| It was still early during the benefit concert for Rainer Ptacek, an Arizonan national steel guitar virtuoso with a brain tumor, and Mark Eitzel was solo under the spotlight when he pulled off a joke that probably couldn't have worked for anyone else. Between the first two songs of his set, Eitzel told the audience, "I thought I had cancer until three days ago." Extended pause. "But it's just a zit." He also burped right into the mike just before playing a new song about a slob who won't leave his sister alone. But the impropriety didn't phase his audience, who seemed to take the burp as a symbol of the intimacy to come. Somehow, when you hear Eitzel's classically simple guitar chords underneath a line that goes, "You hate an innocence that you can't own," it's impossible to view the man on stage as anything less than a gentleman. In fact, he's a lot more. Eitzel is a balding veteran of the American Music Club, and his skillful plucking on your heartstrings belies the awkwardness of his strumming on a guitar that looks too big. His music is as graceful as a sunny autumn afternoon when you have time to watch the falling leaves. And in Eitzel's world, the leaves are pointed, jagged lyrics that have a soothing impact when they touch down. It's therapy his fans crave. Cheers went up when he sang "Mission Rock," in which he lets you laugh while crying: "Let's go have a drink/Talk is useless/It only makes us seem clever/And nothing changes..." The mood in the big hall changed a bit when Giant Sand joined Eitzel on stage for an old fave, "Helium." Eitzel put down his guitar and devoted himself to singing with intensity -- sending sprays of saliva two feet beyond the mike, and reminding me of my favorite college professor, who tended to spit while explaining Shakespeare. Clearly, a man unafraid of spitting has something valuable to teach, something much more substantive than etiquette. Review by Melissa Rawlins for The Austin Chronicle Return to homepage here |
| Mark Eitzel & Giant Sand Texas Union Ballroom,Austin,TX March 14th 1997 |