Concert Review: The New Orleans Bingo! Show @ Spiegelworld (09/12/08) A performance by The New Orleans Bingo! Show is something to behold, and Spiegelworld seems to be the location built for their Tom-Waits-meets-James-Chance-and-the-Contorations-at-a-burlesque-show live events. That’s the catch, too, it’s more event than live concert. The Bingo! Show consists eight members including a piano player with a pension for playing theremin, two foul mouthed clowns who hump audiences members, play cheese graters, police sirens, and accordions, a scantily clad burlesque performer, and a front man rotating between keys and his sax.
When the Bingo! Show hit their ragtime blues style dead on it was spectacular. They could play that old time sound to the tee, and make it into a spectacle, but, unfortunately, that didn’t happen frequently enough. Too often the music drifted into uninspired blues rock balladry with wafts of that roots sound, making them sound more like something from the early afternoon hours of Bonnaroo (not that good bands have not played that slot in the past) than a band that was meant to be seen in a beautiful intimate venue like Spiegelword (and believe me, that’s where they are meant to be seen).
Spiegelworld is an interesting venue, located in a faux circus tent on the South Street Seaport of Manhattan. The cloth tent look from inside, with the chairs and tables thrown everywhere they will fit, all placed under rocking chandeliers and a speakeasy kind of feel, complimented the performance in ways that few venues can do for an act, including a beautiful sound system that allowed for the subtlety of the instrumentation to shine through.
Bingo! Show’s main issue was that there wasn’t enough momentum behind what they were doing, there was often the passion (though not always), but the performance is given too much emphasis over the actual music. Mid set they stopped playing and threw on a film shot on bikes in pre-Katrina French Quarter of New Orleans. In the video the group does a soulful cover of the Kinks “Complicated Life,” which didn’t quite do justice to the Kinks brilliant arrangement. Following the film the band started a pretty thin jam and proceeded to have the audience participate in a twenty game of bingo. Yes, bingo. While this left a few die hard fans cheering and screaming as one of the clowns berated audience members who weren’t catching on to the rules, it seemed that the crowd lost a good deal of it’s enthusiasm for the music from that point forward. Though they would probably argue that it’s in the name and this isn’t just a concert, it’s performance, it nonetheless sucked the air out of the room for both the concert and the performance.
From that point on, aside from a few moments of great Squirrell Nut Zippers inspired roots tunes, the music never caught up to the performance – which, in all fairness, the performance was pretty grand and engaging. The Bingo! Show has a good sound going, but there seems to be a lack of confidence in the music’s ability to engage the audience within the band. The clowns and dancing routine works in it’s own way to create a one of a kind experience, but that’s just not enough in this case.
Watch The New Orleans Bingo! Show live:
Clint Maedgen's Bingo! show landed at lower Manhattan's Spiegelworld as if the revue had been tailor made for the tony cabaret that caters to well heeled New Yorkers. The crowd for this show was unusual for the place, peppered as it was with hardcore fans of Louisiana music who hooted knowingly at the references to the Ninth Ward and Mid City and howled in delight when Clint name checked the Hi Ho Lounge and a series of Bourbon Street strip clubs. The fans knew when to get up and dance, how to clap along in time and especially how to interact with the guerilla theater moves of Bingo's players. The music was as well choreographed as the players and the program, using an array of kitchen utensils and garage junk for percussion instruments and working bull horns, sirens and electronics expertly into a sonic mix based around a two keyboard acoustic quartet with Maedgen's saxophone as the main solo voice. Preservation Hall's Ben Jaffe was along for the ride, playing sousaphone at several points in the show. The video of "Complicated Life" and of course the Bingo game itself, which ended with the "winner" being knocked to the ground and beaten with a bouquet of flowers, worked seamlessly into the theatrical mix. In the evening's most moving moment, the crowd recognized John Brunious in the video and offered up a spontaneous ovation to the late Preservation Hall mainstay. What amazes me most about Maedgen's presentation is how it can transmit so much love for and understanding of traditional New Orleans music without ever pandering to the audience or resorting to the usual cliches that most New Orleans performers use to translate content. When asked, of course, they will provide the hokum.
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