Review of Gorey End Live at UCLA by Smilin' Jack Ruby
In the program for the performance (production?) of The Gorey End from The Tiger Lillies and the Kronos Quartet, comes this anecdote from Tiger Lilies vocalist, accordion/piano player and songwriter, Martyn Jacques:
"While on tour I was told I had received a funny letter from someone called Edward Gorey and he thought I was the 'cat's pyjamas.' He said he had a lot of unpublished work and in due course he sent it to me in a large cardboard box. It was with a great sense of honour that I set about turning this working into the collection of songs.
He also sent me a stone in a saucer saying if I stared at it long enough it would turn into a frog. Sadly I never got to meet him as he died just before I was due to fly out to Cape Cod for a visit, but I hope I have captured something of his wonderful and unique vision of the world.
I'm still staring at the the stone..."
Trying to explain to someone who Edward Gorey (born in 1925) was isn't the easiest thing in the world to do. What, you never saw Mystery? Oh, well there goes that. How about the production design of the Broadway version of Dracula from 1977? Not that either? What about those oh-so-ironic birthday/Christmas/Halloween cards you can find at Borders or Barnes & Noble that feature bears, the ironic death of children and the pinch-faced, yet judgemental/mildly innocent young virgins? No? Well...hm.
Not the easiest thing in the world, though even some who call themselves fans of Gorey know Amphigorey and The Gashlycrumb Tinies, but not much beyond that. Poet, illustrator, playwright, production/costume designer and Gothic dark humorist Edward Gorey was an amazing fellow and his death in April of 2000 was a true tragedy to an off-beat segment of society that still mourns his passing three years later. Gorey was a founding member of the Poets Theater alongside such notables as Frank O'Hara and John Ashbery and his illustrations proved so popular, you can find them on everything from lunch boxes to tote bags the world over now.
Get the CD!This year, to celebrate the life and work of Gorey, experimental musical acts The Tiger Lilies (based in London) and the Kronos Quartet (based in San Francisco) teamed up for a project entitled The Gorey End (now available as a recording on EMI Classics, which you can get here), which had its U.S. premiere on October 28th at Royce Hall on the UCLA campus here in Los Angeles. A crazy night by anyone's standards - including the many gothically-dressed Halloween revelers who were getting an early start - which also saw a number of ticket holders running for the exit (likely subscribers who had no idea what they were getting into) only a few minutes into their combined set. The Kronos Quartet? Surely you jest. How could they possibly offend? I am certain Gorey, who made a career out of skewering the upperclasses in his work, would approve.
I'd seen the Kronos Quartet once before at Bass Concert Hall at UT in Austin. They're an extraordinary group and one of the best things that came out of their Texas visit was a duet with legendary singing/yodeling cowboy Don Walser on the traditional country ballad, "Rose Marie" which Walser later released on his 2000 album, "Down at the Sky-Vue Drive-In". The fact that around that same time (around a year before) they teamed up with experimental composer Phillip Glass to record a new score for Tod Browning's original Dracula is not only a tribute to their versatility, but also to their interest in the macabre. A group consisting of a cello, two violins and a viola, the Kronos Quartet is a soft-spoken group that doesn't spend a lot of time with stage banter, but is one of the greatest popular string quartets in the world (giving "more than 100 concerts each year" their official bio tells us).
The Tiger Lilies, well, they are a difficult group to categorize. A three-man group consisting of a drummer, a bass player (who spent a few moments on a musical saw – though nothing like the singing saw work on the brilliant, similarly Halloween-themed song, "Mysterious Mose" from R. Crumb's "Cheap Suit Serenaders") and a singer who doubles on the accordion and piano (and even, at one point, a ukulele), The Tiger Lilies perform traditional cabaret ballads with a ragtime anarchy that feels like early Oingo Boingo blended with Tom Waits (particularly the Tom Waits of the experimental William S. Burroughs-penned theater piece, The Black Rider). The singer, Jacques, comes on stage in the costume of a barbershop balladeer, but also in the face makeup of a vaudeville clown. He swears at the audience, swears at his bandmates, is generally a total curmudgeonly asshole to all those around, but has a hauntingly beautiful falsetto – technically a "counter tenor" - singing voice (yes, he sounds like a castrato forever raging at the world that took his manhood) that echoes through any concert hall and sends chills up and down its listener's spines - particularly when he's reciting woeful ballads about death, suicide and educated pigs on their way to pig heaven. Or about "FIRE!!!!" - a lyric sung with the kind of force and verve that Danny Elfman gave "Minnie the Moocher" in Forbidden Zone.
After the large crowd had filed into the auditorium (urged in by a cheerfully smiling old man in a tuxedo walking through the crowd beating a hammer along three chimes of a small dulcimer in lieu of the typical dimming lights), the Kronos Quartet took the stage first. The evening was to be divided into two halves – a pair of solo sets by Kronos and The Tiger Lillies followed by an intermission that would then be followed by a combined set.
