Brooklyn Museum's "reOrder"

After seeing photos of the Brooklyn Museum's new "reOrder" exhibit (March 4, 2011-January 15, 2012), I just had to go see it in person. The renderings online looked so massive, so larger-than-life, so...glow-y. And after visiting in person, the installation is far more stunning than the pictures even give it credit.

reOrder consists of huge fabric sculptures made of flat, round frames with heavy white fabric folded and stretched from one circular frame to another below it, at varying heights and diameters. Each fabric monolith appears lit from within with a slightly blue-toned light, so that they all give off a luminescent, mystical glow. They're set up in the 10,000-square-foot hall on the first floor, which is capped with a flat glass roof. The small, green-tinted panes of glass that checker the ceiling pair perfectly with the luminescence of the exhibit, and only add to the otherworldly environment.

Each structure is rooted to the floor with heavy-looking white bases, some of which have a bulbous protrusion encircling it at just the right height to use as a bench (which museum-goers were only too happy to do). The clunky bases coupled with the light umbrellas give the installation an overall feeling of being ethereal yet solid at the same time, an effect made all the more pronounced when standing in the center of the hall, craning one's neck upward at these floating, oversized sunshades surrounding you on all sides. It was like walking through a sparkling white forest, and felt, in a word, magical.

For you architects out there, the Museum is also displaying videos of the building process and the installation and assemblage of the exhibit within the hall, sped up into time-lapse clips. It's fascinating, to say the least (and can also be viewed on the Brooklyn Museum's website).

Whatever you do, do not miss this exhibit. (It'll be on display for 10 months, so you've got no excuse not to go!)

You can find more information on this and other exhibits at brooklynmuseum.org.

And here are some photos I took (which, due to my camera's increasing quasi-brokenness, don't really do the site justice):

Everybody go to the museum!

Thanks, crummy camera, for making this shot blurry.

This dad and his daughter were really sweet. Start 'em young (art lovers, that is)!

The right outer wall.

The left outer wall.

Review: AX Alternative Manga

After reading a lot of mostly positive articles about this book, I checked it out from my local library (side note: I love that the Brooklyn Public Library carries this very adult manga!). And unfortunately, I was pretty disappointed.

Ax: Alternative Manga collects a slew of comics from the Japanese alternative comics magazine Ax, in the style of McSweeney's "Best American Comics" series. It consists of a sizable introduction and a collection of short comics, some of which are standalone tales and some of which appear to be excerpts.

While I'm always happy to see unexpected (and adult) manga translated into English, the content in this book was just not that great overall. There are a few titles that I liked, but too many were boring or nonsensical. Takato Yamamoto and Keizo Miyanishi's pieces, for example, were beautifully drawn, but I couldn't even get through them because they didn't follow a narrative and basically read like a stream-of-consciousness thing. I personally prefer my comics to tell some semblance of a story.

One complaint I read numerous times online is that the book as a whole has too much juvenile and gross-out humor, but this is definitely something I disagree with. Out of the 33 pieces, there are only about 3 or 4 that contain anything gross-out. Yes, these particular stories were pretty dumb and seemed like little more than an excuse for the author to draw penises, but they're hardly representative of the entire collection.

The stories that I enjoyed most were the furthest removed from the feel of traditional manga. Katsuo Kawai's simple line drawings more closely resemble the homemade mini comics you'd find in a local independent comic shop, and his brief tale about a woman's boyfriend leaving her for another woman is incredibly clever and elegant.

Toranusuke Shimada's thick black lines and bulbous shapes are positively fun to look at, and his fictional history of Eldorado motorcycles is one of the most engaging tales in the entire book. Kotobuki Shiriagari's "The Twin Adults" shorts are very clever and his drawings of the two little naked men are gently done in the watery brush stroke style of sumi (ink wash) paintings.

