Stereo Total, Leslie And The Ly's, Blowfly, and Foot Patrol at Emo's
Arian Brumby
Leslie And The Ly's
“Does humor belong in music?” Frank Zappa famously asked on the album of the same name, midway through a career dedicated to slaughtering sacred cows with chuckle-worthy (if occasionally unlistenable) results. In case you were wondering, the answer appears to be a collective “yes!” from almost every corner, save for pockets of self-important rock artistes or brooding metalheads. While novelty music itself has largely gone the way of the Victrola, popular music has always held a place for everyone from bologna-serenading accordionists to sarcastic punk idols. The real question these days is whether the songs are still worth a listen once you’ve tired of the punch lines.
Leslie Hall has gone from Internet sensation to flesh-and-blood phenomenon after spinning her home-recorded spoof-raps about zombies and gold stretch pants into a full-fledged career. Thanks in no small part to tapping into her audience’s love/hate relationship with trash can culture (gem sweaters, the movie Willow), Leslie And The Ly’s both cheekily skewer and snuggle up to their subject matter without condescension. Joined by backup dancers/singers DJ Dr. Laura and Mona Bonez, Hall—sporting her trademark gold suit and garish, Divine-like makeup—basically exploded with the sort of “look at me!” enthusiasm you might expect at Esther’s Follies, but rarely at Emo’s.
In alignment with her CeWEBrity status, Leslie And The Ly’s performed in front of video projections of their sing-along viral sensations, including “Tight Pants (Body Rolls)” and “Zombie Killer.” Hall gleefully acted the diva, bossing around her minions while alternately cajoling and teasing the audience. (“Touch my face … That’s enough!” she shouted at one fan.) Her biggest diehards—or “Junior Gems”—were dressed to the nines in garish gem sweaters of their own, not to mention tacky light-up headgear that made one wonder whether a bachelorette party had stumbled into the wrong bar. Aside from gyrating and high-kicking over the heads of her audience, Hall also relied on some more lo-fi stunts, from being raised up on a metallic platform by her dancers to a stripped-down take on “How We Go Out” that prominently featured an acoustic guitar on wheels. In their barest essence, songs like that or “Zombie Killer” are just crudely constructed GarageBand tracks buttressed with off-key choruses and a goofy flow, but while that may not translate into desire for the record, the stage show itself is worth every body roll.
Foot PatrolMeanwhile, Foot Patrol were wrapping it up inside, finishing its peons to foot fetishes and funk. With two bassists, the group is no slouch when it comes to the bottom end, from the Rick James-style grooves to the shaking derriere of a plus-sized stage dancer all decked out in ballerina-grunge. 
Stereo TotalOutside, the Berlin-based Stereo Total set up its minimal hardware—which included a smattering of electronics combined with a drum kit and guitar—in equally minimal time. The group promised everything from punk to rockabilly, alongside electro-flavored fan favorites like “Holiday Inn” and the winking, incredibly short cover of Salt-N-Pepa’s “Push It.” Speaking of pushing it, members Françoise Cactus and Brezel Göring leaned heavily on their Euro-centric eccentricities, from their cheeky, ESL stage banter to naïve takes on The Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction,” happy to play the part of kooky tourists—even though it’s clearly put-on. (On the same note, it’s hard to take a band’s “anti-consumerist” songs seriously when you know it’s shilled for Sony.) All in all, it’s a little disappointing that so many years into its career, the band is still coasting on songs and personality quirks that first made them popular.
BlowflyClarence Reid—better known as Blowfly—relies on a much less tricky, but no less confounding shtick: Aside from explicit original tracks like “Rap Dirty,” this senior citizen funkster/rapper transforms soul, punk, and rock classics into nasty parodies guaranteed to leave elementary school students laughing all the way to recess. Some of Blowfly’s X-rated interpretations of popular songs for the evening included “Shitting Off The Dock Of The Bay” and “It’s A Faggot’s World,” augmented with the onstage gyrations of corn-fed backup dancers. While the lowbrow subject matter didn’t deserve orchestral flourishes, it did deserve more than the staid competence provided by Blowfly’s backup band, which wouldn’t know funky even if The Parliament Funkadelic mothership landed on it.Funny is funny, though, and a warped homage like “Should I Fuck This Big Fat Ho” at least has no desire to be taken seriously (though postmodernists and feminist scholars might disagree). Whether the laughs live on after the show, well, that’s definitely still in question. Maybe Dweezil Zappa should write a song about that.
