Tim Fite

This blog was not meant to be a place to review live music, but I would be remiss if I didn't mention a show I saw last weekend at Joe's Pub by Brooklyn iconoclast Tim Fite. You won't be able to hear the show as I heard it, but you can go to his website and download two albums for free. http://www.timfite.com/. you won't regret it.

Tim Fite is impossible to categorize. When we sat down in our seats not ten feet away from the stage he was setting up his gear, which included an oversized boombox made of unpainted plywood embedded with flashing leds, a digital projector, apple laptop, and slide projector screen. He and his "brother" were dressed in blue coveralls, and his shaved head with tiny rattail and huge plastic rimmed glasses betrayed a concerted effort to look like a mental patient. Tim is nothing if not deranged. When the show started, Tim was dressed in a seersucker suit. By the second song it was apparent by his profuse sweating why that particular fabric was chosen, but the effect was more John Goodman in 'O Brother where art thou', as Tim exploded into each song with such fury and passion that it seemed he must have been possessed by some holy spirit. Several times I thought of tent revivals and televangelists as he careened around the stage, herky jerky, stumbling, deliberately making himself appear the part of a yokel, a lunatic. This is all for effect: when the songs come out of him (especially his more political rants) its akin to the mad street preacher suddenly becoming coherent.

I was introduced to Tim Fite through his album 'Over the Counterculture', which is a hip hop album that revels in delicious satire, political sermonizing, and a direct slap in the face to modern American culture in it's ultra-hyped violence-driven consumerism and the societal acceptance of the lowest-common-denominator media/political establishment. Tim samples expertly (and pays a dollar or less for each sample). When he plays these songs live, the music is mostly canned (he raps and sometimes plays guitar along) but he projects video of himself (often sitting in a white padded room in a wheelchair) playing the other instruments, spinning on the turntables, harmonizing, or dancing. Other songs are acoustic folk numbers that he plays on the acoustic guitar. Still others are blues, power pop, grunge, country, all of which he plays with abandon, and between which he transitions by telling stories accompanied by rudimentary animations, childrens books, small props, and the rapt attention of everyone in the room. Its not easy to pull all this off, and the only reason he is able to do so is that his personality is completely wrapped up in every song and story. In other words, he is a chameleon; at one time acting as eye doctor as he administers an eye exam to everyone in the room ("cover your left eye and read along - NO ONE IS TOO COOL FOR THIS!"), at another time stealing a front-row seated bewildered teenager's eyeglasses as he intones a funeral dirge about theft. One telling moment was during a transition from a rap song called "In your Hair" (sample lyric: "a king is not a president, a roof is not a residence, the truth is not self-evident when youth is on the line. the boss is not the boss of them, the cross is on the cross again, a crime is not a government, a crime is just a crime.") to a song called "No Good Here". As soon as the song was over, Tim's "Brother" (the projection operator) said "that was serious, this isn't", and they launched into a synth and guitar driven dance pop so sugary sweet that when it devolves into crunchy guitar and Tim screaming, "your money's no good here" it all makes sense, because HE GIVES HIS ALBUMS AWAY FOR FREE! With that kind of marketing strategy, he can say and do what he wants. And He does.

The standout track from "Over the Counterculture" is "Camoflage" where he starts with a simple question: why is camoflage a reasonable fashion statement? From there he connects the dots in a truly astonishing manner.

"the neck bone's connected to the head bone
and what's your head bone got on itself, a cap made for stealth?...
wanna blend in?....
what you wanna look like, like you're ready for war?"

From there, war itself becomes the fashion statement

"vietnam, korea, even better desert storm,
and if you really wanna pop put this new shit on."

The buyer is convinced and buys in:

"has anybody got a bag for this?
body bag for this? body body bag? body bag.
I just paid a lot for it I think I deserve a fucking bag,
a big plastic one with a zipper down the front,
that's the kind of bag I want."

You can see where it goes from here, as the selling of the war becomes a celebration in and of itself, and a new kind of consumerism emerges.

"camoflage looks good with everything,
especially capitalist, colonial commemorative pinky rings.
oh my god, oh my god.
I got this defending a barrel of gasoline."

From there the gloves come off:

"it seems like this camoflage is camoflaging kings,
posing as presidents, camoflaging the evidence
that the patriot act is tapping every phone in your residence,
every home in your settlements, every bone in your skeletons,
bone in your skeletons, bone in your skeletons..."

It's an amazing song, switching narrators on a dime, sneaking in snarky barbs amid bursts of stilted electric guitar and beats that wouldn't seem out of place on a kanye west album, and for me it's one of those masterpieces that demands reverence for songcraft even if you don't appreciate hiphop.

If you have a chance to see Tim Fite live, do it at (almost) all costs. If not, download his albums.