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Author: Halle Eaton
Posted on: Thursday, March 6, 2003
Howard Fishman Quartet: 2/8/03
The Bottom Line
By Halle Eaton
For New Yorkers and tourists not adventurous enough for the L train, the Howard Fishman Quartet played an evening at the village's Bottom Line. The cover charge was $15 and the set that began at 8:30, the first of two, lasted just under an hour. The band, technically now a quintet, is made up of a saxophonist, a violinist, a drummer and a stand up bass player in addition to Howard Fishman who sings and plays the guitar. Their sound ranges from lyrical gypsy to lusty driving blues, incorporating everything from big band to funk in-between. The effect is both energetic and engaging yet due in part to the show case construction of the stage (the band towered over the audience on an elevated platform), the connection the band would have otherwise forged with the audience was lost in the divide. This happened to be a particular disappointment for me. I went to college with Howard Fishman and though I didn't know him personally I remember him well. He used to wander around the lawns with a guitar, signing songs to himself while everybody else was off getting drunk. He wasn't exactly what we thought of as cool. My friends and I even had a knick name for him; we called him Bob Dylan.
Wearing a wide lapel gray pin striped suit and a baby bird haircut Mr.Fishman looked nothing like Bob Dylan. Less longhaired hippie and more hip, he looked like he could have been at home in a speak-easy in Appalachia. The mood on the stage, with its soft colored light and Bonnie and Clyde aesthetic, was quixotic, though the atmosphere in the audience was anything but -- clustered around small wooden tables that looked like they might have been borrowed from a ski lodge, the crowd basked in crisp, smoke-free lighting. Paraphrasing from "Time Out," the vibe was decidedly "adult pop." But such a categorization does not do the music justice. At times reminiscent of a young Paul Simon, Mr. Fishman's voice is smooth and soulful, his lyrics intelligent, suffused with longing. Songs included the swinging, "Molly Good Golly," "Hey Little Girl," and the rant-like "Do What I Want," with its overriding sarcasm as demonstrated in lines like, "maybe we could talk about Tom Robbins, how he really understands women." The tone fluctuated from groovy and brass driven, interspersed with the funk sound of the stand up bass, to the frenzied solos of the electric violin. At moments like those the crowd erupted with a spattering of polite applause. At one point, as the violinist finished a particularly strenuous riff, Howard smiled appreciatively at him, as if to suggest that this band really does enjoy each other's talents. Midway through the set Howard swapped his red Gibson for a plain wood guitar and temporarily changed tack, breaking into a love song cum lullaby, crooning, "I will see you soon in another life." Another love song later, he sang, "honey, I only want you to be mine."
A woman beside me (one of the few under forty) swayed dreamily, her eyes closed and her chin resting in her hands. Mr. Fishman gets away with lyrics like these without sounding sappy or insincere. And in spite of the bands many precursors, as disparate as Van Morrison and The Cowboy Junkies, the sound as a whole is unified.
My disappointment then was not with the Howard Fishman Quartet, but with the venue, the Bottom Line, which as far as I'm concerned might as well be re-christened the "End Of The Line". At nine-thirty, just after the band had finished their last song, the lights came on and a voice over the loud speaker asked patrons lulled by Mr. Fishman's smooth voice and the sultry folksy sound of the music, to pack up their belonging and exit the building.
Five minutes later the urgency of the order increased, until stragglers were literally ushered out of the building and onto the sidewalk. Outside the temperature on Bleeker Street hovered in the mid-twenties. And being deposited in the midst of the central village/ NYU tourist wasteland there was no where nearby to go. Simply put, for fifteen dollars and a Saturday night, I expected more.
Judging from the average age of the audience, where bald heads bobbed like a sea of dashboard Homer Simpson ornaments, this may not have been a problem for most. The crowd at the Bottom Line was markedly white, myopic and over forty. Not particularly sexy, unless you happen to have a thing for soccer jerseys and tee shirts advertising Myrtle Beach. Men outnumbered women roughly two to one, and for most of the evening there were three lonely heart types leaning up against the bar scouring the audience for signs of life.
Mr.Fishman and his musicians are undeniably talented and the combination is well worth seeing, but with references to "playing cards and gambling and also drinking rum," this music deserves a dive bar, or at the very least a smaller venue with a more direct connection between the audience and the band. As it happens they play every Thursday night at Pete's Candy store, a venue much more suited to their brand of moody funky jazz, where the cover charge is the price of the L train and the lights stay on till well past mid-night. But if you can't make it out to Williamsburg, then take my advice, avoid the early show at The Bottom Line. |
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