Ribot, and Greg Cohen.
3/29
Wake up and have breakfast in the hotel, then get in the Hymer to drive to Nurnberg. We get on the road at about 12:30, thinking it is a four hour drive to Nurnberg. Unfortunately it is the Saturday after Easter and the after-holiday traffic is intense. It takes us 7 hours to get to Nurnberg, and we finally arrive at the Muz Club at about 7:45. We meet the nice boys from Mars Mushrooms. The club is cozy and well-lit and beautiful. We set up very quickly using MM's equipment with the help of Martine, the tall, beautiful, kick-ass sound woman, and then eat a delicious meal of spicy thai fish and rice and vegetarian spinach and mushrooms. Mars Mushrooms are premiering their video of a recent three-week tour of Japan, and the room is crowded. The tour video is really well-made and interesting, which is no easy feat for a tour video. Afterwards we take the stage, not expecting the crowd to really take to us, since it is really Mars M's night. This is our first show as a four piece without Frank. He will join us next Friday in Lausanne. Again, the Melomane magic takes over. We are tight and rocking and the sound is great. The crowd eventually fills up and moves towards the stage. By the middle of the show, they are cheering and clapping. They ask us for an encore and we end with a raging Fireflies and Far Out one-two punch and they are stoked. At the merch table, two pretty Germans are trying to decide which Melomane CD to buy, and they end up buying both. We also met Moe, rapper/hostess bartender, and Maggie, another bartender, who spent two years living in Bohemia, Long Island, working as a makeup artist for an undertaker, reconstructing the faces of dead people. Now she is a ballet teacher, and she looks like a Betty Page living in Japan. These incredible lives. We go back to Moe's house where we stay up till 5AM drinking whiskey and playing with Mary, the amazing bouncy playful kitten. Gooooood times. The ladies and I are getting along splendidly.

3/30
Day off in Nurnberg. We say goodbye to our sweet hostess Moe, who gives us a cd of her Christian rap band, Verbales Design, which we listen to in the van.
Interesting.
We walk around the beautiful center of the city, with the warm spring sun shining on the river and the birds singing. We have dinner at a restaurant by the side of the river, salad, gratin noodles, and a delicious rose wine. As we are walking back to the van, we see the most bizarre statue in the middle of town. It is a depiction of all of the trials and terrors of marriage, including the most gruesome scenes of couples fighting and clawing at each other, children crying, ghastly horrible creatures eating people, and a fat woman stuffing herself with food. It also has a poem engraved on a large heart, written in the 1500's, which details the realities and disappointments of marriage.
We drive to Munich and arrive at the home of Red and Nina at about 11PM. We have a glass of wine with them and watch some funny 
videos on YouTube, including the Japanese Casio drum solo promo, and "I Was Robbed by Two Men, " which will become our new tour theme song.

3/31 Munich

Delicious breakfast at a Turkish place nearby. Heather and I went to a drum shop, where she got some rods for her Sonor drums which you can't buy in the US, so she was happy. Eveline and Daria went shoe shopping, and then met Heather and I down by the river where we sat and had a beer sitting on the grass in the sun. Life is good.
Back to the Cord Club for soundcheck, then across the street for an absolutely delicious dinner. Drank a Spanish red wine that blew my head off, delicious and full bodied and rich. We get ready in the van, the ladies getting dressed and giving me hair-care tips. I feel like an intruder posing as a gay model dresser.

The show that night at Cord was great. Nina and Red had decorated the club with all kinds of flashing lights and colorful glowing things, and we played in a room surrounded by windows overlooking the cars and people of the avenue. We had a totally rocking show, though the crowd was sparse. Lo and behold, we had fans there who had been coming to see us since our first show in Munich, and who had already bought all of our cds, including the mustachioed man who told me the last time we were in Mucinch that "not a day goes by that I don't listen to Melomane." Wow. Eveline and Heather are both completely nailing their parts and starting to own the songs, we are becoming a hot little unit. It feels so good to be on stage with three talented and gorgeous women, I am the luckiest man alive.
Achim, my old friend who came to visit me in New York, is at the show, and we catch up on life. Then he leaves and the Karaoke begins, hosted by Nina. Highlights include Daria and Heather singing "Don't You Want me Baby," a rousing rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody by Nina and her friend, Red singing a New Order hit, and I busted out "Sexyback" by Justin Timberlake, at the end of which Daria jumped up on stage and started singing "I Was Robbed By Two Men." Classic! Packed up the van, then we went on to some local strip clubs, where a man with three hot ladies caused a bit of a commotion. 

