Marnie Stern on the fringe
Catbirds adopt a number of guises in sound. On one hand, they mimic other songbirds in an attempt to echo the deepest beauty. On the other hand, they mimc cats, screeching out rusty meows. This is what I refer to, somewhat jocularly, as the Eternal Meow. As our friend Crozier pointed out recently, life is a series of infinite moments.
There is another side of catbirds, however. These complicated birds with their deceptively bland exteriors, these active foragers who inhabit the fringes of forests… they’re plain ol’ chatterboxes. They never shut up. Birdwatchers try to tune them out as they look and listen for the real finds, but it’s a well-known fact that for every time we imitate sublimity, there are 100 times when we find real unconscious, soul-mending pleasure in chattery frivolity.
Tonight I saw Marnie Stern at the Talking Head. She was a bloomin’ potty-mouthed chatterbox. First thing she does when she gets on stage, before the bass player or drummer play a note, is she starts tapping. Not the Fred Astaire way, the Eddie Van Halen way. She doesn’t quite stick her tongue out, but she does do some gyrations. And she totally sells it.
Marnie Stern kisses her mother with that mouth
In between songs Ms. Stern makes curt references to her vagina and vagina-related subjects. It’s that kind of show. The sacred and the profane have always had a close kinship (the two-sided coin again), and profanity, like silliness, often is useful in the ongoing effort to fight stagnation and dullness. For the record, my tool is silliness, not profanity. You will likely not see words like “shit” or “steaming turd” on this blog because I am not comfortable using them in a civilized public setting… oh, crap.
Anyway, Marnie Stern has no such hesitation, and there are no limits to what she might do or say in her music. Her songs are spastic torrents of Turret’s. I hope it’s not offensive to say that.
Drummer Zach Hill is a maniac. He reminds me of Throwing Muses’ David Narcizo, for obvious reasons, with the Gatling gun delivery and the marching band technique. But where Narcizo played the role of the even, controlled machine-works, Zach Hill is a rippling nuclear explosion. Keep your eyes trained on his contorted, sweating face, the fulcrum, and see the whir of flailing sticks on either side. The man beat the drums beyond submission, and reduced his bass pedal to toast.
Marnie Stern is not a mockingbird, imitating voices of beauty. She is a chatterbox, vomiting and screaming math-ridden bursts. I marvelled at her technical skill the way I marvel at the virtuosity of the wood thrush, trilling impossible sounds. It amazes me that she fits in all those notes, and that she keeps it from unravelling into a shambles.
Marnie and her small band were fantastic, like a smacked bottom. My only disappointment was the absence of the legendary Marnie Stern kissing booth. I would have seriously considered shelling out the $100 for a french kiss from either Marnie or the mysterious, pig-tailed bass player who kept up with the other two quite nicely, thank you.
Go on, stick out your tongue, Marnie. I'll give you $100!
Next time you get together with your friends and partake in some kind of jocularity, laughing and squeeing and that sort of thing, take a moment (not too long or you’ll spoil it) to appreciate the healing power of frivolous and spastic movement. It’s a way of fighting the doledrum. If you can appreciate that kind of giddy enjoyment, please don’t pass up a chance to see Marnie Stern.