The New Standards Holiday Concert at Fitzgerald Theater on 12/6/08

By: David de Young

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The New Standards and friends at the Fitzgerald - Photo by Steve Cohen

If only all the holiday fare people will attend this season could be as fun and heartwarming as this show.  If only they could all feature what’s surely one of the best cover bands on earth, Minnesota poet laureate Robert Bly reading his poetry, and Matt Wilson singing “McArthur Park.” That’s unfortunately not likely, but a Minnesotan can dream.

 

Apparently, word had gotten out that The New Standards know how to throw a party. Their annual holiday show at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul sold out well before show time Saturday night.

 

The New Standards (hereafter TNS) opened with “Androgynous” by The Replacements. Live, that song gave me the same chills the original still does. (Though for some reason it made the guy next to me chuckle – apparently it took him a while to realize that Dick wearing a skirt and Jane sporting a chain was not the funniest thing after all in this song lamenting the erosion of diversity.) All this brings me to my first point: When the New Standards cover a song they do it from the inside out. The three musicians – Chan Poling (The Suburbs), John Munson (Trip Shakespeare, Semisonic) and Steve Roehm (Electropolis) - break it down to its essence. (And these musicians know essence better than anybody.) Then they reconstruct it with their quirky instrumentation of piano, stand-up bass, and vibes.

 

The result is magic. TNS bats near 1000 with their cover selections. After hearing their successful and dark cover of “Toxic” (yes, the one popularized by Britney Spears) you may wonder if their magic reaches so far they can make any song sound amazing. Of course starting with great songs helps.  Their new album Rock and Roll features great covers of songs by the likes of Lou Reed, Elvis Costello, The Clash and The Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs.

 

By their second song on Saturday night, a cover of Outkast’s “Hey Ya,” I wished I was seeing TNS in a place where I could actually dance. (I seldom get this urge.)  Steve Roehm went absolutely wild on vibes, four mallets at a time. And even Chan Poling appeared to be watching him in awe, peaking under the lid of his grand piano.

 

Up next was The Postal Service favorite, “Such Great Heights,” another from the new TNS album and one that can currently be previewed on the band’s MySpace page.

 

Robert Bly with one of the Frantzich Brothers - Photo by Steve Cohen

Poling announced the band was now “going to get all Christmas on your ass,” or something to that affect, but qualified it by saying they were definitely “more street than church” when it comes to holiday music. And up next was a bouncy “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.” About this time a woman yelled “I love you, Chan” from the balcony.  A few songs later a woman yelled “I love you, John.” Then almost immediately after that a deep male voice bellowed, “I love you, Steve,” which prompted some laughter from the audience.

 

The cellists of Jelloslave, Jacqueline Ultan and Michelle Kinney came out for “My Favorite Things.” Then former Suicide Commandos, Chris Osgood and Dave Ahl (now known as The Warblers) performed The Soul Deacons’ “Christmas in Jail” and Garland Jeffries “Wild in the Streets.”

 

Not listed in the program, but ever so welcome, Robert Bly, now 81 years old, was about this time invited onto the stage to read selections of his poetry, which he did backed by the Brothers Frantzich on conga and acoustic guitar.

 

The ubiquitous and darn near universally-adored Lucy Michelle performed a great version of “Santa Baby” and also played a little sax after Santa swaggered onto the stage to hand one to her.  She also sang the Wham! song “Last Christmas” accompanied by the cellists and a choir featuring Allison LaBonne and Brian Tighe of the Owls, making it the second time in seven days I had heard this song (after not hearing it for nearly 20 years) as it had been featured in last week’s “A Very Brady Christmas” by the folks at The Electric Arc Radio Show.

 

At about this point, and again not listed in the program, The Hopefuls business-suit dressed dancer, Rupert appeared stage left seeming out of nowhere to dance in the aisle, beer in hand, encouraging the crowd to sing along.  The fun part of this (as is often the case when Rupert makes an appearance) is that not everyone at the Fitz realized who he was and didn’t know it was part of the show.  (Was it part of the show?)  In any case, Rupert’s crazy dance antics at music events has been one of the best inside jokes of the Minnesota music scene for going on five years now.

 

And all this was in the first half of the show! After a brief intermission, it continued, and in no way let up.