My two favorite pieces are by Shinya Komatsu and Akino Kondo (whose work also graces the cover). Komatsu's "Mushroom Garden" is illustrated in a highly detailed and magical Franco-Belgian style (think "TinTin" or "Asterix"), and the story of a mineral collector who switches to mushrooms is short and sweet. Kondo's "The Rainy Day Blouse" looks much more like traditional manga, but with perfectly smooth lines and lots of subtle roundness that gives it just a touch of an art nouveau feel. The simple story of a girl's new blouse and umbrella is also sweet and short with a hint of nostalgia. I will definitely be seeking out more of her work.

Now that I'm writing all this down, it sounds like there's a lot more that I like than dislike. However, that's because beside the stories I like a lot, I feel ambivalent about the rest. I don't like what's left, but I don't hate it (well, most of it) either. This collection is listed as "Volume One" on the cover, so I'm assuming Top Shelf will be publishing more. I look forward to picking up the next one at the library, but I would definitely not buy it, and overall there's just not enough good stuff for me to recommend this first volume.

Book Review: I Don’t Care About Your Band

Full title -
I Don't Care About Your Band: What I Learned from Indie Rockers, Trust Funders, Pornographers, Felons, Faux-Sensitive Hipsters, and Other Guys I've Dated

I randomly stumbled upon this book while browsing in a bookstore. The cover was cute and the title really caught my eye. After getting it from the library, I finished it in two days. However, that’s not to say that I “couldn’t put it down.” Rather, I breezed through it so quickly because I constantly wanted to get on to the good parts. Unfortunately, though, there weren’t many of those. This book was nothing more than a big disappointment.

I expected “I Don’t Care About Your Band” to be composed of a funny chapter devoted to each crazy boy author Julie Klausner dated. But the complete picture was more of a personal ramble that never concretely nailed down the men. Based on the description on the back of the book, I also expected it to have a witty, sarcastic tone. But the self-deprecation in “I Don’t Care…” wasn’t funny. It reads like a case of low self-esteem. Klausner spends more time talking about her insecurities and why she dated such duds than she spends discussing the duds themselves. And it’s no wonder she dated such losers—she acts desperate, jumps into bed with any guy who’ll have her, and displays a complete lack of self-confidence. It’s infuriating when Klausner notes that this or that man was so much hotter than she—especially since the photo on the cover proves that she is, in fact, very pretty and thin. It made me think that the men weren’t so bad after all, if only because Klausner encouraged their behavior by being so desperate and pathetic.

Unfortunately, most of the men are not fully fleshed out, but rather woven into Klausner’s self-description rambles. I wanted them to be distinct characters at the center of their own tales, but they were actually pretty boring. Only a couple come off as being truly ridiculous; the rest are just mild jerks—but, again, why should they have been anything more when Klausner was such a doormat? Those titles on the cover—indie rocker, hipster, porn star, etc, give the men too much credit. Her beaus are so normal and boring that whittling their personalities down to cliché labels just doesn’t work.

Klausner herself also isn’t much more likeable than the men she dates. She makes a lot of offensive and misogynist statements, such as claiming that bisexual women are just horny but bisexual men are “actually gay men,” and that women don’t maintain female friendships without backstabbing and competing with each other (and, as such, all women should have a gay male best friend). She also makes a crack at one point about the Holocaust not being real. I’m sure she thinks she was being funny and sarcastic, but the statement comes out of nowhere and doesn’t belong. Aside from its inherent offensiveness (whether joking or not), it just doesn’t make sense in the context of the story.

The only parts that really intrigued me are when Klausner discusses pop culture relationships, including Miss Piggy and Kermit the Frog, and Pam and Jim from the show “The Office.” Kermit is the sensitive eternal bachelor, a musician who never bothers to settle down while every step of the way leading Miss Piggy to think he will eventually do so. This part actually made me get mad at Kermit! I’ll never be able to look at The Muppets the same way again. Jim and Pam represent Klausner’s thesis that all men want a woman whom no one else knows is pretty, possibly the only original idea contained in this book.

