KOHOUTEK "HAIR ON THE SIDEWALK" DVD

a review from The Washington Post 11/26/06

by Mark Jenkins

Recorded live in Philadelphia last year, Kohoutek's "Hair on the Sidewalk" is not exactly representative of the D.C. quartet. No one release could be, as the band's music is improvised. But this package, which pairs a CD with a DVD, captures a particularly uncharacteristic performance, since it's one that includes a vocalist. Jim Brophy talks and occasionally sings, sometimes inspired by the projections (which can seen on the DVD version). The music burbles or throbs during the vocal parts, but the group -- especially guitarist Luke Wyatt -- periodically asserts itself. Though the result is sufficiently free-form to be termed jazz rock, the rhythms, timbres and aesthetic are decidedly punk.

This guy, the guy on the left in the iridescent Mets shell, clothes-casing of champs and ironic kings; this guy is a Wizard of Quip, a sleep-deprivation verbal slayer. Laugh assassin, deploying humor that has a closing outer ring of madness. Scariness at the corner of your eyes, so you double-take on people's faces because you thought they might have become wolves. Later, as it gets light and he swills Canadian Club, spitting out names of imagined crab actors (Joey Shrimp "Crawfish" Lobster, this one can play all the shellfish parts; he was born lobster but does a good Jolson crab-face), you laugh hard enough to cry, and become afraid you're going to eat your arms.

As I was making this, sewing that ab girl (Russian or Rumanian gymnast slave) behind plastic, I kept getting scared I was going to intentionally stick the needle in my eye. Like "what's the worst thing I can do right now, I'm having too much fun and need to come back to sad. How can I ruin me."