Alverno Presents
For last year’s The History of Rock ‘n’ Roll in Ten Songs, revered rock critic Greil Marcus found a rather original approach to an absurdly well-worn subject. Instead of beating the proverbial dead horse by recounting the usual chronology, from Delta blues to Chuck Berry to the British Invasion and so on, he selected a set of songs from across the ensuing decades, some hits, some obscure, and attempted to extrapolate the larger story from the traces of musical DNA they carry with them. It’s a novel idea, and just the sort of high concept that Alverno Presents, when they’re not busy staging elaborate tribute shows, loves to sink its considerable teeth into. Factor in Jon Langford and Sally Timms of legendary country-punks The Mekons and you have something really promising, which made the actual performance all the more disappointing.
Instead of taking place in the campus’ stately Pitman Theatre, as Alverno Presents events so often do, tonight’s venue was the nearby Wehr Hall, a much smaller space that nevertheless remained only about halfway full. Those that paid the $30 entrance fee noticeably had something in common, namely their very advanced age. Following a bit of a wait, the lights went down and Executive Director David Ravel offered up an effusive introduction of Marcus and his vast body of work, after which he turned the stage over to the man himself and his musical accompaniment who, frankly, seemed unsure of what to do with it. They discussed things briefly and decided that Marcus should start off by describing the basic premise of his book, which he did with convincing gusto.
By all accounts the book itself seems an ideal blueprint for a live show—read about a song, play it, repeat—but instead of sticking to his own setlist, they mostly just meandered rudderlessly from selection to selection, some of which came from the book, some of which came out of nowhere. Many of the songs, performed as truncated versions on those most rocking of instruments: acoustic guitar and accordion, included eloquent observations and anecdotes from Marcus, most memorably a story about a profiteering childhood friend charging him two bucks to hear The Beatles’ raucous take on “Money,” but together they didn’t say much, if anything, about the primordial story of rock ’n’ roll. And after 10ish songs in 60ish minutes, best among them Joy Division’s “Transmission,” it just sort of ended, as noncommittally and as uninspired as it began.
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