2007-05 Vital Source Mag – May 2007
Patti Smith
The word “mulatto” jumps from Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” the National Anthem for the blanker than blank generation. And until all the kids memorized the lyrics and drove Kurt Cobain over the edge it was that one word that hung like cool, moist ground fog on a hot summer night. But before Nirvana there was Big Joe Turner. In fact before just about everything there was Big Joe Turner. One might even argue plausibly that Big Joe was the real nirvana when it came to rock & roll. In his book Where Dead Voices Gather Nick Tosches writes: But enough of color. I tire of every race. I shall, however, here glance for a moment in this context of color and auditory evidence and speculation, to the bellowed words of Big Joe Turner’s “Tell Me, Pretty Baby” of 1948: They say brown-skinned women are evil. And yellow girls are worse. I got myself a mulatta, boy; I’m playin’ it safety first. Or is there no comma intended between the penultimate and ultimate words of the third line of this quatrain? – I got myself a mulatta boy Has the question of a solitary punctuation mark…, ever before or since presented an ambiguity of momentousness such as this? Get thee, then, a mulatto, regardless of gender, punctuation or pronunciation; and proceed, then, behind me, together as one. While the Cobain saga proves once again, sadly, that rock & roll eats its young, what is more vexing is just how many generations it took for mulatto to resurface in a lyric. Twelve, then, is Patti Smith’s twelfth album. (Longtime collaborators Lenny Kaye and Jay Dee Daugherty are still riding shotgun.) It is an album of cover tunes. She has earned the right to coast, pay tribute, have fun – whatever the explanation of this album may be. She is the ultimate case of the fan who made the leap of faith to the stage. (She behaved admirably when she was recently inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame because her late husband Fred Sonic requested she do so.) Twelve gives us an even dozen snapshots paying tribute to The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, the folky Neil Young, Jefferson Airplane and The Doors. Paul Simon and Stevie Wonder, too. The most interesting tune is an odd old- timey take on “Smells Like Teen Spirit” itself, with playwright Sam Shepherd on banjo. We may never know Smith’s reason for covering Gregg Allman’s “Midnight Rider,” but Tears For Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” always sounded to me like it was writ for Muzak from the gitgo. Friends, we are currently living in modern times. Some Old Testament types may even vehemently suggest the end is near. So what better time to sidestep the laws of The Man and track down bootleg recordings of Patti Smith’s real covers. Her first single was turning “Hey Joe” into a heavy liquid ballad, and along the way she’s covered The Velvet […]
May 1st, 2007 by Blaine Schultz
Lady Day
By Jill Gilmer It’s hard not to have a great evening at the Stackner Cabaret. The nightclub-style setting creates a relaxed and festive atmosphere and the well-heeled crowd doesn’t seem to mind sharing tables with strangers and chit-chatting over cocktails or coffee and dessert. Add to this backdrop the wonderful music of Billie Holiday performed by Grammy award-winning singer Regina Marie Williams and you have the recipe for a string of sell-out performances, which Lady Day has enjoyed since it opened on March 16. But theatre-goers hoping to learn more about the life and legacy of this jazz icon may leave the Cabaret disappointed. Like many theatrical productions that examine a celebrity figure, Lady Day focuses less on Ms. Holiday’s life and career and more on her personality. While this in itself is a worthy endeavor, director David Hunter Koch’s obsession with her surprising dark side nearly overshadows both her story and her talent. The story takes place at the Emerson Bar & Grill, a hole-in-the-wall jazz club in Philadelphia and the actual site of one of Holiday’s last performances before her death in 1959, at age 44. Emerson was, apparently, one of the few clubs in the U.S. where she was still welcomed. A series of temperamental incidents – most likely exacerbated by alcohol and heroin abuse – had tarnished her reputation and limited her performance venues. Regina Marie Williams delivers a riveting enactment of Ms. Holiday’s descent into a drunken trance over the course of her 1-hour and 15 minute performance. At least, we can only hope it was alcohol that fueled the seemingly-endless string of expletives that dotted her performance and the insults she hurled at her unsuspecting audience. This drunken rant was a stark contrast from the image of graciousness suggested by her strapless white satin gown, elbow-length gloves and trademark gardenia in her hair. Leaving the show, audience members who are unfamiliar with her contributions to jazz might even question whether the accolades history has bestowed on her are justified. These thoughts were sufficiently disturbing