A steamy time will be had by all
IF there’s a concert tour with a more appropriate title than TGT’s forthcoming “The Shirts Off Tour,” we haven’t heard it. A meeting of the minds (and glistening abs and chiseled jawlines) of R&B; pinups Tyrese, Ginuwine and Tank, the trio recently joined forces as a super group with a single mission -- to please all the ladies, all the time.
“It’s going to be the ultimate female experience,” an obviously giddy Tyrese Gibson said about the group’s fall tour. “It’s going to be an escape for women, an escape from their everyday lives.”
The three singers have been friends and fellow cads for a decade (Gibson was best man at Ginuwine’s wedding), but they only collaborated for the first time on a remix of Tank’s pleading new single “Please Don’t Go.” With 13 albums and a slew of hit singles among them, TGT is something of a Traveling Wilburys of R&B;, if Bob Dylan had V-muscles to stop traffic.
They’ve even cribbed a bit from the R. Kelly manual of fantastically loony concept albums, as the lyrics to their “Please Don’t Go” remix are ripe for plot twists on future singles.
“You’re listening to us having a conversation about what we did for the girls in our lives to make them want to stop messing with us,” Gibson said. “It’s set up to have sequels.”
A short list of producers for a full-length album is being bandied about, and their tour will feature a mix of solo material from each member and new TGT cuts. Supergroups are always dicey propositions, but TGT is admirably on-message in their intentions for the tour.
“There’s going to be a lot of female emotions [at the shows],” Gibson said. “They’re going to be horny, happy and screaming. We’re going to shut down a whole floor of hotel rooms.”
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Robed goons of the world, unite
DAN DEACON’S live shows were strange events to begin with. The noise-pop composer, who looks a bit like a better-fed David Cross with a week’s worth of stubble, sets up a bank of electro gizmos and neon tchotchkes on the floor of a venue and prowls around the audience while they mosh on top of him.
Now, add a backing choir of singers bedecked in fluorescent hooded robes (designed by his friend Stefani Levin), an ensemble Deacon will recruit each night from whatever city he’s playing.
In homage to Wham City, the commune-esque collective of Deacon’s Baltimore artist friends (and the title of a standout track on his album, “Spiderman of the Rings”), four boys and four girls will join Deacon onstage every night in a battle to see who can look the most blissfully art-damaged.
“I always wanted a bunch of goons in wizard robes at shows,” Deacon said. “We hope people come in their own robes. The ultimate goal is to have the stupidest-looking audience possible.”
The candy-colored, rapturously ADD electro-pop of “Spiderman” is earning Deacon an audience far beyond the robed-goon demographic. All the usual taste-making websites instantly jumped onboard to praise Deacon’s experimental freakouts, and he’s become something of a vanguard for a Baltimore noise scene that flips the urban nihilism of “The Wire” into a glitchy, ecstatic underground club land.
Deacon’s never-ending tour schedule, which includes an L.A. stop at Echoplex on June 16, does leave one question about those robes, though. Noise-rock fanboys aren’t renowned for cleanliness: Who’s washing these things between sets?
“I should say that we wash them every night,” Deacon said. “But who wants to see a clean wizard?”
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