The Hidden Cameras: Debbie Does the Bowery

(started 11/12/06; finished 9/25/07)

I often make little plans for entities which I have no control over. Like who I would cast in movies of books I like or crap like that, but music seems to draw my manipulative interest even more. Like songs that I want to hear covered by someone new (who doesn't want to hear George Jones cover "Ninety-nine Red Balloons"?) or duets or trios that I think would be great (Why haven't Tori Amos, Bjork, and P.J. Harvey teamed up for the super album that I dream of when I slip into rare nostalgia for quirky, angsty songbird combination?).

There are a few bands that are probably too different to work in any kind of real combination, but who always put on an amazing show and make me want to dance and seem to throw out the same hectic energy in their differently little ways. In the world in my mind where I run things, in some massive old warehouse with multiple stages set up surrounding a central dance area, these bands would play in close succession, each set up on a different stage so the action could shift from one band to another seemlessly. Instead of any one band playing an hour-long set, each would play multiple shorter sets, intermixed with one another for hours of dancing fun for our delirious crowd. The line up would include Islands, Gogol Bordello, the Hidden Cameras, Old Crow Medicine Show, and the Scissor Sisters. Actually scratch the warehouse, let's move the fantasy outdoors, though I feel like we Americans don't really do outdoor festivals all that well.

(I'm wandering back through posts that I started and never finished and posting the fragments for the hell of it if they aren't too wretched, so this one was written last year sometime and I have no idea why I originally titled the way I did, except I am fairly certain I wrote it after seeing the hidden cameras at Bowery Ballroom. Oh wait, yes I do! Now I can sort of finish this...)

So when I saw the show at the BB that got me started writing this, the girl who plays the xylophone in the band completely rocked my world that night. She bears a striking resemblance to Debi Mazar and looked so happy and danced and smiled in such a fun way that it made the whole show that much better and my friend and I couldn't stop talking about how much we loved her. And it takes some serious distraction to tear my eyes off Joel Gibb, who as long as I'm explaining my fantasy world, wants to be my boyfriend and writes songs for me, but even with this most beautiful of men singing every song straight to me and only me, Debbie (I don't know her real name so I still call her Debbie and I know I could just google and figure out who she really is but so could you so leave me alone) was still the star of the show. The whole band has that way on stage that makes you want to be in a band, makes you dream of being on stage, making wish you could make a room full of people feel like they are making you feel when you watch them but Debbie had this something extra that made you feel that if you were watching her make toast you would want to make toast too. In my mind she goes everywhere and does everything with that same little bop that rocked my world so hard that night at that show.

That is the kind of energy I want to project. I still smile thinking about basking in it at that show.