Chloe Simone Matheou with a colorful serenade. — Photo by Andrew Frisicano.
Susan Hwang, organizer of the Bushwick Book Club, certainly picked an appropriate selection for the first meeting January 6 at Goodbye Blue Monday. The monthly series challenges performers to compose original songs based on a selected text, and on Tuesday, Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s Breakfast of Champions kicked things off. (The book, which also inspired the venue’s name, critiques and satirizes issues like race, consumerism and death with a caring humanist perspective a large dose of black humor — in short, good fodder for songs.) For the occasion, Hwang even concocted a batch of Champions cuisine: Dran-secco (“blue food dye and prosecco,” inspired by one of the book’s more gruesome scenes) and Breakfast of Champions treats (“a Wheaties and marshmallow based snack”).
Hwang herself was the night’s first performer, and her accordion-driven melodies delved into the book’s strange melange of characters and themes head first, harmonizing the book’s frequent bird references (like “bird of paradise” Harry LaSabre, a crossdressing auto salesman), composing a jingle for otherworldly spread Shazbutter and closing with an ode to the Creator of the Universe.
Next up, Liv Carrow, whose delivery reminded me a lot of Kimya Dawson, eagerly animated the plight of Bunny Hoover — the deranged main character’s vegetarian, gay son. Strumming at the guitar’s neck like an old-world chanteuse, Carrow capped her set with a first-person doo-wop ballad about the novel’s abused, lovable Francine Pefko, crowned with a pitch-perfect whistling solo.
The electric-guitar-toting Chloe Simone Matheou first came to my attention minutes before the show, effusing a barrage of colorful language to a friend, well audible over the house music. Her song “Go Fuck Yourselves” took a cue from the book’s more autobiographical notes (Vonnegut has frequent authorial asides and even shows up himself as a character later in the book). Later, Chloe informed me that she’s also a special effect makeup artist who recently wrote a television pilot “that’s not like Sex and the City” and acted in a friend’s film to be screened at Cannes. In all, her self-deprecating and awesomely bold performance was a great ad for her full band, Scream and Scream Again.
Phoebe Kreutz closed the night with a pair of peppy acoustic numbers that floored the crowd. “I wrote these earlier today,” she reported with casual aplomb before sliding into visually evocative, heartrendingly fragile indie pop.
I felt a bit about guilty leaving just as Italian progressive jazz trio Drops and Silence took the stage, its sax and guitar players peering meekly into the increasingly empty room with dour, sad faces. But that’s the thing with Goodbye Blue Monday, just when you think the night’s over, someone new has come from Italy or Chicago or Queens to play for you.
With the series already garnering mentions on Gothamist and Bust Magainze‘s blog, the Bushwick Book Club seems to have some serious ambition. Hwang noted that she was pleased with the turn out — I ended up happily sharing my table way in the back with some former strangers — “especially for a Tuesday, rainy night.” And next month, February 3rd, a new band of songsters will be armed with the seriously creepy “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” by Raymond Carver, to be followed in March by Edwin A. Abbot’s Flatland. Already confirmed for next month are songwriter Toby Goodshank and a musical saw performer.
If you’re interested in performing, send a message to bushwickbookclub@gmail.com. Most of the mentioned artists have upcoming Bushwick and NYC shows, so check out their respective sites for info.
