Jukebox the Ghost is made up of three guys from Philadelphia who met in 2003 at George Washington University, and they’ve been touring since their first album Let Live & Let Ghosts was released in 2008. Their name combines lyrics from 70s musician Captain Beefheart with a line from the 50s Russian novel Pnin, and even though I’ve never heard of either of those things until just now, I think the words “Jukebox the Ghost” capture everything about them – their music belongs in a bouncing 50s jukebox but their lyrics have a lot to do with all sorts of heavy subjects.
Last night was their second concert at Brighton Music Hall within a week, coming back two Thursdays in a row at the exact same time but with two different openers. Ben plays the keyboard and sings on the stage’s right side, Tommy sings and plays guitar across from him, and Jesse’s on drums in the back in a short-sleeved collared shirt decorated with bright red flowers.
Since the first time I saw them in 2010, Ben’s sprouted a faux-hawk that makes for great horizontal optics as his head bounces in front of the mic, Jesse added a blonde streak to his hair, and Tommy must have been happy with his hairstyle because he looks exactly the same. All these guys can play the shit out of their instruments, and having two very different voices at either side of the stage helps mix things up a bit, although last night’s show at Brighton Music Hall was different from most.
Since they were here just a week before, Jukebox played more of their very first album instead of covering everything on their two latest: Everything Under The Sun released in 2010 and Safe Travels in 2012. Their first album is darker than all the others, with songs about the end of the world and one they played last night called “Lighting Myself on Fire.” Their titles are intense and their lyrics follow suit but in a there’s-nothing-to-do-but-laugh kind of way. In Let Live & Let Ghosts those lyrics were closer to the melodies that sometimes went minor and dark and dramatic. But even “Lighting Myself on Fire” is more of a love song than anything else, and most of those first album songs do have the Jukebox gene: bubbly dynamic music given so much meaning with words.
So last night Jukebox alternated between new and old songs, performing the “Good Day,” “Hold It In,” and “Under My Skin” hits from Let Live & Let Ghosts,but also covering “My Heart’s the Same,” “Static to the Heart” (with an extra guitar solo to boot), and “Beady Eyes on the Horzon.” From Everything Under the Sun they performed “Schizophrenia (video above!),” “Half-Crazy,” “Mistletoe,” and “The Popular Thing.” But they started out with their most recent, super catchy/mostly happy songs from Safe Travels: “Somebody,” “Say When,” “Adulthood,” “Ghosts in Empty Houses,” and “Everybody Knows.”
In the middle of the set the band took to performing covers they had learned to play for a friend’s wedding over New Years. “So if you’re wondering why those guys don’t know the words, we don’t know the words,” Ben said before they kicked it off with the 80s song “She Drives Me Crazy.” It was so catchy it made it physically necessary for me to dance, which is why the video above is kind of shaky and doesn’t include the whole song.
Tommy and Ben both have pretty distinct voices so it’s fun to hear a song you know and a voice you know combine for the first time, especially when they’re classics like “Don’t Stop Believing” and “I Believe in a Thing Called Love.” You can really tell how much they love playing those instruments during covers because it’s not really about the words or the message, it’s all just for fun and because the crowd loves it and wants to sing along – which is helpful when someone on stage actually doesn’t know the words.
Overall, it was 90 solid minutes of music that included a three song encore and lots of dedicated fans. Jukebox more than deserves it. This is their first big headlining tour after opening for Ben Folds, Free Energy, and The Barenaked Ladies among others over the past five years.
Even though they’ve been popular for a while, this tour makes it feel more official – they’ve officially/definitely “made it” and it’s so exciting to see how many other people love music that’s happy and meaningful instead of just noisy and mad.
“We all met here in DC, when the three of us were going to school at GW and started out by playing crappy charity events and open mike nights. We were one of the first bands to play at the Mitchell Hall theater when they built that stage in the basement. First we played a lot of shows to nobody, then all of a sudden there were tons of people there and we started selling out ticketed shows. As the guinea pigs for that venue, we got really lucky.”
See more from Jukebox including upcoming tour dates on their website.
The band also has a free iPhone app to get fans even more involved, plus they post Tommy’s Jukebox-style cartoons of the places they tour on the band’s Facebook page, which is kind of a whole other type of art.
It’s arresting – seeing six symmetrical circles holding the faces of little scowling children, all spread across the wall, three red paired against three black. Cast in Renaissance clothing, these children wear the exact color of the background, making the definition between the two an act of magic. Your eyes tell you where the headdress stops and where her shirt begins, but they only know because of delicate shadows and folds that are obvious in some places, but left invisible where the painted fabric is as tight as the canvas.
It’s hard to tell whether these are all the same little boy or girl – all of their faces have the same elegant roundness, the same crystal blue eyes and the same smooth perfect skin. But their expressions are subtly different – the four within the smaller circles seem to hold more contempt in their eyes, like they’re upset with how small their worlds are compared to the two children within the larger circles, whose expressions lie closer to curiosity or suspicion.
The only element offsetting perfect symmetry here comes in the clothing of these two children within the largest circles. The boy in red is bare-chested, wearing only a headdress while the child in the large black oval wears a shiny black shirt that grips his little body so tight he might as well not be wearing it at all.