4/1 April Fools Day in Berlin

Woke up after two hours sleep and got some groceries at the Turkish supermarket, fruit, veggies, crackers, olives, chocolate, peanuts, juice for the road. I bought a delicious greasy kebab to fight the hangover and we got on the road to Berlin. I slept like a baby in the little cubby in the back of the Hymer for about six hours. We pulled into Berlin about 7PM. Saw the big needle of Alexanderplatz and felt the excitement of Berlin, one of the big classic cities of the world. One of the top three in my opinion, in a class with Paris and New York. 
We pulled up to the "venue," but it was more like a community center in the middle of a housing project, in a neighborhood called Wedding. I'm still not sure if what happened next actually happened or if it was all staged as an elaborate hoax. We were greeted by a man named Helge wearing a black suit stretched over his large belly. He led us into a small room with two rows of chairs lined up. This was where we were supposed to play. There was a sound guy blasting old Nazi radio broadcast in German over the sound system as we set up our gear. These strange and frightening broadcasts got louder and louder as we tried to make sense of what the hell was going on. In the back of the room at the top of some stairs, a man in a very good suit, neatly dressed, hair combed, was muttering in German non-stop and fiddling with some kind of equipment. At first we thought he was responsible for the Nazi radio broadcast, but then we realized he was supposed to be the "lighting tech." There was only one light in the room and it could only turn off and on. A few times during the soundcheck, the man turned the light off and everything went black, and then he would turn and say things to his imaginary crew. Eveline translated for us, telling us he was saying "now the show is over, great job everyone," and so on. At one point, the sound guy turned to the lighting guy and said "You need to stop talking for the next two hours." The lighting guy got very upset and said that was much too long.
We went to our Hymer and had a makeshift dinner of cheese, bread, olives and wine, and then it was showtime. We took our place in front of the 10 or 12 fifty-something-year-old weirdos in the audience and did our thing. The audience seemed to enjoy it, they clapped after our first number, Vesuvius. We were playing really quiet and feeling very uncomfortable, when all of a sudden a very drunk guy with two teeth in the middle row started yelling things at us. "Fucking great rock and roll!" We played another song, and then he piped in with "Play some rock and roll! I love rock and roll!" Another song, then "I love the drummer! I love the bass player." I took a vote on who liked the bass player better than the drummer and it came out a tie, 1 to 1, drunk guy for Heather and a woman in the back for Daria. Next we played Allumette, our French song, and the drunk guy yelled out "That was a fucking gay song! You guys are fucking gay!" We busted out laughing. Then he yelled "I want to play your guitar!" to which I replied "You can't, my guitar is only for gay people." Laughs from the audience. During the next song, our drunk friend got out of his seat and began swerving and dancing around the room in front of us. I thought he was going to knock over a mic or an amp but he seemed pretty expert at dancing drunk and he pulled it off. He went back to his seat and then stepped up his name-calling and cursing, culminating in my favorite: "I want to suck your pussy!" 
Finally the show was over. Drunkie, whose name was Clyve, asked if he could touch my guitar. He seemed so eager to just touch it that I let him. I sensed that he had a pretty grim life and that holding my Gretsch in his hands might be a bright spot for him. He held the guitar while I kept one protective hand on it, and his face lit up like a kid at Christmas. He thanked me profusely and said it was the most beautiful guitar he had ever seen. Next he walked up to Daria and began to get romantic. He said, "I really like you. I really really like you" Daria smiled politely, then he took a step closer and said "Do you want…" There was a long pause, and what came out next surprised and amazed us all… "me to splash beer on your face?" Wow…
Up in the lobby, an enthusiastic fan accosted me and said he loved the music. He said he knew exactly what our songwriting influences were. "You like the music of the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. Am I right?!!" I admitted that he was right. As we were loading our equipment out, he managed to find me and repeat this discovery three more times. Also during the load out, we heard the scary sound guy sneer at the Clyve and say "I wish I had the power to put you in a concentration camp." Yikes. Evil Nazi soundman. Then helge came and thanked us for the show, and offered this by way of accommodation: " You are invited to stay at my pace tonight, but I would not recommend it, because it is not very comfortable and I don't have any mattresses." The last thing that was said to me before we said our hasty goodbyes and got the fuck out of Wedding forever was this tasty tidbit; "Wedding is the 319th worst neighborhood out of 319 in Berlin. The serial killers here are very messy and stupid, they just cut people's heads off for fun."
Luckily, Heather's sweet friend Simone saved us. She invited us to stay at her amazing duplex apartment in the neighborhood of the Kulturbraurei. She was waiting for us with whiskey and hospitality, we told her about our crazy night, and then we went to sleep laughing.

