| A Salon It's nice to see a talented musician perform onstage at a club. But nothing beats seeing that singer play in the intimacy of someone's home. On Monday night, Mark Eitzel, the former American Music Club leader who has released a new solo record, sat in front of the open window in the second-floor library of the Greenwich Village home of Danny Goldberg, the president of Mercury Records, and Rosemary Carroll, a high-powered music lawyer, and strummed a handful of songs from his album. The occasion was a salon evening to raise money for Bomb magazine, which interviewed Mr. Eitzel in its summer anniversary issue; more than 100 guests attended, including David Byrne; Rosanne Cash; Brice Marden, the artist, and the writer A. M. Homes. Of all the singers appropriate for such a high-society concert, Mr. Eitzel is one of the most unlikely. Onstage, he is a bundle of introspective energy, so attuned to the crowd that even a hint of bad energy throws him off. As he was introduced at the salon, Mr. Eitzel buried his face in his hands. Accompanied by Marc Capelle on piano and trumpet, he silenced the guests with his first song, "Mission Rock Resort," with its line, "Our talk is always useless, it only makes us seem clever." Slowly, Mr. Eitzel's nervousness subsided and he adapted to the unpredictability of a home environment. A guitar string broke, and with no replacement in sight, he continued his half-hour set. A child crawled across the floor in front of him, and he played on. The phone rang, and he joked, "It must be the neighbors calling to tell me to shut up." The only thing that fazed Mr. Eitzel was when he asked, "Can we do a real depressing one?" And Mr. Goldberg and Ms. Carroll's angelically blond, 6-year-old daughter, Katie, enthusiastically yelled out, "Yes!" as she knocked her knees together with evident glee. Perhaps the record executives present took note: there is a future generation just waiting to turn depressed songwriters into stars. by Neil Strauss for The New York Times June 6th 1996 Return to homepage here |