Nemesis To Go - Live: Frank The Baptist

Frank The Baptist
Speakeasy, Berlin
Saturday December 8 2007

Bands! Here's one way of ensuring you're never short of a place to play: get yourself your own venue. That's probably not the reason Frank The Baptist (the man) quit his former home base in sunny California to become the co-proprietor of this basement bar in windswept East Berlin, but it certainly means that when Frank The Baptist (the band) decided to stage a one-off honky-tonk performance, rearranging the band's usual cinematic anthems into a set of rollicking, piano driven barrelhouse hoedowns, there was no doubt about where the gig should take place.

And so it is that the band decants itself into the subterranean confines of the Speakeasy, and squeezes into the tiny performance space behind the bar. The sound engineer peers in through a serving hatch, and the audience crams into any nook and cranny not occupied by musicians or the video crew. Tonight's gig is being recorded for visual posterity, although given that the lighting amounts to a mere three red spotlights and two candles I doubt if the cameras will capture very much. But it's hot and dark and intimate, and even before anyone's struck a note the entire event has a deliciously informal, underground feel, the like of which you just don't get at your local Enormodome.

It's a tribute to the quality of Frank The Baptist's songwriting that the songs can be deconstructed, reassembled, reduced, rearranged, simmered over a low heat until tender, and then brought back to life as a cross between a stripped down garage band get-down and Mississippi steamboat boogie - and they still sound as crisp and as natural as if they'd always been played this way. But, as Frank himself remarks, this minimalist, mostly-acoustic style was how the songs were written in the first place, so perhaps what we're hearing here is a return to the source rather than a leap into the Frank The Baptist unknown.

But the piano - ever-present, thumpingly rhythmic and boisterously melodic at the same time, and precision tuned to authentic honky-tonk standards - carries everything forward, and it's a genuine pleasure, in these days of spoof keyboard players who do nothing but mime to a backing track, to see a piano really being played, and indeed taking centre stage in the music. A ripple of applause, there, if you will, for Mr Fez Wrecker (himself another co-proprietor of the bar) at the ivories. And, indeed, for Mr Benn Ra on hollow-body bass, Mr Phan Thomas on brushed drums, and Frank himself, holding court like a rock 'n' roll resistance leader on acoustic guitar.

Bela Pistoljet, white-suited and taciturn, threads his way through the crowd to lend some mournful flourishes on violin - and, believe me, it's a rare skill to flourish mournfully. Thus the band, still thought of by most as an American outfit, suddenly channels the spirit of Old Europe. The sound is familiar, yet uncannily different.

The set is a midnight excursion through the Frank The Baptist repertoire, encompassing songs normally heard rolling implacably out of powerful club PA stacks. Tonight, 'Cosmonauts' almost has an undertow of regret, while 'Signing Off' steams with a quiet defiance, an internal dialogue externalised, and where better to do that than late at night in a basement bar? The swing and lilt of 'Scars Forever' works rather well in its minimalist bar-band arrangement, and 'If I Speak' becomes an authentic boozy singalong. Nobody actually clashes steins, but a good few glasses are raised along with the voices.

The gig is a splendid collision of art and location, for this music fits so neatly in this Berlin cellar that it might have been written with the place in mind. If you ever wanted a soundtrack for a late night on Schumanstrasse, here it is.

Essential links:

Frank The Baptist:
Website | Myspace

The Speakeasy, Berlin:
Website | Myspace