By Devon Wendell
Echo Curio looks like a small NYC art gallery and isn’t much larger than a modest Manhattan apartment living room — the perfect setting for the performance Wednesday night by two indie alternative groups, Learning Music and Cassorla.
Learning Music is known for releasing a new album every month with a different concept. This time the group presented a performance of their album: A Tribute To Jonny Pride in its entirety. Pride was a California-based ‘60s rocker during the psychedelic era. After he experienced some moderate success, Pride’s drug use got the best of him and his career fell to the wayside. His disappearance in the early 70′s has made him a controversial cult figure in rock ‘n’ roll.
Learning Music: A Tribute To Jonny Pride (Artwork by Suisse Marocain and Kit Brown)
Learning Music (John Wood: keyboards, vocals, Alex Silverman: guitar, vocals, Ben Cassorla: guitar, vocals, Keith Karman: bass, Mike Green: drums) presented a witty stage act – one of Pride’s songs followed by Wood’s reading of Pride’s bio between songs, reaching from upcoming stardom through a downward spiral. Each song reflected those different periods in his life, starting with “Ambition,” in which Woods read about a young Pride trying to break onto the rock scene of the 60′s, and “Me And My Hands,” Pride’s first hit which landed him a deal with an A&M records. The music was a throw back to the Sunset Strip in its heyday, with a dash of British invasion combining three chord rock with cheesy Farfisa and simulated B3 organ melodies. Think The Doors meet The Trogs.
Often, Wood’s hilarious tongue-in-cheek, between-songs bio readings of Pride’s clichéd rock lifestyle were more entertaining than the music, which was pandering, ‘60′s psychedelic rock at its most pedestrian. Too many of the songs felt like dark, dumbed-down Jim Morrison-like tunes – “Apple Core,” “Heads A Rock” and finally, “What’s Left Behind.”
As the band took us through the fall of Pride’s life, into his odd disappearance, the two-minute songs became cloying and the act got old quickly. It was easy to predict the unfolding story: too many psychedelic drugs leading to a near breakdown by Pride (similar to the Syd Barrett story).
Unfortunately the set was also marred by bad vocal mic mixing, leaving the lyrics almost completely inaudible. It was a fun experiment that wore out its welcome fast, and Learning Music sounding like a good band that was holding itself back to fit the stale, retro material.
Up next, Brooklyn-based band Cassorla took the stage with a NYC art house rock sound that certainly fit the venue, especially with an opening number, “Shout It,” calling back the days of Max’s Kansas City. The trio (consisting of Ben Cassorla: guitar, vocals, Ross Garren: keyboards, harmonica, and Brian Carmody on drums) often brought to mind The Pixies or Radiohead’s less electronic explorations.
Cassorla
On “The Alphabet Song,” Cassorla’s hypnotic guitar rhythms were layered with Garren’s nursery rhyme, electric keyboard melodies. But again, the vocal microphones were too low in the mix so the lyrics were lost. The most interesting number in the set was “My Tree,” a bluesy number in which the band was joined by accordionist Priya Swaminathan, whose ethereal playing wove in and out of Garren, adding some soulful Chicago blues harp. Cassorla’s falsetto vocals were interesting — which made it more of a shame that the words couldn’t be heard. And Carmody’s dynamic drumming really stood out on this number.
But as the set continued, the music felt as though it called for more, as in “The Salad Days of Malcom,” in which the group went from one hook to another with no distinguishable chorus — sounding like three songs at once — and Garren’s impressive keyboard work was drowned out by the volume of Cassorla’s guitar. The band closed with “We Are,” which felt like latter day Velvet Underground, with Cassorla’s vocals reminiscent of VU’S Doug Yule. Cassorla and Garren displayed a unique sense of harmonic camaraderie with some nice interaction between guitar and keyboards. But the piece eventually fell apart, mostly due to the sound problems that had never been remedied since the first act.
Overall Cassorla showed a lot of promise, but their compositions lacked structure, and the bad sound didn’t help. Where most alternative bands play too much, Cassorla could have given more. The net result was an uneven performance at tiny Echo Curio in Echo Park.
