FLYING LUTTENBACHERS 11/28, LOUNGE AX Too persistent to be a joke, too arrogant to be serious, Weasel Walter’s excessively excessive sonic-sabotage project just keeps picking up steam. At their best–which their new Gods of Chaos (Skin Graft) arguably is–the Luttenbachers sound like a high-speed tour-van wreck between Naked City and Fushitsusha while both bands just happen to be listening to a crappy live tape of Fear playing “New York’s Alright if You Like Saxophones.” At their worst, they prove Alan Licht was dead wrong when he wrote that “free music is seemingly incapable of producing an equivalent statement to ‘Bitchin’ Camaro.’” They headline the first night of Skin Graft’s annual weekend-long showcase.
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MILLIGRAMS 11/29, SUBTERRANEAN; 12/4, lounge ax Some might say that a band that appears to have based its MO entirely on the Dead Milkmen’s “Punk Rock Girl” is nobody’s idea of a good time. But Chicago’s Milligrams are to “cloying” what Merzbow is to “loud”–hear the pain, feel the pain, and break on through to the other side. Besides, if they can stand themselves long enough even to rehearse, there must be a superior consciousness at work.
KLEZMER CONSERVATORY BAND 12/1, MEDINAH TEMPLE Leader Hankus Netsky and his ten cohorts, vanguardists in the klezmer revival of the last few decades, have by now settled in at establishment joints like Lincoln Center; last year’s Live in the Fiddler’s House (Angel) found them and three more not-your-father’s-wedding-band bands jamming with none other than Itzhak Perlman. They, Brave Old World, the Klezmatics, and the Andy Statman Klezmer Orchestra will recreate this fete here. Personally, though, I prefer the KCB when some star violinist isn’t overwhelming the moving vocals of Judy Bressler and eloquent clarinet of Ilene Stahl, as on the group’s new Dancing in the Aisles (Rounder).
