This Little Undershirt (A review of Bao Le-Huu’s recent performance)
October 17th, 2011 § 8 Comments
This Little Undershirt
[This is a guest post by Phil Longo. I have edited it for punctuation and spelling only, and added random bolding, a la Orlando Weekly. Hopefully, I can talk Phil into making TLU a recurring feature here at Orlando Music News.]
Bao Le-Huu is a voyeur, a sniper at the gates of a local musician’s dream. He is also a studio hermit rarely ever performing live, so you can imagine my excitement and perverse curiosity when i learned he was to perform on stage for the first time. The event was local musician/shoegaze music expert Tierney Tough‘s birthday extravaganza (Will’s Pub, Oct. 13th).
Having followed his career path for several years, I was keenly aware of his well-documented grit and venom and I couldn’t wait to see the man finally “lay it on the line.” With my known passion for two-piece music critics I was initially dismayed to learn he was to be performing solo. My concern was almost to prove correct when the artist’s legendary performance anxiety almost got the best of him. After being carried to the stage, the set immediately got off to a rough start. The sound was a little muddy and Bao seemed to lack focus at first, several times singing far away from the mic or choosing not to sing at all.
While his performance lacked physicality, I feel it carried a restrained emotive weight and there was a marked “non-performing” style I found refreshing and lacking from most local artists of this genre. Although his eyes betrayed the silence like optical sumamis [sic, and, WTF?] which paralyzed this critic, we will have to wait and see if Bao can translate this vibe into a visceral live show. I personally can’t wait to find out. Welcome to the party, sir.
Also bringing it was local opener Cory (of Will’s Pub fame) with his Silver-Jews-meets-Steven-Wright-narrating-a-YouPorn-clip take on pop music. Well done, well done.
Personally, I would’ve graded my deer-in-the-headlights “performance” much harder.
But in my defense, though I know none of the words to “Can’t Touch This,” I tried to make up for it in dance with a little MC Hammer-style crabbing. That didn’t work too well either, but I tried.
“optical tsunami” perhaps? Although I have no clue what the hell that is
Mine and Cory’s new band: The Mysterious Sumamis
wiki-phil-apedia describes
a optical sunami as a 1000 yard
cold stare into the void with the
intent to flood a specified target
with emotional brevity.
the sunami is a concentrated
energy souce which implodes
reality upon contact.
Belly laugh!
This comment is probably too late to matter now, but I think it’s awesome that at no point in this write-up did Phil mention that this performance was a karaoke rendition of “Can’t Touch This.”
this has to be the best thing i’ve read all month. what a lift in these trying flu’d out times. More reviews from el Longo!
That made me laugh the whole way through, Phil. I am so glad I was there to personally witness this. Especially Bao being carried to the stage like a baby. I’ve never seen a better entrance. Only wish he was carried off, and then back on again for an encore.