Sons of Pitches: A Triumph in Entertainment for the "Cool Crowd" (12-16-02)....Don't get me wrong, I wasn't actually there...I just showed up at the end to help take apart the stage for a small fee, but that's another story entirely. Anyway, I was unfortunate enough to see the end of the show. It's little wonder these jolly rogers claim nativity to Ithaca. The main singer, the Justin Timberlake of the band, who the other members referred to as Ryanne, sported his tight purple velvet T and the hipster neo-seventies metal-grommit leather belt. It was quite dashing. The chubby-doo, everybody-loves-him-mascot-guy of the band could be seen trying to conceal his image-devastating gut with the same sort of belt, and toting a similar bracelet, in some sort of homoerotic sado-masochist expressionist fashion. Oh, and he must use Pantene Pro-V to keep that highlighted hair so perfect. If Bono was dead, he probably would have rolled over once or twice when the Sons broke into a head-shaking cover of "With or Without You," not to mention their cover of "One Love." What's with that anyway, two covers by the same band in one set? Other songs included a tribute to Ariel (the Little Mermaid), an emotionally-suffocating ode to one of the bandmember's wives, and a cover of the King of Pop himself, Michael Jackson. And if that's not cool, then shit, I don't know what is! About halfway through my short tenure in the auditorium, I realized that if I was blind I might have mistakenly thrown a beer bottle on the stage in the hopes of hitting a Backstreet Boy in the nose. Yeah, that's exactly what the music sounds like. Yet all the retro-hippies of our town that are forever begrudging pop culture did not fail to cheer in full-throated support of what was invariably the genesis of the next boy-band. I'm taking some consolation in the fact that they at least write their own songs, but that won't last for long once they run out of stuff to say about their three collective high-school relationships. And by the way, to the dude with the goatee, the whole marriage thing doesn't work too well with celebrities. Sure, this band might be a success, but personally, I think i'll stick to music.
