A Note to Rex

I shared the stage with you once when you were based in Boston, but on Saturday, I attended as a fan as you made landing in Boston once again.  You’ve recently moved to Brooklyn, and I smelled lozenge on your breath when I greeted you.  I wondered if I’d be seeing the same Rex Complex that I knew and loved.


A few dizzying, frenetic songs in, you dropped from view.  I saw disturbance in the audience before me, and something touched my foot; I looked down to see you scurrying between my legs towards the bar on your hands and knees.

At another moment during the set, you told the audience:  “I just feel like jumping on you.  Can I jump on you?”  An empty jest coming from most frontmen, but you, Rex – you actually did it.  Twice.  And the crowd held you up.

Halfway through the set, the stranger next to me turned to me and said, “I feel like I’m at a circus.”  Even ignoring the above, uh, “flourishes,” it wasn’t hard to relate to the sentiment:  a magician-turned-bassist looking as if he danced on hot coals; Jeremy, top-heavy, with his circa-1950′s convertible-swept hair bobbing over a cartoon cyclone of sticks and bones at the kit; a guitarist who pitched forward violently over every riff and lick; and Rex – need I say more than “overalls and an accordion”?  (I guess that’s what it takes to get fifty people to sing “hidehideho” along with you during a song like “Minne the Moocher.”)

Whoever the characters onstage, the music is and always has been the main attraction.  “Debutante Brawl,” with its Western standoff riffs, drunken stumbling kicks, and “aww, naww,” what-a-pity spectator’s-anthem chorus had the crowd swooning.  “The Tragedy of Tikki Tikki Tembo” skipped along with its infectious, dust-ball whistling and hard-boil breaks – and how, exactly, do you go and put a hook like “Tikki Tikki Tembo, no sa rembo, chari bari ruchi, pip peri pemboooo!” right beside a line like “My heart, it drowns with you”?  Somehow, it’s sticky enough to pull yourself out of a well with.

One confession.  I never expected to hear “Missing Pieces” live, given the rabid performances I know are your wont.  But it was a pleasant surprise:  that bittersweet, end of the summer, windows down, cruising through the city with your hand out the window bridge has made “Missing Pieces” one of my favorite songs of the past year.

Anyway.  I’ll put it this way:  I’m alright with you ex-patting to Brooklyn as long as you return again soon – and bring your gyil next time.

—-

Hear the songs mentioned and more on The Rex Complex’s A Delicious Victory on Band Over Boston, and check them out at www.myspace.com/therexcomplex .  While you’re there, drop them a note telling them to get their asses back to Boston.