THE LEMONHEADS: LIVE AT THE KNITTING FACTORY

Evan Dando and the Lemonheads played the Knitting Factory in Brooklyn last night (July 30) with Josh Lattanzi and The Candles. Both bands, whose front men oddly resemble one another,  put on two great sets but what is most amazing, besides Dandos voice, is that  he looks the same age as I remember him when I was in Junior High. Hard to believe he is 43.

Seeing Dando perform live is both nostalgic and strangely relevant at the same time.  He sings with a humility, a reckless weary voice, and a bit of either nervous stage energy or ADD (cutting some songs short as if he made his point, next song, awkwardly introducing the next). And while he still can’t seem to shake off his slacker image, his stage presence never parodies his early 90’s fame as one of pops biggest screw-ups . Whether he is playing punk, rock, pop, country or metal, his lyrics still seem poiniant to where he is in life and credible. Dando performed a mix of old lemonheads power pop favorites, some inspired covers from his most recent album, Varshons and some intimate acoustic songs, ending on a stripped down solo version of the Lemonhead classic  “Alison’s starting to Happen”.

Since their breakthrough in ’86 with, what is now one one of the most sought-after punk relics of the 80’s, the indie EP Laughing All the Way to the Cleaners, The Lemonheads have certainly had one strange trip. After a slew of college radio friendly LP’s like Hate Your Friends (1987), Creator (1988) and one of my favorites, Lick (1989), the band enjoyed some mainstream success where Dando was one of Peoples “50 Most Beautiful people”, and appeared in a cameo at the end of Reality Bites. Then he admitted to smoking crack cocaine.  The tipping point. There was more crack cocaine, a public arrest for possession of drugs at Sydney airport while high on heroin and LSD handing out flowers to strangers and feeding money through the grates in the pavement, depression, a nervous breakdown, rehab and people just stopped taking the band seriously. The Lemonheads and Dando disappeared from the spotlight for about 10 years, but he cleaned up and returned in 2006,  most recently releasing the cover album, Varsons, which “sounds like a mix tape slipped to you by a music-obsessed friend anxious to turn you on to something new.” Varshons is “filled with obscure nuggets… [which] cut a wide swath, jumping from early British psychedelic to Dutch electronica and like all good mix tapes, you never know what is coming next.” Kind of like Evan Dando’s career.

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Check out Dando’s cover of  Townes Van Zandt’s “Waiting around to Die”, and a Smudge song.