to send this writer surfing the in search of “the real Billie Holiday.” The artist I read about online seemed to bear little resemblance to the obnoxious faded starlet portrayed in Lady Day. The lack of balance in this portrayal of Ms. Holiday leaves an unwarranted black eye on this great artist. Despite her unbalanced portrait of Ms. Holiday, Regina Marie Williams does a superb job capturing the emotional intensity and famed uniqueness of Ms. Holiday’s voice, if not its exact tone quality. A highlight is a soul-stirring rendition of “Strange Fruit,” her classic song about Jim Crow-era lynchings. The song is a fitting conclusion to Ms. Holiday’s account of a racist incident she experienced while touring with Artie Shaw. That story reminds us of the difficult era (the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s) during which she succeeded in establishing herself as an African-American singer with a ground-breaking sound. The enormous obstacles she had to overcome are proof that this lady […]
May 1st, 2007 by Vital Archives
Falling in love with Roberta
As I sit to write this, I am surrounded by half-full boxes and piles of things for Purple Heart. The Slightly Crunchy Parent has bought a new house, and we’ll be moving very soon. The house my partner and I found was a foreclosure and in desperate need of much work before being habitable and, as a result, we have spent the last three weeks just getting it put together enough to move in. I wrote the following poem while I was working and falling in love with our new home. This four-bedroom, four-square colonial is all I’ve been able to think about for weeks. I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has helped during this process, because contrary to the way it sounds when you read the poem, I did not do the work on the house by myself – there is simply no way one person could have done it all and, as usual, my friends and family stepped up and lent more than a hand. My sisters have been there for us every step of the way, encouraging and cleaning, sanding, painting and cleaning some more. Michelle and Mrs. Jesi have fed us and listened to us cry and worked at our side. My parents Jude, Kenny and John have been instrumental with the greenbacks and I am grateful to have come from such great people. Allen, the wood guru, walked us through doing the floors and logged uncountable hours managing that monstrous project. My secret connection at the paint store made it possible for us to repaint the entire interior of the house before we moved in and gave us solid counsel about just how to manage the minor mold problem in the basement. As always, my little Lena has showed up to work every day she wasn’t in school, and has made me more proud than I’ve ever known I could be. There were more people who helped and more people who have promised their services than I can name here, and we are thankful to each and every person. VS
May 1st, 2007 by Lucky Tomaszek
Garrett Burton
Photo by Erin Landry Garrett Burton is somewhat of a rare breed. Not only is he a guitarist in the outfit General Jive and the Souldiers, but he is also a luthier; he builds and repairs guitars and he’s been hard at work at it for the past three years. After being certified in 2004, he moved back to Milwaukee where he found work restoring classical stringed instruments such as violins, cellos and violas. From there, he went on to work as a guitar technician for local guitar shops while opening his own shop in the process. Currently, he is doing repair work at Gearheadz Music while also restoring guitars out of his home. To hear more from Burton, check out myspace.com/milwaukeeguitarrepair or myspace.com/generaljiveandthesouldiers. 1. When did you know you wanted to build guitars? I took a couple of woodworking classes in high school and in physics class my teacher was really into sound and making his own speakers. So that’s when I thought about the two different worlds: one of science and one of wood-working. Being a guitar player, the two just merged together for me. I didn’t know what I wanted to study in college, so I decided to go school for luthrie at Bryan Galloup’s School of Luthrie in Big Rapids, Michigan. That’s where I developed an interest in the acoustic properties of instruments. 2. How has Milwaukee’s guitar luthier scene been? There’s definitely been appreciation for my work around here. Presently, I’m over at my friend Benny’s music store, Gearheadz Music, on National Avenue. I like the vibe of his shop; Benny’s super cool, and being a musician, he understands other musician’s interests in instruments. 3. How much has music influenced your life? Well, considering my occupation, it has completely altered my life, or kept it on its path. It has given me many tools to express my feelings. I remember the first time music hit me: shivers. This was junior high. I got the White Album and I needed to put a band together immediately. That’s when I knew I wanted to play music. I’ve been playing ever since. 