 

“Love is the Law” is by far my favorite TNS cover. How often does a band get the chance to perform an authentic cover of a song they can actually claim as their own? (The song is by Chan Poling’s band, The Suburbs.) This version was an extended slower version featuring the Hookers and Blow horns and the guitars of the Frantzich Brothers. (A recorded version appears on TNS’s self-titled debut album.)

 

Matt Wilson totally detroys (in the best possible way) the Richard Harris song "McArthur Park" - Photo by Steve Cohen

Geoff Herbach and Dave Salmela from Electric Arc Radio came out to tell the fabled story of the birth of TNS. It featured Jenny Adams as Bjork and was hilarious. Next I was glad to hear the great Dan Hicks song, “I Scare Myself,” once covered by Thomas Dolby.  I was not so glad, however, to hear requests for “Freebird” hollered in from the balcony. After one such request, John Munson was about to break into “Toxic” and with dry irony said, “This is my ‘Freebird’” before the band broke into the discordant jazz of the song that featured yet another crazy vibes solo. 

 

Before Arcade Fire’s classic “No Cars Go” Poling let on that Fritz Mondale (his father in-law) also likes the Canadian band once championed by David Bowie. The song was fabulous with its horns, strings and chorus. Jeremy Messersmith then came out to perform his own song, “Miracles” (not a Christmas song, mind you) featuring him playing a solo on a silver trumpet.

 

After a candlelight rendition of “Silent Night”, Robert Bly was back to read what he introduced as a poem by “a 14^th Century Indian troublemaker,” and then his own poem Stealing Sugar from the Castle (which features the beautiful line “Just to steal one grain of sugar is a joy.”)  Whoever had the idea of adding Robert Bly to this show was a genius.  Bly’s presence added a perspective and depth to the party that felt much like the feeling you get when you realize what the Prince lyric “Life is just a party, and parties weren’t meant to last” inevitably implies.

 

And there still was more to come!  Mason Jennings ambled on stage to perform “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” and lent a hand to Sam Cooke’s “Bring it on Home to Me.” Then came probably the wildest moment of the night: the Twilight Hours’ Matt Wilson damn near upstaged Robert Bly with a rendition of “McArthur Park” that most in attendance will never forget.  After Wilson left the stage, John Munson pointed out how grateful they were for their guests, how they’d called up Mason Jenning and he said he’d do “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” and how they’d called Matt Wilson and he said, “Sure, I’d like to do McArthur Park.”  That wasn’t exactly the song they’d expected him to pick, but they learned it anyway, and the rest, as they say, is history.

 

A portion of all merchandise and concessions from tonight’s show were donated to Feed Them With Music, an organization that works with global food distributors to prove meals to those in need.

Set list:

ANDRO – TNS
HEY YA – TNS
SUCH GREAT HEIGHTS – TNS
GOD REST YE MERRY GENTLEMEN – KEN, HORNS, SHOUT-OUTS
MY FAVE THINGS – KEN, CELLOS, STEPHEN
XMAS IN JAIL – THE WARBLERS,  KEN, MAX SOLO
WILD IN THE STREETS – THE WARBLERS, KEN
SANTA BABY – LUCY, SANTA
LAST CHRISTMAS – LUCY, KEN, CELLOS, CHOIR
HAWAIAN XMAS – BROS. F
LOVE IS THE LAW – BROS F,  KEN, STEPHEN

INTERMISSION

O TANNENBAUM – E.A.R.S.
I SCARE MYSELF – TNS, KEN, MATT timbale
TOXIC – TNS
DETECTIVES - TNS
NO CARS GO – TNS, CELLOS, CHOIR, HORNS, KEN
MIRACLES – JEREMY, MADDIE
SILENT NIGHT – JEREMY,BRIAN, ALISON, MADDIE, FRANTZICH
SANTA CLAUS IS COMIN’ TO TOWN – MASON
BRING IT ON HOME – MASON
MACARTHUR PARK – MATT, KEN, CELLOS, HORNS
SNOW DAYS – KEN, HORNS,
ANGELS WE HAVE HEARD ON HIGH (GLORIA) - ALL

ENCORE:

HAVE YOURSELF A MERRY LITTLE CHRISTMAS – TNS, ALL ON LAST VERSE

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Location Info: Fitzgerald Theater
Artist Info: The New Standards

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