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Happy Rhodes Live shows

Troy Savings Bank Music Hall
Troy, NY
Friday October 25, 1996

Articles were shamelessly stolen from Terra Incognita, a much-loved but now-defunct Happy Rhodes fanzine.

Happy Rhodes is Versatile Virtuoso

by Michael Hochanadel
Schnectady Daily Gazette, October 1996

TROY--When Happy Rhodes found some Linton High School classmates in her audience at Troy Savings Bank Music Hall Friday, she jokingly summoned security to eject them. "I wasn't popular in high school," she confided, proclaiming herself "a freak of nature."

Rhodes writes vulnerable, strong pop music of deep hurt and high hopes; about trying to belong, and to earn love. In her first area show in four years, she sang in a lovely, strong voice, and her quartet played and sang wonderfully original support.

Rhodes actually has three voices: a high register as ethereal as Kate Bush's, a powerfully declarative middle, and a low end that so closely resembles David Bowie that the effect was startling when Rhodes bravely sang Bowie's "Space Oddity."

Otherwise, she generally sang original songs from her ten highly idiosyncratic and carefully crafted CDs. The show was carefully crafted, too; and since guitarist Kevin Bartlett collaborates with Rhodes on stage as well as in the studio, her show Friday had all the drama and atmosphere of the recordings.

"All Things" started the two-hour set with droning effects from Bartlett's guitar, a quiet thrum of bass from Carl Adami and a percussion loop; but the real fireworks began when Rhodes and backing vocalist Kelly Bird united their voices. In "Save Our Souls," Rhodes sent her voice way up high for the first time, with Bird's curling around it, and the sound was stunning.

For all the originality of the drummer-less arrangements--"How It Should Be" and "Come Undone" were high points of ingenuity and energy--Rhodes' band is really about singing. Rhodes was terrific all by herself in "Soon" while Rhodes and Bird duetted powerfully in "Summer."

Richard Johnson was the toughest act possible to follow: The Chicago Symphony, the Spike Jones, the Merlin of the guitar--like an American Adrian Legg with more electronics and less talk.

He made sounds on every part of his six- and 12-strong guitars, sounds strange enough to make you scratch your head and wonder "How did he do THAT?" But it was all intensely musical, not just tricks or noise. In "Catch and Release" for his young daughter, for example, you could hear crickets, bicycles, ballet class, Halloween, make-up, roller-blades, MTV, Barbie--the whole world of girlhood.

Johnson will give a guitar clinic at 10 a.m. today at Drome Sound.

The concert was presented by Cloud Nine Cafe. Admission was $15.

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