Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
Typically on Sunday nights I hold office hours at Crepeville in downtown Davis. I am grateful that a musical opportunity interrupted my regular schedule this past weekend because of how I spent the night last night, discovering my new favorite House Brass band: Too Many Zooz.
It turns out that New York City-based Too Many Zooz actually created the genre of House Brass, so I don’t know how much competition they have. House music is that minimalist electronic dance music (or EDM) that is more rewarding to dance to than to listen to, many say. I’ve read pointed laments on the KDVS DJs listserv about the deleterious effect of EDM on the musical tastes of an entire generation of club-goers. I suppose the same has been said of every new genre of music: often it’s the young people in the know who embrace it, while an older generation notices only its faults (and perhaps its excessive volume).
Certainly the music was turned up too loud at Harlow’s last night, or so concluded my lovely date Kate and myself after we strolled in, some of the first patrons to arrive after 7. While first inadvertently sitting in the bands’ VIP section (before being redirected), we saw the scheduled performance times on the playlist, and discovered that a DJ and three other musical acts would take the stage before Too Many Zooz were to come out at 10:15. Could we last that long?
The best of the three opening acts was Big Sticky Mess, a Davis-based funk band (two guitars and a drummer) that I want to see again. Reminding me of some of the favorite musical acts that I was exposed to in Washington DC in the 1970s and 80s, Big Sticky Mess borrowed licks and tones from James Brown and Parliament Funkadelic. I was encouraged, and pleased that my home town had nourished such funky aspirants.
While BSM was terrific, Too Many Zooz trumped everyone we had heard so far, astounding everyone with their rich sound and energetic brass. David Parks, the drummer, came out first. I haven’t discovered why in the New York City subway, especially the Grand Central Station stop, he is called “King of Sludge,” and at first he didn’t look entirely regal while casually strapping on his huge drum, but before long he would show us that he has the endless energy and focus of all the best drummers. Next out was Leo Pellegrino, the baritone saxophonist who can make his sax sound like three instruments at once, and who sways like a caged leopard as he plays. Finally Matt Doe joined the other two on trumpet. He plays the horn the way that Davis poet Joe Wenderoth plays softball, with a beer bottle in his non-dominant hand.
Bill Mahr recently said that if you aren’t playing the drums or the trumpet in your marching band, you can go home because nobody can hear you. I’m sure that 90% of the 300 musicians who make up the UC Davis California Aggie Marching Band-uh! would disagree, but a casual listener of Too Many Zooz might see the perspicacity in Mahr’s assertion. Matt Doe’s trumpet screamed in a way that reminded me of Louis Armstrong, who was asked to play his horn outside the room of the first Hot Fives and Hot Sevens recording sessions that he made in the 1920s because of the overwhelming power of his unamplified song. Doe also flirts with the intense and almost shrill musical dominance of Stan Kenton’s original “wall of sound.” The real heart of Too Many Zooz, however, is the saxophone of Leo P., for he brings to the instrument the intensity of my childhood friend Ian MacKaye (of Fugazi fame) and the proficiency of a sax master such as Cannonball Adderley. Leo wisely keeps his impressive shock of purple hair under a baseball cap so that we could better see his intense eyes and showman’s bravado.
What a great show! I encourage you to see Too Mazy Zooz perform in person, to watch their videos of subway performances in their hometown of New York City, or to download one of their EPs, as I did last night. It has provided an energetic soundtrack to my morning!
Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on early internet properties, the telephone, Greek yogurt, musicals, what people are streaming in the UK, luxury boxes, family planning, basketball, the meaning of illness, bodies of water, filmmakers and their origins, mammals, stingers, eating habits, people who have commonalities with Kevin Kline, countries that are not Uganda, world leaders, newspapers, the word “cirrhotic” used for the first time in a Pub Quiz, spices, the police, notches, big cities, failures, friends of Obama, watery annoyances, downtown and uptown, seven times a charm, Watson, mottos and slogans, geography, and Shakespeare.
As you may have noticed, the Pub Quiz fills the Irish Pub every Monday night, some come early if you want a table. One of my favorite Theatre professors recently had to take his team elsewhere because he couldn’t get a table, and it was too cold to sit outside. If you love theatre, come by tonight for the show. There will be no questions about Stan Kenton.
Your Quizmaster
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Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:
- Mottos and Slogans. What brand was responsible for the slogan “Good to the Last Drop”?
- Internet Culture. What were the first and last names of the man portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch in The Imitation Game?
- Newspaper Headlines. At 5 million people, the previous record for attendance at a Papal Mass was set by John Paul II in Rizal Park, but yesterday Pope Francis broke that record, with more than 6 million in the same location. Name the country.
- Four for Four. Which of the following pop singers are over 21? Ariana Grande, Kesha, Lorde, Taylor Swift.
- Greek and Roman Mythology. Half human and half goat, what sort of monosyllabic creatures are featured in the films The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and Pan’s Labyrinth?
P.S. Poetry Night returns February 5th with Indigo Moor. As with all the (mostly musical) names mentioned in this newsletter, you should look up Indigo Moor and then join us that Thursday at the Natsoulas Gallery for poetry. See you tonight!