To be fair, there are some laugh-out-loud funny lines in this book, but they were few and far between. If I wanted to read a book about one woman’s self-esteem issues, I’d hang out in the Self Help section at the bookstore, not Humor.

Movie Review: "Public Sex" (2009)

WARNING: THERE ARE SPOILERS IN THIS REVIEW

I watched the British movie "Public Sex" on the Sundance Channel last night. The US release really should have stuck with the UK title, "Dogging: A Love Story," because "Public Sex" is misleading. "Public Sex" does not focus on sex, rather it focuses on Dan, an unemployed journalist (HEYYY!) who wants to write an expose about "dogging"--the British practice of having sex in cars in a public space while others watch and sometimes participate.

Dan starts by simply researching dogging online, but soon his obnoxious room mate Rob brings Dan with him on a dogging excursion. Meanwhile, under the pseudonym "East of England Eight Inches," Dan strikes up a friendship with "Horny Geordie Lass," a person he meets in an online dogging forum. Horny Geordie turns out to be Laura, a pretty university student who explores the dogging scene to escape her overprotective father (though she never actually participates in the act herself).

Upon Dan's first trip to a parking lot with Rob and Rob's older girlfriend Sarah, Dan and Laura run into eachother without knowing that they've already met online under pseudonyms. The two of them awkwardly discuss dogging for a few minutes, and although Dan has a girlfriend, he invites Laura to meet again at a future dogging gathering. However, Dan ends up bringing his girlfriend Tanya to that gathering in order to "show her his research," but she is disgusted once she realizes what's going on. What follows is one of the funnier scenes in the movie, in which Tanya escapes Dan's car only to follow an older man into his trailer, where he and his wife serve her tea and explain that dogging saved their marriage (and ask if she'd like to see photos of their grandchildren while the wife is wearing a dildo, natch).

Tanya then decides to give dogging a try with Dan, much to his horror. Despite his curiosity, Dan is in actuality totally grossed out by the scene, and the act of performing public sex while other people jerk off (onto his car window, no less) makes him horribly uncomfortable. Tanya, on the other hand, likes it so much that she later tells him if he won't do it with her, she'll find someone who will.

The rest of the movie follows Dan and Laura meeting a few times more, usually at dogging events, until the film culminates at a huge dogging weekend in the countryside. By now, Dan and Tanya have broken up and Laura, after learning that Jim is East of England Eight Inches and catching him with his (now ex-) girlfriend, has dragged along Jim, a classmate who has a crush on her, to the weekend event. Jim, too, is not interested in dogging, so Laura ends up wandering off on her own. She's picked up by a large group of older men and the situation starts to turn dark until Dan shows up and takes her away, finally bringing the two together for good.

The best parts of the movie are the moments when people's true colors finally show. The awkward meetings between Dan and Laura; Rob crying and begging when Sarah indicates she prefers dogging to Rob; Tanya enjoying dogging while Rob halfheartedly fights it. The characters are truly what drive the film, not sex. Though there are plenty of prurient moments in the movie, including above-the-waist nudity and creepy sex scenes shot in night vision, those are nearly forgotten once you return to the main characters. However, I have to say that the love story itself is a bit convenient and cliche, so the dogging backdrop is what makes it different and interesting.

Despite the borderline weak story, I still really liked this film. There are lots of surprises and the characters all have depth. The story is sweet but still subtle, which presents a strong dichotomy against the stark and dirty dogging background.

Movie Review: "My Darling is a Foreigner"

Tonight, I scored free tickets to a Japanese movie called "My Darling is a Foreigner" at the Big Cinemas Manhattan (formerly the Imaginasian theatre). This was its American premiere, and was sponsored by All Nippon Air (ANA) and New York-Tokyo (NYT).

