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Out
Weasel to the rescue; ‘Mash Ave’ blows up
BY WILL SPITZ

"Pauly Shore is here. He will be here shortly," a Virgin Megastore employee announced last Thursday afternoon, moments before Apollo Sunshine were slated to open the Boston installment of Virgin Megastore’s "100 Acts of Support — The Concerts for Tsunami Relief," which the Wiez himself was to MC. "Is he going to announce us?" shouted Apollo Sunshine’s frontman Jesse Gallagher in half-joking dejection. "We came here to have Pauly Shore introduce us. What a letdown," he said as he took the stage and they launched into "I Was on the Moon," from their scatterbrained 2003 space-pop odyssey Katonah (spinART). It was an odd scene, the band precariously situated on a tiny stage about 20 feet in front of the store’s second-floor register as Shore’s mockumentary Pauly Shore Is Dead, the DVD release of which he was in town to promote, beamed down from countless TVs at all angles. (The movie appears to have been released in some theaters in October — who knew?)

"Not only did Pauly Shore not show up to introduce us, I have to keep looking at his face," Gallagher joked between songs. Despite the digital distraction, the fluorescent lights, the sanitary environment, and a thin and muffled sound system, Apollo Sunshine did their best to keep things lively, playing a couple of new songs and a cover of the Talking Heads’ "Psycho Killer." As the band wrapped up, Shore — decked out in his best duds, an undersized gray sweatshirt, a pair of warm-up pants, and a beanie — came bounding down the escalator, hopped on the stage to mug for the cameras with a pleased-looking Apollo Sunshine, and implored some teenagers from the small crowd to help the band with their gear. Then, in a sort of surreal pied-piper routine, he led the crowd up the escalator to the third floor for Justin Brooks’s acoustic set in the store’s café, following which he acted as auctioneer for the auction of an odd collection of goods. (A Tim Wakefield–autographed baseball fetched $55; a miniature porcelain guitar went for $12.) The proceeds went to tsunami relief; the show itself was a freebie. Shore reminded us why he hasn’t been getting much work lately by offering up some cringe-worthy jokes. "If we had a disaster here, they’d help out, right?" went one such stinker. "No, they wouldn’t. They’d say [affecting an offensive, stereotypical Asian accent], ‘You have your own money in your pocket.’ " It was all almost enough to make you feel bad for him. But not quite.

The following night marked the inaugural installment of "Mash Ave" at the Union Square bar Toast. Hosted by Somerville residents Lenlow (Luke Enlow) and DJ BC (Bob Cronin), the night is named not for Sean Connery’s pronunciation of the thoroughfare but for the digital mergers of disparate songs referred to as mash-ups that have been burgeoning for the past several years throughout the blogosphere. Enlow and Cronin took turns spinning some of their own bootlegs — Enlow’s "Last Night" combined the Strokes, Traveling Wilburys, and Kid ’N Play songs of the same name — as well as tracks from Cronin’s Beastles album (a disc of Beatles-versus-Beastie-Boys mashes that was recently written up in Rolling Stone) and Frankensteined creations from such mash monsters as Loo & Placido and Go Home Productions. There were about 80 or 90 revelers, many of whom were dancing, in the chic, spacious bar — pretty good for the kickoff. But not everyone seemed to get it. One woman approached the DJ booth and asked Cronin to play some 50 Cent. He obliged — sort of — by putting on DJ Tripp’s mash-up of Fiddy’s "In da Club" and Iggy Pop’s "Lust for Life" (which Tripp called "Lust for da Club Life"). "You’re ruining it!" she whined, then later handed him a napkin with "You suck" scrawled on it. Can’t please everyone.

Will Spitz can be reached at wspitz[a]phx.com


Issue Date: January 28 - February 3, 2005
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