4. How has building guitars deepened your understanding of guitar music? If you look at the timeline of the invention of different types of guitars, you can see [a relationship to] how the sound of the music changes, and the style being played. For instance, surf rock most likely wouldn’t exist without the Fender Stratocaster and some mad reverb, dig? But classical guitars brought my ear to Brazilian music. Arch-top guitars drew me to early jazz. Flat-tops introduced me to ragtime, country blues and country music. 5. What’s one of your favorite things about repairing guitars? The look on the customer’s faces when they play their fixed instrument and it plays the way they want it to play; they’re happy. I also really like to experience working on all sorts of stringed instruments, especially older ones. They tend to have more craftsmanship and detail or thought […]
May 1st, 2007 by Blaine Schultz
Simply the best
By Evan Solochek + Photos by Kat Jacobs and Gene Martin He is one of the recording industry’s true living legends; some call him the godfather of modern music. His name is as synonymous with rock & roll as Jimi Hendrix or Eric Clapton. What’s that? You say you’ve never heard of him? Well, take a closer look at that cursive signature on the headstock of that Gibson guitar your favorite musician is playing. That’s his. His name is Les Paul. Born Lester William Polfuss in 1915 in Waukesha, Wisconsin, Les Paul took to music at an early age, performing semi-professionally by the age of 13 and with Rube Tronson’s Cowboys by 17. Shortly thereafter, he moved to St. Louis, Missouri and joined the Wolverston’s Radio Band on KMOX. By the 1930s, Paul was in Chicago playing jazz on local radio stations, and in 1936 he released his first two records. However, despite this early success, Paul was generally disappointed with the musical equipment with which he had to work; he found the acoustic bodies of the ‘30s-era electric guitars to be too dampening for noisy clubs. So, Paul began experimenting, and after some initial success in 1935 with “The Log,” which was nothing more than a length of fence post with a bridge, neck and pickup attached, Paul perfected his design in 1941 and built one of the first solid-body electric guitars, a revolutionary design that made rock & roll’s signature sound possible. By the early ‘50s, Gibson Guitar Corporation had finally taken an interest and used some of Paul’s design suggestions to build a prototype that would come to be known the world over as the “Les Paul” model, immortalized by the likes of Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, George Harrison, Bob Marley, Joe Perry, Slash and countless others. Today the Les Paul design remains virtually unchanged and one of the most popular guitar models around. While Paul also made many groundbreaking innovations in the area of multi-track recording, overdubbing and reverb, he is much more than an inventor. Widely considered the greatest jazz guitarist of his generation, over his 75 years in music and radio Paul has released over 10 albums, recorded and performed with the likes of Nat King Cole and Bing Crosby and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1978, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1988, the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2005 and the National Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 2006. Also in 2006, at the age of 90, Paul won two Grammy Awards for his album Les Paul & Friends: American Made, World Played. Now 91, this musical visionary will return home to Waukesha on May 10 to play a concert at the Milwaukee Marriott West hotel (tickets are $1,500 for up-front Premier Tables of four or $300 for general admission) that will also include appetizers, dinner, a silent auction and an autograph session. While the concert will only be 45 minutes long, it will mark the […]
May 1st, 2007 by Vital Archives
Watts Tea Shop – 103 years and counting
photos by Kevin C. Groen Watts Tea Shop 761 N. Jefferson Street Milwaukee, WI 53202 414-290-5720 Tom Millot is one of those rare managers who actually wants his employees to learn how to do his job. As Executive Chef of Watts Tea Shop, he fosters leadership qualities in his staff of 14 full and part timers. “I love my staff. They respect what I try to do and the reverse. We have a team concept. We’re always looking to go forward. Besides myself, we have three staffers who can produce any of our baked goods,” he says proudly beaming ear to ear. “You’re only as good as your team.” If Millot sounds like a major league coach, it may be because he’s always been a team player: at home, on the field and in the kitchen. Raised in a family of 11 children, he says, “Everybody pitched in. Sometimes there were too many cooks and not enough elbowroom. We didn’t even fathom eating out, we were so used to eating off the land. We were on a tight budget and that has helped me in my profession. It keeps waste to a minimum and you value everything.” Everyone in the Millot family was expected to be at the dinner table on time. “That was very important for