4/2 Second night in Berlin

We had blown out our transformer the night before, and to our amazement there was an electronics shop right across the street from Simone's house that was able to fix it. Most great fortunate blessed luck! We had breakfast at a café and then decided to split up for the day. I had lunch with my dear friend Anette, and we went to a fantastic museum where I saw photography by a very over-rated German guy named Something Something (I forget) who takes pictures of himself and his self-important arty friends doing self-important arty things around the world. Also saw some very beautiful photos of Detroit in the 60s by an American that moved me very much.
Then back to Schokoladen for soundcheck. Beautiful funky lovely Schokoladen. Met the boys and girls of Lilienthal, the band that was playing before us. Two girls, two guys. The boys were prettier than the girls. Two models turned musicians on their way to the top. 
As the doors open, we saw Gordon Raphael walk in. It was great to see him, but unfortunately I only talked to him for a bout five minutes and after the show he was nowhere to be found. Mysterious Gordon, man of international intrigue.
First up was Jeff Tarlton, a noisy solo electric troubadour from Detroit, living in Berlin for 15 years, playing heartfelt and weird Guided By Voices meets Sonic Youth type stuff on an electric guitar with just a drummer. Very convincing and rocking. 
Next it was Lilienthal. They put on a really good show of tight and rocking power-pop, using loops and sequences integrated with the real instruments in an interesting and convincing way. All good musicians, and you can tell they won't be satisfied until they are super-stars.
We went on and rocked our asses off. Eveline and Heather (AKA Evel and Eater) are totally locked in and giving it their all. Evel delivers a scorching solo on "15 Steps" and Heather is pounding and swinging and shlagging the zeug or zeuging the shlagg with all her might. A beautiful sweaty good time. 
Afterwards we hang out with Nico, who is looking better every year and has some really nice comments. He says I sing in English but my melodies and music are purely French. I take that as the highest compliment. 
We hang out with all of our new friends, including Oscar the bartender and Tarzan the honorary crazy guy, then go up to our little apartment above the club. I stay up late playing dj on my laptop and writing this blog while my sleeping beauties drift off into rock n roll oblivion around me.

http://lucidculture.wordpress.com/2008/09/25/cd-review-melomane-look-out/

CD Review: Melomane – Look Out!
September 25, 2008

The long-awaited product of Melomane frontman Pierre de Gaillande's ongoing "disaster song cycle" is a masterpiece, not only one of the best albums of the year but of the entire decade. As good as their 2007 cd Glaciers was, this is even better: it's the New York art-rock band's greatest shining moment, in the studio anyway. Lushly orchestrated with layers of strings, guitars, keyboards and a propulsive rhythm section featuring the brilliantly melodic Daria Grace (also of the Jack Grace Band and her own, rustically romantic project Daria Grace & the Prewar Ponies) on bass, this cd looks at the apocalypse from many different angles, some of them as ominous as you would expect, some less so. Look Out! stares death square in the face: death by war, volcanic eruption, flood, global warming, collision with space junk…and flame, at least metaphorically.

