HYSTERICAL TOASTER OVEN(The weekend report from the IS Arts & Entertainment News)
Choosing a name for your band isn't easy. There's a zillion garage bands out there, even in a small community like I-town, each competing for handbill space on every downtown telephone pole, head shop walk-in, and free advertising venue in Ithaca, New York.
Sometimes getting just the perfect tag that connects viscerally with a particular fan base can occupy the first half of a band's existence. The Hysterical Toaster Oven, who will play the Rongo this Saturday, admission $6.00, must be 21 or older, is one of those local bands that spent their formative years in search of an identity, often changing the band's name an average of every 3 weeks. Once, driving through a small town in rural Wisconsin, having gotten lost after a weekend gig in Madison, they were briefly the Whistling Wilsons. For a week, actually, until they became the Xanax X-men.
At one point, one of the lead guitarist's best friends came down with mononucleosis. Somehow that transmuted instantly into the Mangled Monads. Only later did Carleton discover, from googling around a bit, that the 17th Century philosopher, Leibniz, may have been playing the same name game trick a few centuries earlier. But, you know, Leibniz's Lizards, was probably not taken as a cool band handle.
Two years ago, after briefly making another lackluster round of Ithaca's clubs as the Savage Electrodes, the four members of the band realized that their career was going nowhere. They had never played St. Louis, or Oshkosh for that matter. Never made a CD, were spinning their wheels covering old Ozzie material. It was time to break out.
So the guys went on a musical retreat. They holed up at Sean's parents' cabin on Cayuga Lake while the folks were away in Europe, bought a couple of cases of Ithaca Brown Ale, and jammed, drank, talked and brainstormed for three days straight. The group that emerged from that experience, a few thousand brain cells lighter, but tighter musically than they had ever been before, was Hysterical Toaster Oven.
The Oven's tortured lyrics and hard pounding riffs somehow manage to capture the heart and soul of their generation. There are schizoid tunes about breaking up with your girlfriends by cell phone. One particularly sad ballad talks about not being able to get an Ipod ear piece out on a hot summer day due to wax buildup. If you've ever been maxxed out on your Cingular minutes and needed to talk to that special person before she flew off to Cancun on vacation with her sorority sisters, you'd understand the poignant dilemma described in
Out of Time.
Toaster Oven will be playing this Saturday at the Rongo. If you're looking for a memorable evening of post-911 heartbreak and technological mishap, catch their show.
The IS Arts and Entertainment News brings you the latest coverage of the thriving band scene here in I-town, New York. Because there are always a bunch of wannabe Kurt Cobains banging out future nostalgia on some one's front porch.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 2:51 AM
