Tuesday, September 25, 2001

WWWAC Rocks wacky relief

Some might say it was comedy with a "k." Some might say it was a NY-version of an unofficial Burning Man. Some might say it was a wonderful attempt at community in the face of some real hurdles. However you looked at it, the WWWAC Rocks benefit on Tuesday, September 25th at the Luna Lounge brought together about 50 WWWAC-ies for a night of wacky music and community effort to raise funds for the UFA Widow's & Children's Fund.

Among the more colorful WWWAC list members were the vivacious "Mrs. J. Hart" (with her husband, who's not Mr. Hart), Paul Dube and Jen Runne. Larry Aronson made an appearance and board member Scott Bowling worked the door, collecting the donations, which he said "grew into the three figures."

The very fun and arty show was kicked off by board member Gary "Grimmwerks" Schafer who has an excellent voice and did a very good job singing four songs with a guitar. Board member Bob Frankel spoke for a bit on what WWWAC is doing regarding the crisis in New York and for relief efforts after the terrorist attacks. Bob then introduced the emcee for the evening, comedian Dan Cronin, who worked the cold crowd as best he could. When they heckled too much, he grabbed the hecklers and grilled them on stage. That'll show 'em!

"Pro Choice for Mental Health" was the first band up-when they finally got there. After being AWOL for about 45 minutes, their first "number" was a scripted play that the band members and people from the audience read off notepads in a stilted manner. When they finished this, the guitar player couldn't find his guitar (not hard to believe since there was an enormous amount of gear on the stage). So, over a microphone, he accused an audience member of stealing his guitar. Finally, they played for about five minutes and were quite upset when they were kicked off the stage. Harrumph!

"German Cars vs. American Homes" was up next and their exciting and fun act was seriously weird. The seven band members approached stage as crabs (walking sideways, arms akimbo) and with the exception of the bass player they all played keyboard guitars. As their documentary "guy" filmed everything they did, but wouldn't tell anyone what he was doing or what was going on, the band rapped, screamed and did call/response type antics for their set.

Board member Steve Masur's band "Noisy Le Grand" played next. Their set was characterized by heavy punk rock and the typical screeching that accompanies. It was punctuated when fellow band member Lars asked someone to "beer" him and Steve sprayed him with a cold brewsky. The evening ended with a resounding success to many hoots and hollers. The success of this night was in the community-development department. With a bit more notice and planning, WWWAC Rocks 2.0 will surely be a bigger and badder benefit.