By: Jim Froehlich
Anyone looking for a smug hatchet job on an easy mark can just keep moving. I'm saving my acid-pen for more deserving targets, like the scruffy little monkeys in that Lou Reed tribute band called The Strokes.
Back in 1998, Peter Tork played the Fine Line with some obscure Austin folkie, Henry Lee Something or another. It was an afternoon acoustic show and maybe 60 people showed up, 40 of whom were middle-aged housewives in homemade Monkees T-Shirts who spent the entire show shrieking for "Daydream Believer." Mr. Tork was not amused nor was he particularly gracious. He berated the audience from the stage about growing up and getting on with their lives. He was no longer an entertainer, get it, he was an artist. He cut the show short and bolted through the "crowd", refusing to sign autographs and muttering obscenities under his breath.
My initial reaction: Poor guy. 30 years on and people still cared only for the short time he was a member of some teen-pop band. No matter what he tried to do musically, he would forever be judged against songs he neither wrote, sang nor played.
My second reaction: Fuck you, Peter Tork. If it wasn't for The Monkees, you'd still be washing dishes with Stephen Stills on the Sunset Strip. You struck your deal with the Devil and the Devil was wanting his due.
Tiffany Renee Darwish was a product of the 80's in more ways than one. Like the Monkees, she was created, manipulated & packaged by unseen hands - the ultimate karaoke queen. A cute girl with a pleasant voice who sang other people's songs in order to make other people lots of money, she was no great interpreter of the American Songbook but remained (briefly) the idol of teens everywhere who could see an acne-free version of their own face in hers. Massive popularity was followed by total oblivion and mandatory celebrity in Japan as she struggled to kick her addiction to the screaming crowds. Albums trickled out through the 90's while Tiffany tried to find her own voice and to see if anyone cared to listen.
So Tiffany v.2004 hit the Fine Line Wednesday on a whirlwind North American tour that takes her to such hotspots as Xtremes in Terre Haute, the Lewis Bowl in Ames and the Pittsburgh Hard Rock Café. A blatant exploratory stab intended to drum up interest in an album and full tour later in the year she was accompanied on stage by two other musicians: a lone guitarist dressed in his Goo Goo Dolls Halloween costume and a mortified keyboard player who worked from charts and stared at the ceiling all night as if beseeching the Almighty to smite him with a Kleig light.
With heavy promotion on local radio, a reasonably-sized crowd of maybe 300 was on hand. Populated mainly by nostalgia-driven late 20 & 30-somethings, the club had the air of a Boogie Wonderland show, minus the Boogie Wonderland.
And for that, let us be grateful…
Introduced by some shrill troll from Mix 104, Tiffany then took the stage for what she described as "an intimate evening of old hits & new", referring apparently to other people's "old hits" because she then launched into an hour-long set of mostly covers:
Then it was time for a little Q&A from the crowd. Tiff pulled up a stool and began to expound on Malraux's contention that one of the fundamental attributes of popular music is precisely the fact of it being not only an art but an industry.
No, not really. Everybody just wanted to hear about her fake boobies. In an effort to distance herself from her child-star past, Tiff had some work done including collagen injections and a significant "structural" augmentation displayed openly in Playboy magazine. Judging by the number of copies waving in the crowd, April 2002 was a popular issue indeed.
But the big question on everyone's lips seemed to be the recent summit with Debbie Gibson where they were finally able to iron out that whole East Coast/West Coast thing. Popular at pretty much the same time, the rivalry was played up by both sides seeking an edge for their product. Tiffany was the Paramus Mall-cruising' Jersey Girl while Debbie played the California cutie wandering the Galleria at Beverly Center. The similarities with Biggie & Tupac are eerie, aren't they? Tiff & Deb, however, were never capped in Vegas drive-bys and Mr. Smalls & Shakur never appeared as Sandy in the touring company of "Grease." Fo shizzle.
Regardless, Tiff says they're swell pals now so we can all rest a little easier.
Then our girl launched into the hits - her hits this time: "Could Have Been", "Saw Her Standing There" & "I Think We're Alone Now" all had the crowd singing along in unison. At least she wasn't under any pretense that people had come to hear anything else. Tiff was an affable karaoke hostess who modestly stepped back to let the audience yell out the choruses in a Proustian flashback of collective 80's consciousness.
Intermingled throughout the show was a small cross-section of new material that garnered little note or impression. Done in a vague singer-songwriter style like Jonatha Brooke, they were mostly ruminations on lost love, lost fame & growing up that had everyone bum-rushing the bar to freshen their drinks. Honestly, I felt bad for her. There we were, all having a great time until she tried to play her own stuff, the stuff that meant something to her and we could not have cared less.
So can she sing? Sure, why not? She has a likeable voice with a more-than-passable range and the adorable/annoying habit of hand-dancing like Xtina in her upper register. That, coupled with her reliance on cover tunes, reminded me chiefly of the hotel lounge act in "Lost In Translation". Remember them?
"Love is kind of crazy with a spooky little girl like you… Thank you very much, we're Sausalito. We're going to take a short break now. Thank you."
Tiffany's spare yet self-congratulatory website (tiffany music.com) states boldly that she paved the way for The New Kids On The Block. This begs two questions:
1) This is a good thing?
2) Like Bobby Sherman paved the way for the Partridge Family?
Tiffany was the voice of all the collective adolescent yearning felt by teen girls at the uncertain twilight of the Cold War Years. Assuming, that is, they were all yearning for a trip to Esprit to buy acid-wash jeans, leggings with slouch socks and big plastic banana clips. The old saying "How you gonna keep 'em down on the farm when they've seen Paree" kept coming to mind, though, and it got me thinking…
I'm just old enough to remember the very last days of Ed Sullivan & Live at the Hollywood Palace, of entertainers like Sammy Davis who gave 110% back to the audience every time he performed. I think about him a lot when I go to a hipster show and see some group who pretend they don't want to play in front of an audience pretending they don't want to listen. I can mock Tiff all I want but it comes down to this: she really enjoyed singing for a crowd that really enjoyed hearing her sing.
So I watched "High Fidelity" the other night, a good movie about why people listen to music. Then I watched "Still Crazy", a great movie about why people play music and it dawned on me - Tiffany had done an outstanding show.
Kudos, Tiff. Good effort. I'll see you back this summer.
Location Info:
Fine Line Music Café
Artist Info: Tiffany
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