The cd kicks off somewhat counterintuitively with the stately, blackly humorous The Shadow of Vesuvius, something of a noir cabaret number given a slowly bouncing rock treatment, marching along inevitably to its doom. The cd's second cut Darkness Rising, a brooding meditation on the logical extreme that a dictatorial regime leads to, is a long, intricate epic punctuated in places by searing, anguished, somewhat Gilmouresque guitar from multi-instrumentalist Quentin Jennings. The cd's best cut (and perhaps the band's best-ever track), O Mighty Orb begins with slow, pitch-black piano, markedly slower than the version the band plays live, building inexorably over a slinky, chromatic bassline, slashing keyboards bright against eerie reverberating guitar. Black humor comes to the forefront here again with the song's brutally sarcastic trick ending.

Meteorite, a surprisingly gentle, countryish 6/8 ballad also begins quietly and builds, bass climbing against the guitar and vice versa: "The destruction of the whole human race brought by a glimmering shower," Gailland muses stoically. After the scathing antiwar anthem Battlecat, a flamenco-inflected number in 5/4 time, the cd closes with Je Suis une Alumette (I Am a Match), a tongue-in-cheek song about the romance between a cigarette and a match, the Paris-born Gaillande's first-ever song in French. Guest vocalist Eleni Mandell is merveilleuse, and of course there's a laugh-out-loud if somewhat obvious musical joke when its moment arrives.

Thirty years ago, bands this good, this intelligent and this enamored of soaring, epic grandeur would be all over FM radio and would be playing stadiums around the world. Until that happens again, you can get this cd online or at shows: Melomane play Thurs Oct 2 at the Bell House, 149 7th Street in Gowanus, Brooklyn, 9:30ish, on a bill also including the excellent M Shanghai String Band.

LOOK OUT is now available on Vermillion Music:

www.melomane.org/vermillion

And on cdbaby:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/melomane4

Look Out is an EP of disaster-themed songs begun in a studio in the Pyrenees during a break from Melomane's August 2007 tour of France. It is their most rocking output to date, featuring the cynical/poetic/political lyrics of their first three albums, but wading into all-out guitar aggression, large-scale orchestral soundscapes, and bittersweet melodic heartbreak in turns. Or as LucidCulture.com puts it; "Living proof that epic grandeur can be synonymous with great fun." The EP features a collaboration with LA-based singer/songwriter Eleni Mandell, who lends her vocal abilities to Melomane's first French-only number, Je Suis Une Allumette.

Friends of Melomane
We are ecstatic to be heading out to France again for the month of August. If you happen to be in the area, come join us for some music by the sea, or tell a friend.

We are still looking for shows on August 8 and 9, so if you are a booker or know of a good place for Melomane to play in the area, let us know!

We'll be doing our second annual tour of the seaside Atlantic coast of France from August 6 to 18. Not a bad place to be in August... We are very happy to be joined on this tour by explosive voodoo violinist, Karl "The Gnarl" Meyer. We'll be doing some of our new songs, and releasing our brand new tour-only EP, Look Out!, recorded last year in France.

Check our website for show details.


Aug 6: St.Paul les Dax Casino, Dax
Aug 7: Esplanade de La Plage, Biarritz
Aug 10: Salies de Bearn
Aug 11: Vieux Boucau
Aug 12: Esplanade de La Plage, Hossegor
Aug 13: Argeles Gazost Casino
Aug 14: Saint Gaudens
Aug 15: L'Eclipse, Biscarrosse
Aug 16: Secret Show, somewhere nearby.
Aug 17: Bar Mojito, Vieux Boucau
Aug 18: Cauterets

A bientot!
MELOMANE


www.melomane.org
www.myspace.com/melomane

"This is terrific headphone music, great road music, and a shot of adrenaline for any disheartened freedom fighter." LucidCulture.com

LOOK OUT THE SKYS GONNA CRUSH US FILM REVIEWS:


