Lucid Dementia/The Tuna Helpers
Elysium : August 19, 2003
The
bill for this Tuesday night at Elysium was Blazetek2, The
Tuna Helpers and Lucid Dementia. Of the three bands, I had
seen Lucid Dementia before and had only heard of The Tuna
Helpers. It had been at least two years and one female vocalist
ago that I had last heard anything Lucid Dementia had done.
As for The Tuna Helpers, all I had heard of the band was a
friend of mine who told me, "they're interesting."
Blazetek2 was going to be the suprise of the night, with no
bias I firmly thought that I would be able to give that band
a completely fair shot. Fair can bite.
Blazetek2
can best be described as a band in it's formative stages.
If you pay attention to the seperate elements of the band
they have some solid components, the lead singer had a commanding
presence and voice, to go along with her Sinead O'Connor speaking
short haircut. The lead guitarist had the talent and definately
the finger style for playing the instrument, unfortuantely
he also gave off the aura of a Sammy Hagar stunt double. The
thing that rubbed me the wrong way with Blazetek2 was that
they have good elements in their music. They have a talented
vocalist and guitarist along with the rest of the band, however
all those elements didn't mix well at all. Kinda like vodka
and yogurt. You can probably stomach it, but you know it wasn't
a good idea. On top of that they had very little original
material, (I'm also willing to accept that fact that they
may have had no original material and I just didn't recognize
what I had heard) which made them the vodka and yogurt mistake
I had made before. On the upside, Blazetek2 does have the
makings of something that I would go see, but they need to
pull their shit together and polish it off before I'd do it
again.
The
Tuna Helpers took the stage next and I have to admit that
"interesting" was the word. Though not as bizarre
as some of the acts that I've seen roll through Austin, The
Tuna Helpers do have a kind of strange cuteness going for
them. They were more strange than cute, with the onstage performances
and attention to theatrics definately setting them apart from
just a girl band with funny songs. Three of the four band
members were female and the lead singer Adrienne Sneed's stage
personality of upbeat bouncy near neurosis was the perfect
face to the sound that The Tuna Helpers had. I have to admit
that I'm not sure what sound exactly that is, The Tuna Helpers
can't really be classified into a genre or at least not into
any genre that I know of. It's got some elements of punk and
some elements of more comedic acts like Tenacious D. It also
has the bizarre mix of truly entertaining song writing, sign
language translations, lively performers, solid musical talent,
and puppets. Ah yes, puppets. pure un-adulterated puppets.
Several of the songs where sung with the help of an onstage
puppet theatre sporting articulated puppets that sang with
Operatic voices. All of the songs whether featuring puppet
vocals or not, were cleverly written and entertaining as hell.
All in all, the bottom line is that although they might be
seen as a novelty act I would definately pay the club cover
to see this band again.
The
last and headlining band was Lucid Dementia. It had been at
least two years since I had first seen and heard Lucid Dementia
at the Atomic cafe. At that first show I was introduced to
Luci, the creation of the band's lead singer, programmer,
and founder, Sheldon. Luci can really only be best described
as a skeletal alien, Jim Henson, drug induced vision. The
exact concept and creation of the puppet is a little obscure
but I did get at least one version of the story. Apparently
Sheldon, at one point, had a problem with stage fright. Luci
is the product of the search for a working solution that would
get Sheldon onstage and his music out of his skull and into
the ears of an audience. By using the full body puppet of
Luci to be the persona of the lead singer in the band, Sheldon
was able to deal with performing and ease into the roll of
front man. Luci the skeletal full body puppet is now no longer
needed in the same way that he/she/it used to be. Sheldon
has since gotten over his fear but the puppet has stayed as
the namesake of the band and probably the most recognized
part of it. Luci only makes it's appearance for the first
few songs of the show now, but Sheldon himself has developed
into a animated performer which has more than compensated.
He, along with latest female vocalist Holly, have a good energy
though I think that they still need to develop a little better
chemistry between the two. Holly herself seems to be a bit
too reserved for the music involved. That music is one that
has changed since I last listened to Luci. Previously, the
sound was more electronic than anything else. Now, the sound
has gotten harder and more aggressive. More guitars have overtaken
the synthetic sounds that were the backbone of the Lucid Dementia
style before. There are still some synthetics involved in
the band but if Lucid Dementia could still be considered an
electronic band then they're on the guitar side of KMFDM if
anything. I was always entertained by Lucid Dementia, the
sheer novelty of puppets was enough to do it for me. Now though,
the band sounds much better and the changes have really done
a lot to improve their appeal for me. I'm real curious to
see what else is going to happen with Lucid Dementia and how
else their music is going to evolve. This is a band that I
will be checking on in the future.
-Darren Davila |