Chris at the Tenement Street Workshop Benefit Gala!

Tenement Street Workshop Benefit Gala, featuring the Joe Etzine Band and more Let me just get some disclosure issues out of the way here. Tenement Street Workshop is an artist collective co-founded by my brother Patrick. Whew. The honesty feels good. This is what good journalism is all about. Anyway, this event found me once again enjoying an evening of culture on a New York City rooftop, this time in Brooklyn. Tenement Street Workshop is a new artist collective that was created with the aim of fostering all kinds of artistic expression, from theatre to music to pizza-making (my contribution). To that end, the founding members put together a benefit gala (don't be fooled by the fancy connotations of that word -- plaid shirts and cutoff jeans were at least as welcome as blazers and pocket squares) with two new, original one-act plays, along with musical performances by the Joe Etzine Band ; Hillary Johnson , and J.J. Gluckman. There was also wine. And, friends, it flowed. Before we get to the wine, we had to get to the roof, however, and it was a bit of a trek, especially with the L train's being replaced by a shuttle bus east of L orimer St. I was also carrying a big old box of brownies (homemade, with walnuts!) to give away along with the wine -- not exactly a common hassle when I go to shows. The space, though, was awfully swell, with sweeping views on all sides made more wonderful by the absence of the predicted rain. After the first play, the one-act "Rubble," a post-apocalyptic comedy written and performed by students in Carnegie Mellon's BFA program, the first musical act, J.J. Gluckman played an acoustic set. Since it was acoustic, and on an enormous, windy rooftop, the sound wasn't great, but I appreciated having a little musical accompaniment to my red wine-and-brownie-filled intermission. The next play, "Tales of Brave Ulysses," was a "rock-opera movement piece" that retold the classic Odyssey legend using Cream music performed by the Joe Etzine Band. For whatever strange reason, this was the third play I've seen in the past year that has been based on Greek myth. The stories never get old, though, and the approach was fresh enough to overcome the obstacle of everyone in the audience already knowing the story by heart. It didn't exactly hurt that the band was just bad as hell. Uh, that was a compliment. During the play, of course, they only played Cream songs, but judging them purely on execution, I was impressed. Dave Levy on trumpet used some sort of crazy wah-wah effect that made his horn sound like Clapton's Gibson, and Mr Etzine h imself added guitar flourishes that complemented excellently the actors' movement and dialogue. In fact, the band as a whole played its auxiliary role well, supporting the action onstage (well, there wasn't really a stage, but you know what I mean) without overwhelming it. After the play, the band played a set of their own material, which veered into more improvisational territory, jamming at length on jazzy cuts with just enough blues-rock influence to remind me that they were the same band that had just torn through "White Room" and "Tales of Brave Ulysses." I'm not sure how often this group plays shows -- they're all still students as far as I know (and at different, non-NYC universities, no less) -- but hopefully it's soon. Besides the Joe Etzine Band, Hillary Johnson also played after the play. Her songs are piano-based, but since getting a Steinway & Sons on the roof would be awfully problematic, she opted for the acoustic-guitar approach, running into some of the same windy rooftop-related obstacles as Mr Gluckman, but gamely carrying on. Go on to her MySpace page for a stark cover of Marcy Playground’s “Sex and Candy.” Because if there’s one thing that I condone, it's stark covers of Marcy Playground's "Sex and Candy."