Left La Guardia at 230PM with Heather. On the 7 1/2 hr flight, I couldn’t sleep, so I watched 3 pretty lame movies in a row, all of them dealing with issues of child abandonment. First Juno, a ridiculous comedy about a pregnant teenager who makes unwanted pregnancy look hip and fun. Everyone in the film, from the doctors to the worried parents, talk like they are tattooed Williamsburg hipsters, which makes sense if you consider the film was written by Diablo Cody, a tattooed buxom ex-stripper. This film was plagued by the most irritating of all filmic tropes, the need to put an entire quirky folk or pop song in the background of every scene with about 25 seconds max in between each song. I appreciate that Diablo introduced the mainstream world to the genius of Kimya Dawson, but it was a little nauseating to see Juno and her boyfriend singing her song at the end of the film.
Next up was "August Rush," an unbearable piece of sappy garbage about a classical cello player and an Irish rocker who meet one night in the west village, have a magical night of sex in which she gets pregnant (again with the unwanted pregnancy!) and gives up the baby. The kid turns into a weird starry-eyed musical genius who runs away to new York, gets kidnapped by a homeless gay cowboy played by Robin Williams, and then magically writes a symphony which gets magically picked to be played in central Park, where his two parents magically happen to hear him and meet each other again after all these years. Give me a fucking break, for fuck’s sake. OK, next on to the least shitty of the three, a John Cusack paycheck called "Martian Child" about an abandoned orphan kid (again!) who is extremely weird, hides in a box, and believes he is a visitor from mars. Nobody wants to adopt him, except Cusack, who is an ex-misfit weirdo turned famous sci-fi best-seller novelist, whose wife has died two years ago and is searching for meaning in his life. He decides to adopt this very odd and damaged child (who was played extremely brilliantly by this kid) and accepts him as an oddball. Hijinxs ensue in which they each learn how to love each other and love themselves and blah blah blahblah blblblbla. I was actually very moved by this film, probably because the acting was so strong and it wasn’t poisoned by too-much-music-itis.

Melomane will be touring Switzerland and Germany in late March, and we just had a last minute cancellation. We need to find a show in Switzerland or southern Germany on Saturday, March 29. Are you in a band that is playing that night and wants to share a bill? Do you have a club and want a great band from New York to play that night? Are you having a psychedelic art party and need musical enhancement? Help us out! We will repay you with beautiful music, undying friendship, a show in New York next time you come, and mind-blowing cunnilingus...

"The Perfect Dress" a short film by Rose Viggiano, with music composed by Pierre de Gaillande, screens Saturday February 16 at the Show Us Your Shorts Festival, in Los Angeles, CA, at 9PM at Raleigh Studios. Go see it!

http://www.soysfilmfest.com/
http://www.sparkleboom.com

Raleigh Studios
5300 Melrose Avenue
Hollywood, CA. 90038

You can buy a download of Allumette, Melomane's newest recording in French, featuring Eleni Mandell on vocals and Heather Wagner on drums, directly from our Snocap store HERE: http://www.melomane.org/vermillion/index.php

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euC1t7FHPwM&mode=related&search=


I just watched the Democratic Presidential on Youtube. I just want to jot down my first impressions.

Dennis Kucinich and Senator Gravel are the only candidates who are not completely afraid to tell the truth. They are the only two people who I would actually invite over to my house for dinner. But Gravel is way too hot-headed and emotional. He is like Howard Dean; too much of a real actual caring, feelig person to be a politician.
The other candidates are all actors and game players. That said, the first two don't have a chance to be elected by the sad, scared, stupid sheep that make up the mass of our TV watching nation. So among the other candidates I have this to say.
John Edwards is the most promising mainstram candidate on the ballot. He seems like the one most willing to tell the truth and actually find a solution. He seems truly passionate about health care. He voted for the war but he is truly sorry. Plus he looks like a midwestern porn star.
Obama is very smart and slick, but he is full of shit. At least he didn't vote for the war. But he seems way too willing to say what people want to hear. Plus he put on a fake black accent when he was answering a question about race. That said, I would still like to see him in office as Vice President. I also respect the fact that he opposed the war. I just wish he wasn't so timid and careful about all of his statements.
Joe Biden seems really experienced and pretty honest. I like him a lot, but he is too much a part of the establishment to be elected. The people want new blood.
Richardson is very interesting and smart and fiery. But he is a fan of guns and the NRA, and that immediately disqualifies him in my book.
Hilary Clinton is such a robot, it makes me sick. There is no way to know what she actually believes. She has been making speeches in front of cameras for way too long. When asked about the environment, whe answered with a statement about Iraq. Get over it. We want health care and education.
That other old guy is a washed-up career politician. He means well but he is so ensconsed in the system that there is no way he can actually act independently.
My dream ticket would be either Edwards Kucinich or Edwards Obama.

