By: David de Young
 The Trachtenburgs - publicity photo |
Members: Jason Trachtenburg - keyboard/guitar/vocals Official website: http://www.slideshowplayers.com |
The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players have a fascinating concept. If you read this short review you should be able to tell your friends about them and they will agree, "Wow, that sounds really interesting!" Unfortunately, as interesting as they might sound when you hear about them, seeing them live is, as they say in the common parlance, "a whole other story."
In the introduction to their set, vocalist and dad (yes, this is a real family) Jason Trachtenburg claims that what we were about to see would "change the future of entertainment." While Jason plays his keyboard-based, childlike pop, his wife Tina shows vintage slides (that they purportedly pick up at estate sales, retelling the stories of the people in the slides "turn their lives into pop/rock exposes." There's certain morbidity in this, of course, because you can't help but realize that many of the people you are seeing on the screen are probably dead. Or even worse off.
Jason Trachtenburg reminds you of a real-life Austin Powers and plays an old out of tune guitar when not playing keys. (He swore Saturday's performance would be the last time he used it.) Only his 9-year-old daughter Rachel accompanies him on drums.
Although "Trip to Old Japan, 1959" is a bouncy and fun pop song (ala They Might Be Giants) and "Don't you Know What I Mean?" is so catchy you may need to scrape the inside of your head with a garden trowel to get it out, after about 20 minutes of the show you realize that if you subtracted any of the elements of the live show you would be experiencing something far less than fun. The stars of the shows are clearly the slides themselves and 9-year-old Rachel (whose spunky vocals and problems with her vocal and drum monitors throughout the night provided some very light-hearted fun.)
The "six part rock opera" based on training slides from a 1977 McDonald's executive training session they closed with was a bit too much, and I find it difficult to think I would ever go see this show again. And there's the root of the problem right there.
Still The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players provided one of the more extreme alternatives to the concurrently scheduled Soul Asylum show was going on a few blocks away at First Avenue. But this band is probably better enjoyed as a novelty, or an opener for similar themed bands like They Might Be Giants. An hour of it wears your patience thin.
Location Info:
The Quest Club
Artist Info: The Trachtenburg Family Slide Show Players
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