I've seen a lot of Japanese cinema, from Kurosawa classics to manga-inspired modern comedies. The manga-inspired modern comedies make up the bulk of the fare I get to see nowadays, though, largely because I get these free tickets from NYT on a regular basis. And as much as I love Japanese cinema, a lot of the modern flicks I see are silly to the extreme. The acting tends to either have a goofy, over-the-top quality (things like outrageous facial expressions responding to minor incidents, and a particular fake laugh that female characters always seem to do), or feels stiff and held back--even when someone is angry and the situation warrants animated acting, rarely does anyone raise his voice or yell. "My Darling is a Foreigner," then, came as a pleasant surprise. I expected it to be slapstick silly, and instead it was cute, touching, and, best of all, realistic.

"My Darling" is the story of the relationship between the Japanese Saori and her American boyfriend, Tony. Tony speaks perfect Japanese and is enamored with Japanese culture, though he doesn't always understand either the language or the culture. The young couple must navigate their relationship while dealing with the approval (or in many cases disapproval) from others who don't fully understand this Japanese-foreigner relationship.

Upon the wedding of Saori's sister, Saori and Tony each start thinking about where their relationship is headed too. At this very wedding, Tony meets Saori's parents for the first time. Tony had wanted to meet formally and follow Japanese custom, but Saori insisted it was no big deal. And at first it appears not to be. Saori's mother takes a quick liking to Tony, and the rest of the family immedately follows...except for Saori's father. He tells her that he cannot approve of her relationship with a foreigner. Saori opts not to tell this to Tony, and thus begins a troubled patch for their relationship. Saori soon becomes immersed in her work as a struggling manga writer, further pushing Tony away. Things come to a head when Tony disinvites Saori from a trip they had planned to the U.S. (where Saori was to meet his family for the first time).

So as to avoid spoilers, I won't describe any more of the plot. However, I will say that this movie had some of the best acting I've seen from a modern, young Japanese cast. Mao Inoue, who plays Saori, has large, expressive eyes, yet she doesn't fall back on sad puppy dog faces to express her character's feelings. Her shock at being disinvited from the trip is palpable through both her face and her stammering, and a scene of her crying upon Tony's leaving her behind is truly moving. (I'll be honest, I teared up a little--who can't relate to her feelings of sadness and disappointment??)

Jonathan Sherr, who plays Tony, is also great. He never rests on silliness even when asking Saori silly, amusing questions. He demonstrates a genuine curiosity and eagerness. Even the scenes that are downright goofy (such as Tony cleaning the house in Saori's apron with a hot pink duster) remain grounded in reality thanks to Sherr knowing just how far to take things.

"My Darling is a Foreigner" may be a romantic comedy, but it's still subtle, a rarity in this genre. The end of the movie does wrap up a little too neatly and abruptly, but the movie as a whole is touching without being saccarine.

Unfortunately, it does not appear that "My Darling" is playing on any sort of regular schedule at Big Cinemas Manhattan. This may be because this particular showing was part of the Nippon Eiga Series, which is sponsored by (and used as a marketing tool for) ANA, but maybe Big Cinemas will play it further once their current roster of films ends?

Also, anyone who likes Asian cinema should really sign up for NYT's emailing list. I get these free movie invites at least once a month. And the theatre just got swanky new seats courtesy of ANA. I don't know how or why I originally got onto this mailing list, but it is probably the most useful out of all the ones to which I subscribe (Urban Daddy, Flavorpill, 3rd Ward, Todd P, Thrillist...).

Kazuhiro Okamoto’s “Translucent”

I’ve been consuming comics like crazy lately, but the titles I regularly follow have been coming out too slowly. So I decided I need to add another new series to my palate. I really want something different, though: no high school romance or boy-on-a-quest stories. Last week, I picked up the first two volumes of Kazuhiro Okamoto’s “Translucent” (from Dark Horse Comics), an unusual story that seemed promising.

