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Sister acts
Leslie & the LY’s at P.A.’s; monsters and nuns at MassArt
BY WILL SPITZ
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As any good MC knows, there’s no better way to get a crowd to pay attention than dissing the town you’re playing. "I used to live in Boston," said New York transplant Arecee during a break in his set at P.A.’s Lounge in Somerville last Friday. "I didn’t like it much." Well, I didn’t like Arecee’s wanna-be-Brooklyn-tough-guy rap shtick, and his song about working as a stand-in for Ashton Kutcher sucked too. The most satisfying moment of his set came when he deadpanned, "Hey, I’m Aesop Rock," an acknowledgment of the guy he’d been ripping off all night. But his sister was way more amusing. Going under the name Leslie & the LY’s, she shook up the room dressed in a white fringed ’70s-Elvis jumpsuit (with heft to match) and rocking joky hip-hop like some combination of Salt-N-Pepa and U.V. Protection backed by a pair of chicks in red usher jackets (one of whom pretended to play keytar). But the highlight of the night was Schaffer the Darklord, a Queens rapper — sorry, "rappist" — whose intelligence and sense of irony were reminiscent of fellow white-rapper geek MC Paul Barman. Unlike Arecee, Schaffer was under no delusions: "No crew, no gin and juice, I’m no Dr. Dre, I’m more like Dr. Seuss," went a verse in "The Rappist." "I’ll never battle rap or ever rap like I’m black, and I’ll try to never lose sight of just where I’m at." Brie, nachos, and PBR is pretty good fare for an art opening, but a party just isn’t a party until a guy in a giant Frankenstein mask shows up with the gummy fish. Last Saturday at MassArt, the man beneath the homemade mask turned out to be Mister Reusch, who was also the guest of honor, as 100 of his monster-inspired posters lined the walls. Across the hall, his girlfriend’s masked lady-wrestling league, La Gata Negra, went at it on a mat in the middle of a gym-like auditorium. The troupe was like a little sister of Kaiju Big Battel, complete with hilarious characters and costumes: Missy America wore an American-flag-styled singlet; the Bad Habits, tag-team nuns, toted a Bible and a ruler. As if head stomping weren’t enough, Connecticut’s the Can Kickers inspired some serious foot stomping with their old-time country-punk clap-alongs. After whipping the couple-hundred-strong crowd into a frenzy, the trio — toting a fiddle, a banjo, and a washboard — ditched the PA system (which wasn’t serving them well anyhow) and jumped off the stage for their last song while the crowd formed a tight circle around them, hootin’, hollerin’, and hoppin’ around. It was enough to make percussionist Dough Schaefer turn into a hillbilly Keith Moon and smash his washboard to pieces. Will Spitz can be reached at wspitz[a]phx.com
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