Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players, Ricky Spontane, Kid Carpet
@ Islington Academy, Sat 4th Sept 04

If half the thrill of a concert is in the performance and not just in what’s played, then this was a wholly great gig. None of these performers would win prizes for musicianship, but that’s hardly surprising since one of them is a ten-year-old girl. But more of her later.

The person on stage with an array of toys in a suitcase is no child, but Kid Carpet plays with all the zest (and hint of irritation if he went at it for too long) of a true youngster. Eschewing the “funny noise”-sample-based cut-up technique after his first track of another Kid like Koala, Mr Carpet takes the mic and tells us all about his local job centre. A spiteful track named ‘Nelson Street Space Invaders’ details the job search on those computer game machines you get there nowadays. Presumably he can’t make a career out of throwing rock god poses with a tiny toy guitar, miming to Van Halen’s classic ‘Jump’ and adding power-up sounds, and otherwise jumping round the smart Academy stage in his cheerleader vest and pink trainers. Nice work if you can get away with it – and the sat-down crowd rapt in his movements seem to approve.

A few stand up and wiggle their way through the second support slot from Ricky Spontane, long-standing underground favourites and a rock ‘n’ roll band who missed the boat when the Coral sailed their pirate ship out of Liverpool, also-rans like the Zutons instead finding fame on their wave. This loose band have recorded a rattlingly-fine selection of surf-pop and impressed many an indie crowd, but while the old favourites go down well with the faithful, the songs are at least four years old now, and in truth the set lacks something; perhaps their would-be epic ‘The Perfect Sound’ is better suited to sweatier venues, and the tiny Casio wasn’t loud enough on Fall-like ‘Hey! Modigliani’. ‘Oo Oo Oo’ (“She’s sweet and lovely, she makes my heart go curvy”) should be a classic climax but didn’t last long enough. History advises me to recommend a second chance. Perhaps the band just couldn’t live up to the spectacle of their second song ‘Domino’, which had frontman Richard perform less of a Morrissey impression and sing the Fats-tribute entirely while laying on his back with his legs in the air.

So, that was fun. And the headline act TFSP must be the band who’ve made me laugh most at a gig since, ooh, the Moldy Peaches. In fact, they’re a bit like old Adam and Kimya if they were joined by a kid, but without the scatological obsessions. What drives this troupe instead is collecting old slides from thrift stores and garage sales (they’re from New York City and talk like that). They are: wild-haired, bespectacled, father Jason Trachtenburg, switching between guitar and keyboard; Tina Pina Trachtenburg the slideshow operator and fashion designer for the band; and in matching polka dots aforementioned daughter Rachel on the drums. After these introductions (and a cute “can I have less of EVERYthing in my monitors?”) it’s on with the slideshows!

'Mountain-trip to old Japan, 1959' is self-explanatory, but you need to hear the gloriously untrained harmony singing of it, describing each quick shot; and see the banal snaps strangely showing some anonymous family on holiday at, er, execution sites. "Look at me, I'm so funny;" the thoughts of a half-century ago are sung through fresh mouths in another country. Middle-aged middle-Americans in matching lipstick pose in grotesque projection. A man falls off a chair in a static precursor to You've Been Framed! I don't know who would take these photos in the first place even to show their friends, let alone then sell them to strangers who tour them around the world! It's entertainment from a bygone age. There's also a six-song pop opera based on a McDonald's corporation meeting. The whole experience is bizarre; then the Trachtenburg Family donate their unnecessary rider to the audience: oranges, kiwis and candy fly everywhere. "It must be somebody's birthday." There's a song, too, about being given slides they're unable to write about. A postmodern exercise in melding disparate entertainments and breaking accepted audience-band/age boundaries? Or just another excuse to mock our elders? It's all done with such good-hearted fun it's difficult to fault. I only hope there was somebody photographing it all for future parties.

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