“Translucent” focuses on 14-year-old Shizuka, who is afflicted with “translucent syndrome,” a disease that makes her body “see-through.” It affects each person differently, with some people being completely transparent all the time and some (like Shizuka) regularly shifting from visible to varying degrees of translucency. Emotions also affect the syndrome, with negative feelings and stress causing Shizuka to go completely transparent and happiness causing her body to return to normal. If someone with translucent syndrome remains completely transparent for two weeks, it’s likely she’ll stay that way forever.

“Translucent” was a promising concept in theory. An adolescent girl with an unusual disease should allow for some entertaining drama. But in reality, the series falls completely flat. For one thing, there isn't enough attention given to the disease itself. We’re repeatedly told that there’s no known cause or cure. And that’s it. I can suspend my disbelief enough to ignore the scientific impossibilities at work here, but wouldn’t there be people studying this disease? Shouldn’t Shizuka at the very least exert some effort into understanding it?

For another thing, the art is totally unimpressive. The characters aren’t detailed enough to tell them apart. Shizuka’s friend Mamoru is supposed to be the most beautiful student in the entire school, but the only difference between her and Shizuka is their hairstyles. Bodies and body movement are also rendered extremely stiffly.

I could get past the amateurish art if the story itself was well told, but, unfortunately, it’s not. Problems wrap up much too simplistically to be enjoyable. In the first volume, Shizuka’s body turns completely transparent, so she has to move away to be close to a translucent syndrome specialist. But a special parting gift from Tadami makes her so happy that her body returns to normal, so the doctor tells her she only has to visit once a month and Shizuka returns to her old school. This quick fix and lack of development is unsatisfying.

There also appears to be no overarching storyline. This story really needs a concrete direction. I thought Shizuka’s desire to become an actress despite her condition (which develops after her successful drama club performance) would be the spine of the story, but it’s more of an afterthought, really, happening concurrently to the plot rather than driving it.

I actually ended up returning these books to the store because they’re so unsatisfying. It’s really disappointing to see such a creative theme executed so poorly. Next time I want to try a new manga, I’m going to read the whole thing in-store before buying it.

new article at zingmagazine.com

http://www.zingmagazine.com/drupal/node/447 or you can read it below


Censorship Exhibit at the Brecht Forum
By Leah Hansen

Thursday, November 8 saw the opening of “Censorship: An Exhibition Benefiting Artists in Distress” at the Brecht Forum. The reception featured plenty of food and drinks, live performances, and a raucous crowd the filled every inch of the relatively small gallery space. The featured artists hail from countries around the world and utilize an array of mediums, including drawing, painting, photography, video, and performance. The only thing missing was context.

No artist’s statement or biography appeared; no overall explanation of the show’s goal was on view. The press release for the exhibition, which can be found at freedimensional.org, explains that a few of the artists have faced political repercussions as a result of their controversial work, but nowhere at the actual show can one read which artists were censored and which are simply responding to the idea of censorship.

This creates a modicum of confusion. Though quite striking, Melissa Murray’s “Bag,” a four-foot graphite drawing of a nude woman in profile, sitting on the ground wearing a plastic grocery bag like a hat, doesn’t necessarily address censorship. Yes, nudity is frequently under attack by censors, but in this case, the woman’s arms and legs obscure any “offensive” parts. Moving on, one arrives at Sarah Valeri’s stunning painting, “Bright”. The 30-inch canvas features a lithe, androgynous child curled in a fetal position on a swamp bank. In the foreground, a dog with a frog riding on its back swims by; lily pads float around them. The painting’s sea of blue, green, lavender, and cream swirl gently together, and, coupled with the child’s morose expression, evokes serenity and sadness. But, again, one wonders how it relates to the show’s theme.

The pieces with clear ties to censorship cover emotions ranging from rage to hope to humor. Particularly humorous are the pieces by photographer “BKLYN Paul,” who attended the opening naked. In “Spring Street,” the artist appears naked and smirking in front of graffiti-covered wall that creates a stark contrast to his unclothed body. On the left, an amateur photographer is caught snapping Paul’s photo with a little digital camera and a woman on the right turns toward us with a big grin. Paul’s “Subway Series” consists of three photos of a friend riding the subway naked. Only one other rider watches with a scowl, while everyone else is clearly laughing. The laughter captured in these photos emphasizes the ridiculousness of the attempts by the FCC and conservatives to fine and jail people for even accidental flashes nudity. Meanwhile, no one in these photos appears harmed or scarred by seeing a naked man on the streets of New York.

