WAMC Performing Arts Studio
News and Reviews
| SLIDE SHOW ROCK BAND TESTS CROWD By Greg Haymes, Staff writer (First published in the Times Union of Albany, NY: Wednesday, October 20, 2004) The drummer is 10 years old. The band is a family, featuring dad Jason on guitar, keyboards and vocals, mom Tina on tambourine and slide projector and daughter Rachel on drums. They create pop songs based on collections of old slides that they've purchased at garage sales and estate sales. The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players certainly know the value of a gimmick. Or gimmicks. Making their official Albany debut at the Linda Norris Auditorium of the WAMC Performing Arts Studio on Tuesday night, TFSSP amused, befuddled and tested the patience of the nearly sold out that filled the theater, but they certainly weren't boring. "We come from New York City, and we tour the world doing this -- believe it or not," explained Tina, slide projectionist extraordinaire at the start of the show. And, yes, it is difficult to believe. Jason described TFSSP as "a conceptual art rock-pop band," and the emphasis is clearly on the conceptual art end of the equation. And like so much conceptual art, the execution doesn't quite live up to the high concept. While Tina clicked her way through a carousel of slides of military nurses Jean and Kathy and their friends, Jason sang "Look at Me." One slide included a visit to the Festival of Gas. No, they weren't making it up. "It Must Be Somebody's Birthday" was accompanied by a montage of birthday slides, cakes featuring prominently in most of them. "Mountain Trip to Japan, 1959" -- the original "slide song" penned by Jason in 2000 -- was followed by the jazzy "Don't You Know What I Mean?" and "What Will the Corporation Do?," based on slides from a McDonald's corporate advertising presentation. Unfortunately, the music -- falling somewhere in between Ben Folds, the Dead Milkmen and Camper Van Beethoven -- wasn't up to the level of the concept. Jason isn't a very good singer, and his bumbling, fumbling, self-consciously nervous between-tune patter rambled on longer than the songs themselves. For all her engaging, 10-year-old charm, Rachel isn't much of a drummer. And while the songs certainly had their moments of humor and biting satire, none of them really sustained those moments for very long. In the end, the evening was something like Andy Kaufman sitting in with They Might Be Giants. Interesting to be sure. And unquestionably original, too. Captivating, in fact, in a car crash kind of way. You won't see the likes of the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players again anytime soon. And while you certainly wouldn't want a steady diet of it, TFSSP did serve as an eccentric palate cleanser for the Top 40 pop pap pumped out by most contemporary commercial radio stations. Back to News and Reviews |
| Used with permission of the Times Union of Albany, NY. Re-use rights may not be assigned to a third party without prior written permission from the Times Union. |