Canaries' Sophomore Gig

The canaries flew into Claremont once again to wing it with another Bob Dylan hit, ruffling the feathers of many folk purists with their uke-o-centric rendition. This time, they thrashed "Maggie's Farm," the title of which is actually longer, but I'm too damn lazy to type the whole thing, even though typing this sentence has taken longer. I mean "thrash" in a good way.

Canary Limo once again provided power vocals, setting many young girls hearts a-flutter, while Billy Canary and Canary Jeff lit the stage with their ukes. Canary Jeff attacked his ukulele solo with the ferocity of a young tiger raging through a forest of Frosted Flakes, bringing an otherwise complacent to it's feet for the first of many standing O's.

Other acts at the Open Mique (and I'm going to be occasionally serious here) were plentiful. Kudos to the nice elderly lady who started an impromptu jam session while we all waited in line. But I have to take at least one kudo back. The lady was first on the list and, in spite of the new Folk center policy of one song per, asked if she could do a second song. The first song was good. The second song was kind of "faux" folk and not very good. The FC open Mique MC return to the one per policy for every act that followed. To make matters worse, after making us sit through her two songs, she couldn't be bothered to stay until the end--major chutzpah in my book. She left during the break. What's wrong Granny, didn't get your nap?

For those of you classical music fans, Paganini Man was back, trying to recapture the glory that he so elegantly didn't capture the first time. This time, he brought his own sound equipment, which didn't make the piece any better, or shorter. Again, he had to be stopped before someone killed him.

My theory is that he is actually a long-lost son of Andy Kaufman.

But there were a lot of fine performances, with a lot of unusual instruments featured.

One of the FC's employees played tubular kind of banjo-esque thingy that. A good instrumental performance.

One regular put aside his guitar and pulled a charango off the wall and played that. Another fine instrumental.

Special ed and the Guy Who Looks Like Jim Croce returned with another Croce tune. It was okay, but I hope they realize that you can only take that Jim Croce gimmick so far.

The highlight was this perky little Chinese lady who showed up with the Japanese version of a koto and played that. It was a haunting, exquisite performance. It was probably the most surprising and even best thing I have ever seen at the FC. It was one of the reasons I go to these things.

That, and to catch the Canarie's in their latest performance.