Collages by Issa Nyaphaga and Bara Diokhane evoke potent anger at the lack of artistic freedom in their homelands, Cameroon and Senegal. Mel Smothers’ two Mao portraits (of the Andy Warhol variety), painted over with ethereal birds in flight, impart a sense of hope for the future.

While the exhibition is successful as a showcase of eclectic art, it fails to maintain a cohesive message about censorship. Background information on the art and artists is especially important in this context, as artists face the FCC crackdown on “obscene” television and radio programming, and the current administration’s attempts to repeal basic rights in the name of “combating terrorism.” Without an explanation tying this work together, it’s just a mish-mash of art—impressive art, but a mish-mash nonetheless.

“Censorship: An Exhibition Benefiting Artists in Distress” will be on display at the Brecht Forum, located at 451 West Street between Bank and Bethune Streets, through December 6. There will also be a closing celebration held on Friday, November 30 from 7 to 10 p.m., featuring live music and dance. For more information, visit brechtforum.org or call 212-242-4201.

Last review of the trip

Here is the official review I wrote about the Museum of Sex's exhibit on Japanese comics:

Working Title:
When Worlds Collide: Porn in the museum

A dark room with black walls, small windows cut into each at varying heights so that one must stand on toe or crouch down, face pressed to the hole, to see inside. A peep show? Not quite, though a look within does reveal nudity, prostitution, and all manner of graphic sexual behavior. Set a few inches into the windows of the walls are Japanese prints and drawings detailing sexual escapades dating from the Edo Period (1603-1867) all the way up to modern day’s pornographic manga (comics).

On display through March 6 at New York’s Museum of Sex, Peeping, Probing & Porn: Four Centuries of Graphic Sex in Japan provides an intimate glimpse into the evolution of sex trade and gender roles in Japan, and chronicles the country’s relationship with the western world and its own rapid modernization.

The Edo-era woodblock prints that begin the exhibit feature prostitutes in action within the brothel district. Most include startlingly detailed depictions of colorful engorged genitalia, the artists not shying away from bodily fluids and closeups of penetration. By the time Commodore Perry arrived to force the opening of Japan’s ports in 1854, scenes of rape and sex with demons and animals appeared, a reflection of the West’s invasion. Then western-style clothing shows up and women’s roles appear less victimized, the notes accompanying the pictures pointing out joyful facial expressions and consensual relationships.

Manga exploded after a WWII ban was lifted. Hentai (pornographic manga) now depicts every type of sexual activity and relationship imaginable, signaling a less repressive society in which women are no longer submissive slaves. Wide age gaps, bestiality, and gay relationships are common themes.

The exhibit’s dark walls and bright red floor, small viewing windows, and fabric screens hanging from the ceiling to divide the room into chronological sections all add up to a sense that visitors are participants in a peep show. The copious number of written explanations, however, also provide ample historical context. This mix of sexuality and intellectualism almost desexualizes the pornography, yet the graphic nature of the images keeps it firmly entrenched in masturbatory fodder, making for a uniquely paradoxical museum show.

Working title: Life in Progress: Kimsooja’s fleeting photos.

Becoming a star of the art world is no easy task. One must have the right style at the right moment, and even then, fame is most often a fleeting fad. How appropriate, then, that Korean artist Kimsooja’s current photography exhibition, at the Peter Blum Gallery in Chelsea, discusses the passage of time.

A Wind Woman, on display through Jan. 13, consists of a group of large-scale color photographs (roughly three feet wide by two feet high) that are stills from her 2003 video of the same name. Kimsooja shot the video while driving in Hawaii, with the camera shutter open at length so as to capture the movement of the landscape as she passed by.