bonding with family. There’s not enough of that [today]. Everybody’s in a hurry to go nowhere fast.” Summers in Hartland, when not doing chores, Millot played baseball in six leagues, several games a day, seven days a week. However, he decided on a career in cooking in his teens and some years later found a lifelong mentor and friend in Louis Danegelis, Senior Chef Instructor at Waukesha County Technical College, where the young chef studied. “He taught me passion. Passion for what I do for my career, with food and more importantly with the people you work with and manage – the culinary team. He taught that the speed of the leader is speed of the team.” “Cross train yourself and your employees. Having an employee adept at doing any job duty within your framework, giving them a sense and feeling of leadership, that’s what he taught me and I try to pass that on.” Millot did double duty with Danegelis, studying by day and working nights and weekends at his catering company, Lee John’s. “He instilled confidence in me and helped me overcome my doubts. I have no fear of failure. Louis said when the pressure’s on, the only thing you can do is pin your ears back, pray and go for it and you will get through the day.” It was advice Millot has applied throughout his career from working as Corporate Chef at QuadGraphics to opening the Union House in Genesee Depot. As a result of this attitude, Millot can not only stand the heat in the kitchen, he thrives on it. “I want to get slammed, otherwise you don’t make any money. Titles aside, when everyone works together, they […]
May 1st, 2007 by Cate Miller
Feist
Leslie Feist has all the makings of a classic indie girl – completely indecipherable, yet at the same time completely able to be pigeonholed. For one not familiar with Feist, the Canadian has some pretty ridiculous credits racked up: from the electro-shock value of Peaches to the pretty indie-pop of the Broken Social Scene (not to mention stints with By Divine Right and Kings of Convenience). She seems comfortable with and suited to each place she ventures. Her newest album, The Reminder, sees her travel right from writing in the tour bus and creating in the studio to finishing up a tour stint in Berlin and capping it off with a recording session with pals Mocky, [Chilly] Gonzales and Jaime Lidell in la Frette Studios outside of Paris. Feist’s previous releases, Let it Die and Open Season, made Canada and Europe take notice of her youthful but classic jazz vocals and guitar playing that lent a punchy yet wispy quality to her pop, half penned by her, half lent by others. This time around, Feist is writing more, collaborating with her recording pals Mocky and Gonzales as well as Ron Sexsmith. If Feist was arresting before doing other people’s songs, she is even more so singing her own. The lone cover song, “Sea Lion Woman,” was originally written by George Bass and made famous by Nina Simone. Feist revamps it by pairing light-stepping vocals with energetic and full handclaps. Feist also tries her hand at gospel, country-twinged pop in “Past in Present,” brooding piano dynamics in “My Moon My Man,” haunting ethereality in the chilling “The Water” and upbeat with “I Feel it All.” Versatility is the mark of a great songwriter, and Feist is writing with such fluidity on The Reminder that it will be interesting to see which direction Feist will travel next. VS
May 1st, 2007 by Erin Wolf
Robbie Fulks
By Allison Berndt The best way to describe Robbie Fulks’ new album Revenge! is to call it an eclectic hillbilly mix produced live on the road for an audience that’s looking for some good ol’ country music alongside a good laugh. Well, it’s true. Fulks, known for his catchy country songs and humorous lyrics, has put together an impressive collection of his very best. Hints of jazz, bluegrass and even a little ‘50s rock are evident in this generally hillbilly-esque compilation. Revenge! is a two-CD set of live recordings, half of which are brand-new songs. “I Like Being Left Alone” is a perfect example of a song that makes you laugh while engaging you musically with a charming melody. The best tracks on the album include previous hits “I Want to Be Mama’d” and “Cigarette State,” as well as a cover of Cher’s “Believe.” Fulks goes off on a guitar tangent that’ll take the listener through some masterful riffs in “Mama’d,” and “Cigarette State” is bound to be a crowd pleaser no matter where or when you hear it – it’s a staple in his repertoire. To hear a western cover of “Believe” is laughable in general, but even more so with the adaptation Fulks provides. Slower and more serious, “The Buck Starts Here” is a great theme that showcases a classic twangy country sound. Revenge! has a smattering of everything on it: old songs and new, covers and originals and any tempo for which you could be in the mood. It’s a solid collection with one constant element: hillbilly. VS
May 1st, 2007 by Vital Archives
Bright Eyes