"Aaj Ki Raat (Tonight is the Night)" from composer Rahul Dev Burman came first followed by the quick strains of Aleksandra Vrebalov's "Pannonia Boundless," a piece written specifically to be performed by the Kronos Quartet. Following that was the whimsical "Mini Skirt" from Juan Garcia Esquivel and then "Flugufrelsarinn (The Fly Freer)" by the Icelandic group, Sigur Ros. A too-brief set, of course, but a nice introduction to the power that is the Kronos Quartet, particularly on "Flugufrelsarinn," truly the highlight of their set and a beautiful way to end their introduction.
And then came the Tiger Lillies. Dear God.
The cacophonous ravings of a madman is pretty much the easiest way to explain what the Tiger Lillies were all about with their solo show. The L.A. Times made a special note in their review to gaily mention one of their songs, likely entitled "Fire" or something else similarly minimalist to say that singing a wild song with lyrics like "I like burning houses down" and "START A FIRE!!!" was "no question, in appalling taste" given that at the time the Lillies were singing it, Southern California was burning to the ground. What's fun about watching the Lillies is imagining that it wasn't just an "odd coincidence" where their set list matched contemporary headlines, but that they had the song in their old repertoire and pulled it out of retirement specifically for this occasion – which matches the attitude of the group.
The Tiger Lillies are probably best known for their Olivier award-winning songwriting for the so-called "junk opera" "Shockheaded Peter" which they did in 1999. They don't write songs about magically falling in love, but instead about drug addicts, prostitutes and even beastiality – an entire album about that one topic, in fact, entitled "Farmyard Filth." Though it sounds like more the music you'd hear from a rapper or an odd speed metal band, the Lillies' Victorian balladeer tradition make them that much more of a shocking oddity and their songs that much more bizarre.
Following five truly bizarre moral music messages from the Lillies, intermission was called, a number of subscribers hastily beat a path for the door and a mere few minutes later, the remaining of us were shuttled back in for the rest of the show.
Here is the set list for the Lillies/Kronos combined musical versions of Gorey poetry (which matches the order on the CD):
"The Hipdeep Family"
"ABC"
"Weeping Chandelier"
"Jesus on the Windshield"
"Besotted Mother"
"Gin"
"Learned Pig"
"Hertha Strubb"
"Dreadful Domesticity"
"QRV"
"Histoire de Kay"
"Trampled Lily"
For forty-five minutes, we the audience were in the thrall of story after story of mirthful death, unexpected brilliance followed by death, success followed by death, death by alcohol, death from loneliness/sadness, even death from a pack of ravenous wild dogs. Death, death, death, death, death – but all with a humorous bent.
Take "Learned Pig," for example (which featured drummer Adrian Huge in a pig mask). It is the story of a smart pig and his little piggy adventures whose brilliance goes unnoticed and he dies and goes off to piggy heaven. It felt after awhile that the phrase, "...and then he/she/it dies" was like the secret word on You Bet Your Life where whenever Jacques uttered the phrase, a duck half-dressed as Groucho Marx would drop from the ceiling issuing $100 dollar bills (or, well, the entire cast of Pee Wee's Playhouse would go bananas). "Learned Pig" is a delightful and fun song, Shel Silverstein by way of, well, Clive Barker on a day where he's coming up with more characters names for Abarat sequels. Gorey's ironies do not fall far from the tree of his other work, so you can imagine the bent of the other songs.
"Gin" is, of course, a raucous song about the dangers of said inebriate. "Weeping Chandelier" is about a light fixture that can't help crying when it hears certain music. "Trampled Lily" – sorry – "TRRRRRAAAAAAAMMPPPP-LLLLLLED LI-LYY!!!!!" seems more appropriate as the syllables ricochet around my head is, of course, about a fallen maiden. "ABC" went through the alphabet rather quickly ascribing different horrific definition to various letters as drummer Huge tried to keep up flipping through a large notepad with letters drawn on it. And so on.
With every song, another couple of audience members leapt for the door. I've seen that before – in Austin at a one-man show by Eric Bogosian, in Houston at the intermission of the premiere of the disturbing long-lost Tennessee Williams prison-play "Not About Nightingales." These same people would probably have no problem watching a guy get shot to death in, say, an Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle or any of the violence on any episode of Law & Order, but there's just something about the violence of words, particularly when so violently thrust at you as by the Tiger Lillies, a blast of vehemence, the smug anti-Archie Rice couched in the promised elegance of the Kronos Quartet and a shabbily dressed falsetto ("I thought you said he won an Olivier!? He's an abomination!"), that makes it untenable to so many people.
Though Kronos and the Tiger Lillies are likely to recreate The Gorey End again some place, the album might be the only way many outside of particular cities get to hear this show. I highly recommend giving it a listen as it is truly amazing, unlike anything I have ever experienced before in the theater. It is unsettling, haunting, classical in nature, but ironic, ghastly and darkly comedic in lyric. The combination concocted by the Quartet and the Lillies is a Victorian madman's mix, something that has to be witnessed to be believed, and a Gorey tale indeed.
Somewhere, the Lord of Elephant House sleeps with a grin.