Most of the photographs have placid clouds in the background, while glimpses of what are presumably foliage and contours of the land blur horizontally in the foreground. Dark lines trespass across each photo, exposing the photographer’s movement.

While standing in front of the photos, there is a distinctive sense that the scene is passing you by, not that you’re moving past it. The pictures urge the viewer to hurry, as though time is running by. Since the movement is already captured on film, however, forever sealing it in constant motion, attempts to catch up are a waste of time.

The very first photo in the array is nearly all white, with only very pale grey blobs. The last one is all black. The white evokes birth, with the following photographs life, and the stark black presumably death. It’s a seemingly heartless way of looking at the world. You’re born, life passes you by in an instant, and then it’s over. But within each fast-paced photo, the clouds in the background remain still. The static clouds are the moments that matter enough to stick with you.

Human existence is comparative to a drop in the ocean of time. Kimsooja’s photographs resonate with this short history, and the even shorter life span of each individual. Yet they’re also optimistic, reminding us that to cherish and remember something is to keep it still despite time’s attempts to steal it away.

wasted weekend

I went to the Inner Harbor today with Jon Ross to see a Dave Matthews cover band and a Sublime cover band to review for the Newtimes. I'm not really much of a Dave Matthews fan, and the Sublime band basically sucked. Here is my review:

Title: Just Plain Bad

Sunday was an ideal day to spend at Syracuse’s Inner Harbor. The sun was shining, the temperature was pleasant, and any native would recognize it as possibly the last nice day of the year. You would think it would be the perfect day to see a couple of bands covering songs by two popular and relatively summery-sounding acts.

You would be wrong.

Well, halfway wrong, that is, as the opening band, “One Sweet World,” a Dave Matthews cover band, actually wasn’t too bad. One Sweet World was extremely faithful to the original songs, and even included a saxophone player (who had four different types of sax to choose from) and a violinist.

Lead singer Anthony Iglesias did an admirable job evoking Dave Matthews’ gentle voice, but couldn’t quite reach the high-pitched plateaus Matthews manages. His voice was also a bit scratchier than Matthews, and the signature syllabic emphasis was a bit off at times, but overall it was a valiant try that mostly succeeded.

The best thing about One Sweet World was undoubtedly its violinist. Though all the musicians were clearly talented, the mere existence of the violin gave this band something extra. Because so many of the Dave Matthews Band’s songs include unique and conspicuous violin parts, it is essential that a cover band have a decent fiddler.

If you are a fan of the Dave Matthews Band, One Sweet World will not disappoint. Their set, though, was nearly two hours long, which is highly unusual for an opener. And after One Sweet World’s last song, a Dave Matthews-esque rape of Jimi Hendrix’s All Along the Watchtower, it felt like the show should have simply ended.

The headliner, Sublime cover band “Badfish,” started out with Garden Grove, an appropriate start, as it’s the first track off of Sublime’s self-titled album. There were no turntables, though, so it sounded decidedly different than the original. In addition, unlike Sublime’s Brad Nowell, the vocalist didn’t enunciate enough, making it unnecessarily difficult to understand the lyrics.

The singer continued this near-slurring of words throughout most of the songs, which just worsened the slow speed at which they were played. The short, quick Same in the End wasn’t played nearly as fast and enthusiastically as the original, completely losing the frenetic, fun sound it’s supposed to have.

Perhaps the worst offense was their version of the immensely popular Wrong Way. The original includes a trombone, but Badfish instead incorporated a mediocre alto saxophone. The trombone’s speedy and lively solo was completely lost, being replaced by a sub-par saxophone attempt.

Somehow Badfish has become a nationally known group, and the audience was certainly enjoying themselves, with plenty of people dancing and singing along (though by then, it could have simply been the influence of copious beer). But to this Sublime fan, they were truly nothing special. You’d be better off popping in one of their CDs with the volume turned up.