Wesley Stace’s Cabinet of Wonders at the Cedar Cultural Center, Minneapolis (10/11/13)
“May I present the cabinet: its contents, and its discontents,” starts Wesley Stace’s Cabinet of Wonders show at the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis last night, October 11th. If you’re not familiar with the Wesley Stace’s Cabinet of Wonders show, this is not the typical rock concert, but more like a variety show. There’s book readings, there’s poetry, there’s comedy, and, of course, there’s music. Bottom line, the show is really an excuse for Wesley Stace (formerly John Wesley Harding) to gather his friends and colleagues on the stage!
After a poetry introduction to all the players in the cabinet, Stace singled John Roderick to talk a little about being ‘the last man [not] on the plane’ and how he went over to the ‘400 Club’ to realized it was now a converted Islamic mosque (the 400 Bar closed its door late December last year). Wesley Stace, with his live band The English UK, then kicked off his three-song set, starting with his Eleanor Friedberger collaborated song, “When I Knew”. The latter two songs were from the latest album Self-Titled (“it’s called Self-Titled, because it is…”). Stace explained that these new songs were all true, then quickly announced that ‘Jane’ in “Goodbye Jane” was not, in fact, ‘Jane’. As for “A Canterbury Kiss”, this was about the coolest girl he’s ever met. The real moral of that song is that you should never send the subject their song until it’s been recorded and published. Todd Boss was next, reading three love (one ‘lust’) poems from his books: “The Hush of the Very Good”, “Constellation”, and “Feast”. Next was Marc Perlman, from the Jayhawks, played three covers, two of which were Moby Grape songs (“It’s A Beautiful Day Today” and “I Am Not Willing”). He explained that he never listened to Moby Grape when he was young, it’s only recently that he’s absolutely fell in love with them. Author Laurie Lindeen, formerly from Zuzu’s Petals, read an excerpt from her forthcoming book called “My Boyfriend’s Dead”. It’s not a zombie book, but about a 12-year-old girl growing up in the 70s.
Haley Bonar did three songs, the first was “Heaven’s Made For Two”. She had more songs written for an upcoming album, but they’re not quite ready yet. In the meantime, she did “Bad Reputation” and a cover of Melanie’s “Brand New Key”. The cover song, as explained by Stace, was possibly more famous for being re-made into “The Combine Harvester” by The Wurzels. The way Stace over-pronounced the band name, you can tell he had a distaste, if you’ll forgive the pun, for this drinking novelty band. At one point, he even compared their same-songs to Chubby Checker’s various “Twist” songs. You know what? I’m going hazard a guess that no one in America’s heard of The Wurzels, but that didn’t stop people from laughing.
Speaking of laughing, my personal highlight of the show was Todd Barry, mostly because of his quick-witted improvisation. Barry must have a habit of going over his set time, so a clock was brought on stage for him to reference (although he promised he was going over “10 seconds” because he loved us so much). As we previously mentioned, Barry is very deadpan in his deliveries. His material consisted of some crowd work (like when the audience had a second wave of laugh and a finicky cat), but also prepared jokes (if you can call it ‘prepared’).
John Roderick, from the Long Winters, was last seen in Minneapolis with Jonathan Coulton. He actually seems like he could also do stand-up, telling us about that one time someone landed on his head (feet first) at the running of the bulls in Spain. Roderick did “Not Moving To Portland” and, I think, “Same Song”.
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