Polarizing indie icon Conor Oberst lobs his first full-length studio album since 2005’s simultaneous releases I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning and Digital Ash in a Digital Urn. Cassadaga, Florida, renowned “Psychic Center of the World” and the “South’s Oldest Spiritualist Community,” is the CD’s namesake. Songs about self-cleansing, balancing out and finding home emphasize the spiritual theme. “Four Winds” – on loan from this spring’s eponymous EP – and the Janet Weiss-drummed “Hot Knives” come as close as Americana can get to head-banging and fist-pumping. “Middleman” flaunts Iron & Wine-worthy breaths of grainy fiddling and “I Must Belong Somewhere” alone embodies enough colorful imagery to defend Oberst’s visionary status. Tribal beats and vocals feel fresh on the atmospheric “Coat Check Dream Song.” “Make A Plan To Love Me” begins as an airy lullaby swirled with female a capella, but becomes so over-produced that it winds up leaning toward theatrical score. Though delivering memorable storytelling and big hooks, the majority of songs also surrender to the same excessive polishing. Gone is the raw zest and neighing naiveté that made Fevers and Mirrors such a powerful release. Oberst even sings “…was a hopeless romantic/now I’m just turning tricks,” a possible reference to fatiguing artistic expression. Is our precious Conor jading over, growing up and abandoning his wild ways? Cassadaga is an attempt to convince, but he’ll most likely still be spitting into microphones, stumbling over amplifiers and wrangling up girls with nice shoes on the album’s supporting tour. Just as he should be. VS
May 1st, 2007 by Amber Herzog
May 2007
May 1 Tori Amos American Doll Posse Epic Joan Armatrading Into the Blues Savoy Black Rebel Motorcycle Club Baby 81 RCA Michael Bublé Call Me Irresponsible Reprise Dinosaur Jr. Beyond Fat Possum Feist The Reminder Cherry Tree/Interscope Hanson The Walk 3CG Chantal Kreviazuk Ghost Stories Nettwerk America/Red Distribution The Mission God is a Bullet Cooking Vinyl Rush Snakes & Arrows Anthem/Atlantic Tangerine Dream Madcap’s Flaming Duty East Gate Patrick Wolf The Magic Position Low Altitude/Universal May 8 Paul Anka My Way – Swings & Strings Decca Björk Volta One Little Indian/Atlantic Bone Thugs-N-Harmony Strength & Loyalty Full Surface/Interscope Brakes The Beatific Visions Rough Trade/World’s Fair The Clientele God Save the Clientele Merge DJ Encore Unique Koch Sage Francis Human the Death Dance Anti-/Epitaph Hayseed Dixie Weapons of Grass Destruction Cooking Vinyl Mystery Jets ZooTime Dim Mak The Ike Reilly Assassination We Belong to the Staggering Evening Rock Ridge The Sea & Cake Everybody Thrill Jockey Travis The Boy With No Name Epic The View Hats Off to the Buskers Columbia Shannon Wright Let in the Light Quarterstick May 15 The Avett Brothers Emotionalism Ramseur Groovie Ghoulies 99 Lives Green Door Ian Hunter Shrunken Heads Yep Roc Megadeth United Abominations Roadrunner Dolores O’Riordan Are You Listening? Sequel/Sanctuary The Phoenix Foundation Horsepower Young American Recordings Satellite Party Ultra Payloaded Columbia Rufus Wainwright Release the Stars Geffen Wilco Sky Blue Sky Nonesuch May 22 Tim Armstrong A Poet’s Life Hellcat/Epitaph Meg Baird Dear Companion Drag City The Bravery The Sun and the Moon Island Chick Corea and Béla Fleck The Enchantment Stretch The Cribs Men’s Needs, Women’s Needs, Whatever Warner Erasure Light at the End of the World Mute Fiction Plane Left Side of the Brain Bieler Bros. The National Boxer Beggars Banquet 1990s 1990s Rough Trade/World’s Fair Joan Osborne Breakfast in Bed Time Life Jean-Luc Ponty The Acatama Experience Koch Luther Russell Repair Ungawa/Adrenaline Uncle Monk Uncle Monk Airday/Burnside Distribution The Used Lies for the Liars Reprise White Rabbits Fort Nightly Say Hey May 29 Cary Brothers Who You Are bluhammock music/Procrastination Music Firescape Dancehall Apocalypse We The People R. Kelly Double Up Jive The Vacancies Tantrum Blackheart
May 1st, 2007 by Erin Wolf
Time to grant women equal rights
By Martha Burk The new Congress has been busy, what with scandals in the Justice Department and votes to rein in war spending with some accountability and better training for the troops. Both are good things, and proper priorities. But both are likely to end with standoffs as they go head-to-head with the White House, no doubt because the 2008 election season is already well under way. The president is determined not to give Democrats an edge with voters. But some members of this Congress are already looking ahead and hoping to boost the party’s stock with the majority of voters – women. These Congress members are going beyond non-binding resolutions and bills that won’t get past the president’s veto pen. They are talking about passing the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). The ERA states “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” Recently renamed the Women’s Equality Amendment and introduced March 27 by its chief sponsor, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), to a standing-room-only news conference, the ERA would grant equal constitutional