Rick Berlin’s Van Gogh bash
By JON GARELICK | February 2, 2006
“I feel like I’ve been nominated for the Supreme Court and I’m not an asshole,” Rick Berlin told the capacity crowd January 28 at the Lizard Lounge. It was nearing the end of the second of a two-night extravaganza celebrating the release of Berlin’s Me & Van Gogh (Hi-N-Dry) for which he’d invited about 20 different acts each night to perform one of his songs. Previously, Berlin had called this “a kind of 60th-birthday party,” and it kind of was. He had family in the audience, as well as contemporaries who harked back to his days as the front guy in proto-glam band Orchestra Luna, and a slew of performers less than half his age paying homage. “That was the Schoenberg version of ‘Nice But,’ ” Berlin said of a performance by a string quartet that included former Shelley Winters Project player Meredith Cooper. Leah Callahan sang, a cappella , “Who’s That You’re With.” Bill Hough said, “If there were a God, I would have written this song,” before launching into “One Night Only.” The Neighborhoods began with “Baseball Park” and shifted mid song when bassist Lee Harrington took over at the mike from Dave Minehan with Modern English’s “Mesh and Lace,” a surprise ’80s move that cracked up the room, no one more than Berlin. The Warner Music Group-signed goth duo Humanwine did “Hopefully”; the quartet Sand Machine played “Depth Charge.”
Finally, Berlin talked about the 10 years of Monday nights he’d spent playing at Jacques and the band he’d introduced there, the Dresden Dolls. Brian Viglione attacked his hi-hat with high-speed ferocity (eventually knocking the top cymbal off) as Amanda Palmer tore into a hellacious “I Hate Everything But You.” At Palmer’s bidding, Berlin (who had played his solo set earlier in the night) returned for an encore of a hushed “Your Light Is On” and then, so as not to leave everyone in too teary a romantic mood, finished up with “Beerbelly.” Moved with Boston-scene love, he quoted his friend Joan Wasser (of Dambuilders and Antony and the Johnsons fame, also the subject of a Berlin song) as saying, “We’re all in this together,” and then added, “That sounds like hippies, but that’s what I am.”
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Jon Garelick: jgarelick@phx.com
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