The only leader who can fix this sad tired, depressed, paranoid nation is one who stops being shit-scared about every potential threat and starts thinking about America in terms of what we CAN do. Rebuild our schools. Imprison our corrupt leaders and businessmen. Stop selling guns. Give the people health care. Raise taxes on the top 1% of wealthy people and spread the wealth where it's needed. Separate church and state. Keep abortion legal. Give gay people the same rights as everyone else. Reverse the tide of rampant consumerism in this country that is making us the leaders in the causes of global warming and environmental polution.

I thought I had given up but I guess I'm starting to care agin. Bush is still alive, but fortunately he won't be President for long. Keep hope alive.

Here's a great review of our last show at Hank's Saloon on June 7th from our good friends at LUCID CULTURE.

http://lucidculture.wordpress.com/2007/06/09/concert-review-melomane-at-hank's-saloon-6707/

Living proof that epic grandeur can be synonymous with great fun. This well-established New York art-rock unit is part eerie 60s garage band, part meticulously orchestrated symphonic rock. As much as it was a little incongruous seeing them in these surroundings – Hank's is a wonderfully inexpensive, friendly, old-school place that usually features country music – it was a blissfully good show. They bookended the set with a cover of the old Lou Reed chestnut We're Going to Have a Real Good Time Together, the only song on which the band lacked tightness, and in fact the only really lighthearted moment of the night. Melomane translates loosely from the French as "passion for fun," and there was no lack of either, although since 9/11 they've become a very dark band with a remarkable political awareness, even for an age where pretty much everybody is united against Bush & Corp. Foremost among the songs they played tonight were a trio from their ongoing "disaster song cycle," as frontman/lead guitarist Pierre de Gaillande put it. One of them was a bouncy pop song about the Vesuvius eruption that essentially cast the Romans as a bunch of fascists. Another was about a meteorite. Their global warming song, possibly titled This Celestial Orb was the best of the bunch, a gorgeous, minor-key number that began with de Gaillande's guitar playing fast, biting broken chords while keyboardist Frank Heer did the same. It built to a haunting chorus, "gravity reverses and the sea and sky trade places." After a spur-of-the-moment interlude in 7/8 time, they tacked on a sarcastic, poppy finale with a tricky false ending that caught the audience completely off guard.

This is a talented group of musicians. Heer doubled on lead guitar, and at the end of a slowly unwinding, overtly political number, played a perfect dual guitar solo with de Gaillande. To their credit, it sounded absolutely nothing like Hotel California. Keyboardist Quentin Jennings played haunting cello on several numbers. It was also good to see nimble, inventive bass player Daria Grace (also of the Jack Grace Band and the Prewar Ponies) singing harmonies again. There was a time when she'd pushed her voice too far, and it took a long time to come back. The good news is that it's back and as bright as ever.

The biggest hit with the audience was a request, Going Places, a spot-on parody of trendoids:

Let's get stressed out to impress and then let's go out
You have the best high-fashion bedhead to go with your sleepy mind
And if the night should segregate us you go your way and I'll go mine

The song went doublespeed after the second verse and by the time they wound it up, it was completely punked out, de Gaillande screamingly hoarsely.

Otherwise, the band displayed a welcome gravitas, most powerfully evoked with the two keyboards going at once. They're playing mostly in minor keys, and de Gaillande has become an excellent lead guitarist. Melomane's show tonight was a reminder yet again of the uncontestable fact that the most transcendent, powerful moments of live music in New York aren't found at Madison Square Garden or Irving Plaza or for that matter even the Annex. The good stuff, the really great stuff is happening at cozy little neighborhood joints like Hank's.