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Starshine. Naturally luminous beyond the constellations of the hype manufactured by wannabes and media mavens, the real thing is unmistakable. Tangoman’s got it. Songs by this Argentinian Aznavour named Jorge Heilpern slither, constrict the heart of any man who has suffered for love. Behind the intimacy and conviction of the lyrics he lives as he sings, there is a pulse. The five-piece band that backs him drives an open Latin beat, but Heilpern is possessed of an insidious rhythmic energy, densely tropical and primitive, that moves his audience to dance, dance, dance even while the motion of his song fixes them in an anaconda’s embrace. The phenomenon that is Tangoman, including double drums, keys, bass, and sax, has burst most local clubs at the seams, so the progression last Saturday to the Bearsville Theater, with its open dance floor, was natural. Besides, Garth Hudson of The Band was sitting in, and the crowd that came out was enormous. In this space, the cabaret intimacy, incidental gotta-dance intensity of the band shifted to an on-purpose dancehall sound, an accommodation to the group’s growing local popularity as a wild party band. Tangoman is so much more than that, this temptation to please rather than seduce will pass with the coming of wider success. Magnificent moments abounded in the bodacious collective anyhow. And no matter how long the solos or how far they rocked away from the sultry Latin pulse that has made Tangoman’s closer gigs a cheap trip to the tropics, Heilpern crested the band’s energy, picked it up and carried it further, with every trip to the mike. |
Stork-like in his high-top sneakers, eyes shaded by a baseball cap, this guitar playing, keyboard riding, ex-Argentinian economist makes ginchy look sexy. A second singer in Tangoman is sax player Paul Branin. His horn is possessed of a multitude of voices, all dog-breath intimate as Heilpern’s—jazz-raw and Latin big-band, trumpet bright. Ernie Colon and Artie Dixon double the percussion, Colon on congas and Dixon on traps. Dixon, who sketches behind the players without overwhelming the mass, took a solo that culminated beyond the sum of its rhythm and power to blow out into orbit, a lift-off awesome to witness, full of the sound and fry signifying effort. Steve Rust, of the local Rust clan of musicians, pulls in elegantly minimal, absolutely sensual bass lines, and Paul Duffy chords the keys. Seated among them, looking like Old Man Mountain, sat Garth Hudson. Serene and resplendent in snow-white, chest-length beard, this man, respected for this musicianship beyond any legend, seemed to hold the keys of his heart’s desire. Keys to cherish like a woman, to give the breath of life, like a child. He played the ultimate, intimate keyboard, an accordion. Blissed out, working unobtrusively within the texture of the group, his occasional solos on the box were mini-cantina soul songs, cries from the heart of a man who has mastered the complexities of great technological Oz-box boards, and who’s home at last.
Cat Ballou |