The largest circles are stretched wider to form more of an oval shape – the smaller perfect circles play a supporting role by framing their larger counterpart and interacting with the opposite color across the wall. The abrupt visual contrast of the black versus red, along with the dagger stares coming from intense perfect children makes the whole wall come alive with ideas about conflict and disdain, youth and maturity. And the Renaissance headdresses hint at an address of institutionalized religion or just religion as a whole.
Perhaps the most dynamic part comes where the two colors meet – both children with the exact same grimacing glare pointed right at us, although it really seems like their unhappiness is actually rooted in their physical closeness to the antidote – the opposite color with a contrast too strong to look directly at.
Born in Seville, Spain in 1965, Salustiano has an exhibition list too long for even multiple pages on his website. He’s shown between 10-20 exhibitions per year since 2001, and began all the way back in 1994. Beginning in Spain, then moving to Portugal in 1999, he showed in Italy in 2000 and New York City in 2001, and has since had work displayed all over the world, from Seoul to Salzburg to Moscow.
Salustiano’s VOLTA comment read:
“For me, emotion is a key word in contemporary art and should continue to be so in the future. In recent years in the art world, artists have tried to flee from ’emotion’: saturated with every kind of visual stimulus, they have been more concerned with making an ‘impact’ on the spectator than in touching an emotional fibre. I strongly believe that emotion should be the principal motivation and purpose of the artist. For centuries art has emotionally impacted upon, moved or even perturbed the spectator; and this ‘interior’ movement has contributed to the evolution of mankind. I also think that even if the artist intends to stimulate the intellect of his or her audience, then this should be done through ’emotion’….”
Robert Mango has been a working artist in Tribeca since the 70s. When he arrived it wasn’t yet called Tribeca; he set to transforming a bread and egg factory on Duane Street into a studio and home, the wooden floors still stained yellow from all the yolk. I was lucky enough to get a tour of this studio yesterday as he walked me through a body of work even more impressive than his transformed gallery, exposed brick walls lined with art. His work began as sculpture and painting that coalesced into a new kind of mixed media; a constructed layering of materials and color that projects three dimensionally, but is still contained on all four sides within a frame.
Working with the female form as his muse, Mango’s most recent series presents women as powerful forces of feeling, with limbs twisting and swirling inside and on top of the border’s edges. Instead of being simplified, these women are glorified, celebrated, and admired – each one embodying an entire sensibility. Their arms and legs curve into distinct postures that transform each piece into the goddess of her action:
“Drumming Her Fingers,” 2012 Oil on canvas over sculpted foam. Artist statement>>
Anticipate
A swirling body painted in matching swirls of orange, she sits on bronze stool with her ankles daintily crossed, leg joined with a hip that spirals up into the two small circles of her chest. Her body keeps twisting up into arms and a bronze head – her right arm disjointed and dropping down into fingers that tap restlessly on her leg. The attention on this arm leaves the whole rest of her body stacked on the right side, her abstracted torso looks like the face of a frowning man – left leg propped up to become his chin and cheek. She’s poised but waiting, with some impatience but with more grace.
Her figure spirals out on a grey-orange-purple background that looks worn compared to her bright blue and white. These orange and purple shapes are sketched out in rough black outline, and her figure literally floats off its surface, crafted puzzle pieces of sculpted foam that float together, two legs that cross and a single arm that encircles her head above. Looking up, her hair glides down and springs up to create a space for the hand coming towards it, which creates a sort of compositional symmetry that matches her criss-crossed legs. Her form dances, embracing itself and the space it occupies, a space that becomes yours physically with her figure projecting inches from the background.
“No Room for Doubt,” oil on canvas over sculpted foam. Artist statement>>
Adore
She is absolutely absorbed in emotion, all her limbs motioning in the same direction as the kiss she’s blowing. The whole work is shiny, blue and green loops of metallic make up a background that leaves spaces for the wall behind to come through. Her hair is blown back into little casual curls in a bright shade of metallic blonde. The left shoulder looks like a cave shaped for her heart, a little spiral that projects itself forward like a megaphone disguised as her Adam’s apple. It calls out just like her kiss does, her toes curled with a hint of tense desire.
“Girl with Trumpet,” 2012 Image courtesy of the artist.
Captivate
Here the sculpted foam is photographed against a white background, but of course photography can’t do much for sculpted foam. In person, her figure physically comes toward you, grabbing bits and pieces of the abstract background behind her and becoming a kind of golden goddess, bent over like she’s in the middle of modern dance rehearsal. Her gold-plated head and hair in profile bring out the frame that’s overlaid with the abstract shapes that become the trumpet part of the piece. She’s powerful, with a warm, sexy forcefulness – emboldened by the dynamic background and confident in the fact that you’re looking even though she isn’t.
These women work as goddesses of action, fully involving their environment by revealing the wall behind them and by physically coming into your space; relief sculptures of carefully shaped and colored foam that melt in the most organic way, merging into legs and arms and hearts that become a single, powerful action.
See more of Robert Mango’s work on his website here.
