oldman's voice jizzed the whole room for a few minutes. it was as if new breathing space had opened up, the hall's stall air made fresh by his passion.
then he went back to mumbling.
oldman made a lot of weird faces and gestures during his set. he'd stretch his lips back over his gums or jut his lower jaw way out between vocals.
and sometimes he'd wind up to sing by bouncing up and down on his toes real fast, even though the songs were all slow. the crowd, too, was full of strange visages. new yorkers busting the alterna-appalachian style, lots of blond muttonchops and short-brimmed fedoras, some folks looking more authentically inbred than others.
oldman aspires to the level of the mythic, with all his cryptic imagery and traditional song structures. i was thinking, on my way up hudson st. after the show, that he gets there. i felt i'd seen someone from another planet. no one sounds like him, and the way he employs history in the service of self-indulgence seems to me like a possible 'next step'. i felt willing to consider the aspects of the performance i didn't like as, possibly, beyond my present-bound comprehension.