rights to women — something we have yet to achieve. It’s a simple concept that had the blessing of both political parties until the Republicans struck it from their platform in 1980, with the Democrats following in 2004. The ERA was first introduced in Congress in 1923, but was not passed and sent to the states for ratification until 1972. Unlike the 27th amendment, ratified after hanging around for 200 years, the Equal Rights Amendment was passed with a time limit of only seven years for approval by the states. In that brief time, it was ratified by 35 states, but was stopped three short of the required 38 by millions of corporate dollars backing Phyllis Schlafly’s anti-woman storm troopers. They feared unisex toilets more than they valued freedom from discrimination. Schlafly always resurfaces at the Republican platform committee hearings leading a band of zealots campaigning for their own constitutional amendment banning abortion. She says Republican women want to do that. (No doubt a few do. We saw just how few last November, when 100 percent of anti-abortion ballot initiatives were defeated.) Much has changed in the 35 years since Congress first passed the ERA. Women have become the majority of both the population and of the electorate. Most are now in the work force full time, including nearly three quarters of mothers with children between 6 and 18. Women head one third of all households, and a whopping 61 percent of single parent families. While much has changed, little progress has been made. On average, women still make only 76 cents to a man’s dollar, working full-time and year-round. They hold 98 percent of the low paying “women’s” jobs and fewer than 15 percent of the board seats in major corporations. Three-quarters of the elderly in poverty are women. And in every state except Montana, women still pay higher rates than similarly […]
May 1st, 2007 by Vital Archives
You, Mii and D&D
Sunday, April 1, 2007 6:30 a.m. In the years following my retirement from professional bass fishing, I’ve accomplished a great deal: I’ve survived Catholic grade school, gotten laid, graduated from college and even managed to watch all seven Police Academy movies in one sitting. Until recently, however, I had never once gotten up at the butt-crack of dawn in order to wait in a Toys ‘R’ Us parking lot. Joined by my long-suffering girlfriend, I’m among a dozen other foolhardy souls braving the morning freeze in hopes of scoring the impossibly hard-to-find Nintendo Wii. Though this video game-fueled madness certainly represents a troubling descent into pasty-faced, fan-boy territory, it’s merely the topper to a weekend already filled with role-playing games, minor sci-fi celebrities and a puzzling lecture on ghost hunting. Get out your 20-sided dice, grandma, ‘cause this column’s rolling with a +8 Dexterity… 15 Hours Earlier… It’s a perfectly lovely Saturday afternoon and I’m spending it listening to a handful of 19-year-olds discuss their favorite Super Nintendo games: “Did you know that Breath of Fire III was the first SNES game to utilize an Active Time Battle system?” …I actually did know that. After following a sizzling hot tip, I’ve found myself – again, with my patient-to-a-fault girlfriend – at the 2007 Concinnity Sci-Fi and Gaming Convention held at the MSOE Campus Center. Like the once-Milwaukee-based Gen Con (the largest sci-fi/gaming/still-living-with-your-parents convention in the country), Concinnity offers up RPG demos, video game tournaments and bored-looking vendors hawking used fantasy books and black light dragon posters. Of course, everything here is on a much smaller scale, a fact that bears out in the lineup of special guests: instead of Dungeons & Dragons creator Gary Gygax and a Billy Dee Williams meet-and-greet, Concinnity has, um…an anime voice actress and some guy who used to write Tomb Raider novels. It’s this micro-sized quality that gives the “con” it’s wonky charm, however, along with the small and endearingly awkward group of attendees that populate it. Fittingly, the place feels like a rec room sent from heaven (or hell, if you’re averse to these sorts of things): a few clutches of seasoned gamers roll dice in a faraway corner, a group of younger Evil Dead aficionados mull over arcane rule books in the back and, near the entrance, a pleasant-enough fellow recruits for a zombie LARP game (Live Action Role Playing). My girlfriend and I stroll through the room cautiously; though we’re enjoying ourselves, most of the attendees seem to steer clear of us (the requisite “guy-dressed-up-as-a-Jedi” seems especially aloof). It’s a strange feeling I can only equate to my experiences with gay bars: no matter how hard you try to blend in, no matter how kinda-sorta gay you may be, the pros will always sniff you out. Following the aforementioned Super Nintendo discussion (dubbed “AwesomSNES” on the schedule), as well as a look at an Alien-themed board game, we grab our seats for the highly anticipated lecture on ghost hunting. The star of […]
May 1st, 2007 by Vital Archives
