What: Tenafly High Geezer Palooza
Where: Pianos NYC, 158 Ludlow St, NY, NY
To invite a friend to Geezer-Palooza, hatch a plan here!
Smoking Bathroom
The band where all the cool kids hang out to light up. Featuring the dynamic stage presence of lead singer Jen Cohn alongside the “belligerent and irascible” lead guitar licks of Chris McKenna (formerly of Face Down), anchored by the original dynamic duo rhythm section of nineties rap-rock stars, 2 Skinnee Js, Andy Action and Eddie Eyeball. Smoking Bathroom performs ferocious pop-punk by The Clash, David Bowie, The Pretenders and Violent Femmes. Put that safety pin in your nose, dye your hair green, get as androgynous as nature or inclination will permit and rock your face off to a sound as raw and stripped down and badass as a peeled carrot with a Zippo!
Ürdang 89
This band will transport you back to peak eighties faster than a Hot Tub Time Machine. Once featured in the pages of Tiger Beat magazine back when they were called Jinx and The Core, Urdang 89 features singer Dan Edrei, guitarist Ethan Fiks, Bassist, Doug Kramon and drummer Andy Action bringing the great songs of the golden age of MTV-driven hits back to life. Remember hanging out in the basement watching videos all afternoon with your friends—all those marvellous and strange one-hit wonders by bands like Golden Earring coming on right after hits by stars like Billy Idol and Duran Duran? Ürdang 89 will have you hallucinating Martha Quinn and JJ Jackson dancing the Safety Dance like it ain’t really all that safe. Put on your legwarmers, stick some gel in your hair and party like 1999 is thirteen years in the future!
Mrs Henry
As the eighties drew to a close and a new decade yawned, Face Down’s Chris McKenna teamed up with The RB Laurence Band’s Julian Koslow and Russ Reilly to make music that would capture the hopes and dreams of an entire nation. Unfortunately, it was never entirely clear which nation this was, though there are rumors of a mysterious island off the coast of New Zealand where their old demo tape washed ashore and they are now worshipped as divine simpletons. With riffs to make the Stones soil their Depends and lyrics to make Bob Dylan scratch his head in confusion, Mrs Henry aims to turn every performance into a true Julep Hootenanny. And despite the fact that we are currently undergoing a massive heatwave this July, when Mrs Henry performs their blizzard of a Christmas song, Sidewalk Santa they just might succeed in altering the global climate.
Mondo Cane Blues Explosion
Just out of high school, we used to head downtown to this little shoebox of a bar called the Mondo Cane. It was up a flight of narrow stairs, just over a small Italian restaurant. Some pretty big names played there back in the day when they were just little names, or no names at all–Blues Traveler, The Spin Doctors, The Holmes Brothers. But the guy we were there to see was a bluesman extraordinaire who called himself TJ Swan, a man who would douse himself in blues and turn himself into a human torch– playing his Strat like it was a murder weapon, hollering uptempo blues number by
Muddy Waters,
Little Walter,
John Lee Hooker,
Junior Parker, as well as his own ode to the joys of redundant flesh–Mogambo Woman (sample lyric: “I need me a mogambo woman, gonna have to weigh oh, five-, six-, seven-, eight-, nine-hundred pounds./ If I don’t get me a mogambo woman, I’m just gonna have to do without.”). We ran up some record bar tabs while TJ worked his hoodoo on us back in the day. Mondo Cane Blues Machine will recreate for you the chaotic honky-tonk atmosphere of those wild and glorious bourbon and blues drenched nights.
The RB Laurence Band
If there was one thing that was true about the music we listened to in the eighties it was that a lot of it was from the seventies. And the one band from the seventies that seemed to tower over all the others was Led Zeppelin. For some of us, they were the musical gods of our idolatry, and we worshipped them with all the fervor of true pagans, going to midnight showings of Song Remains the Same like we were going to mass. When seniors Russ Reilly and Julian Koslow met a sophomore named Dave Simon who could wail just like Robert Plant and his friend Jason Reilly who could groove just like John Paul Jones they knew what the next step was–to emulate the objects of their worship and re-enact the rituals of their performance. So, next thing you know The RB Laurence Band was formed and was playing a complete live rendition of Zeppelin’s monstrous Dazed and Confused (a performance discussed in more detail, here). Newly reformed as a bi-coastal band, and with the addition of drummer Andy Action, they are planning a true Stonehenge of a setlist, one to bring the wild rumpus of Geezer-Paloozato a wild finish. Those with heart conditions, spastic colons and nervous dispositions are advised to take some serious medication before RBL takes the stage. Your lives may depend on it.
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