From the Oct 28 – Nov 3, 2004 issue

Music

Live Wire

Comedy of Assholes

by Jennifer Maerz

He wasn't billed as a musical act, but that didn't stop comedian Jon Lovitz from doing his best Elton John on the piano last weekend. The ex-Saturday Night Live alum, ex-portly imitator of Picasso, and "not a Jew; I'm Jew-ish" funny guy stayed focused on the derriere in his songs, as he was at the Paramount as part of the Seattle Comedy Festival. To that, um, end, Lovtiz sang about Bill Clinton as a kinky Arkansas clown--including one ditty about dick slippage called "Oops Up the Butt (Surreptitiously Up the Butt)"--and Bob Saget's allusions of homosexuality, which came in a pair: "Bob Saget Isn't Gay" and "Bob Saget Likes It in His Kitchen (Kitchen of Course Is Code for Butt)." And yeah, his humor sometimes barely graduated grade school, but Lovitz was really damn funny. Headliner Norm Macdonald's humor is famously drier than a bad case of cottonmouth, but he still managed to crack slapstick jokes about such typically off-color subjects as his uncle "battling" cancer, Lance Armstrong's testicle, and the differences between various diseases (where he played off alcoholism as the easiest disease of all because you get to "drink a lot, and if you find a girl with the same disease, go home and have sex with her at the end of the night"). Definitely a lighter mood from the night before, when Interpol played the same venue enshrouded in heavy fog before heading off to spark a Chop Suey dance party--where most of the band, and openers the Secret Machines socialized to bassist Carlos D. spinning New Order tracks for the sloppy drunken crowd.

So it's been a year, and we're ready for the comeback. Jackie Hell and Ursula Android had their last official Pho Bang last November 3, and after hints, small get-togethers, and blink-and-you-missed-it outings, the crass drag queens of comedy are bringing their coveted club night out of retirement. Pho Bang is returning with a fitting reopening on Halloween with Dalmatians, Jackie & the Control Tops, Ursula & the Androids, and Veronica Lipgloss & the Evil Eyes. This one's at the upscale but intimate Mirabeau Room, but according to Ms. Android's new vision for the punk-cabaret extravaganza, that's only its temporary home. The pair are looking at a couple alternate venues, with one of Android's biggest issues being "to get people off the Hill, because Capitol Hill can be really stagnant when it comes to seeing shows." The Pho Bang series will be seasonal now, too, instead of the monthly and weekly events the crew used to stage. "We want to be able to put more work into the shows," says Android. "We also want to get back into making movies, and Jackie and I have been working on a play for two years now. We never had time to do anything else in the past." The as-yet-untitled play involves Jackie and Ursula solving a murder, getting psychic help from LaToya Jackson, and some kind of interference from Liza Minnelli. "It's a loose retelling of The Odyssey," Android imparts. (Expect to also see Jackie and Ursula in an upcoming Showgirls play at Re-bar in December).

In the meantime, what brought Pho Bang out of retirement? "We both got really bored without it," admits Android. "After the first three months of R&R, we started going out, and it was like all these rock shows that started feeling really repetitious; we'd either be going out and seeing bands or going out dancing. No real surprises. We wanted to return to something more unexpected, more of a free-for-all. With Pho Bang, one minute you're watching a band, one minute you're dancing, one minute you're watching a drag show, and you're never totally passive standing there all night. You never know if you're going to get pulled into the show yourself. Outside of the all-ages scene, I think that mentality is really rare." With Veronica Lipgloss on the bill, expect the possibility of getting pulled into more than just a musical performance. "Veronica Lipgloss just wants to have sex with everyone," Android says, laughing.

In another recent surfacing, A Frames return to the fray after a long absence from Seattle venues. Not that the band's been stagnant--they recently inked a deal with Sub Pop for a record that the label hopes will be out this spring. And Friday, October 29, A Frames play the Comet with Sexy Prison and Factums, a show perfectly tailored for the trio's stark post punk. Sexy Prison features the frontman for Sacramento hardcore act Corpse Fucks Corpse performing in a much more radical endeavor. The Prison boys create synth punk fried in Suicide experimentations, sounding like the aftermath of repetitious electronic loops being thrown into an industrial fan, chopped between the blades, and blasted out around echoing vocals. Their shows are as far from stagnant as it gets.

jennifer@thestranger.com

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