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Album Tue Nov 27 2007
The Artist Formally Known as. . . .Who?
First things first: while I may not take the crown, I will definitely go down swinging in a challenge for the World’s Greatest Prince fan (if such a challenge ever existed). I remember fondly when His Royal Badness changed his name inexplicably to an unpronounceable symbal, only to be dubbed by the media with the acronym TAFKAP. And as much as I do love Prince, I’ve been marveling with glee at his increasingly ridiculous artistic choices the past couple of years (I mean, seriously, he named his latest album Planet Earth). So you can imagine my delight when I received a press release for the Artist Formally Known as Vince and his latest album, Welcome to the Show. While I expected a tongue-in-cheek send-up of His Purple Majesty, instead I was handed a surprisingly good blast of fast and furious glam rock.
Thankfully Vince doesn’t take himself too seriously, tossing off a cache of love-pump licking jams, most of them about screwing trashy women, or potentially trashy women. “Come and Touch Me” features the absolutely ridiculous line, “Don’t know where you been / Don’t know your sin”, while “More than Me” laments his lovers preference for drugs over his own diverse charms. “Heartbreak (Leads to Heartattack)” is an oddly sweet, semi-poppy, ready for radio ditty and Lauren Kurtz’s vocals provide a nice dynamic on “Tiara Blues”, a fine piece of dirty, grungy fun. The music isn’t terribly diverse (just straight ahead rock’n’roll) and there’s nothing really insightful that can be said about it but once you get locked into its hooks, there’s really no where else to go. Ultimately, what keeps the album from completely taking off is the lack of production values. While I appreciate a loose and low-fi approach, what would really make all of the jokes work is a healthy dose of nonsensical over-production. Even still, Welcome to the Show is a noble effort that is subversive, trashy and a real good time.
TAFKAVince and Lauren play December 7th at Reggie’s, December 14th at Quenchers and a special holiday show December 15th at the Pontiac Café.
