CYHSY

Last nite Irene and I went to see a band called "Clap Your Hands Say Yeah" ("Clap Your Hands") at the Middle East in Cambridge. Clap Your Hand's claim to fame is that they started out almost entirely as an internet phenomenon. No major record label, no shows outside New York, no nothing, really. But they put their eponymous album online and word spread. Before they knew it they were getting hundreds of thousands of orders.

They recently put out another album, "Some Loud Thunder." Following the breakthrough success of their initial album, their second feels a bit like an attempt to establish themselves as artists, and conversely to establish that they aren't one of modern musics many one time wonders. In any event, Irene and I saw them touring in support of "Some Loud Thunder." They don't tour often and this was their first stop, so it was particularly good to see them.

They played a good number of songs from the first album (the one most people are familiar with) and I was struck by the variations from the recorded tracks. I suppose when you become intimately familiar with the recording of a song it's easy to view it as Definitive (with a purposefully capital D). Like a painting. An artist can talk about what they meant, and what they were feeling, but in the end it stands bare for all the world to see. You can't expect an artist to repaint a piece over and over again.

But maybe live shows are more like theater. The Director and Producer can work together to ensure multiple versions of their work. Of course, Directors and Producers rely on Players (that shifty bunch) whose allegiance is often more to their own glory then anything else.

Alone among them, a small band of four or five musicians can authoritatively recreate and reinterpret their work night after night after night. Once the LP is cut the issue is set, to a certain extent, but unlike an author who must set their work free out into the world and afterwards can only harp after it, the musician can reproduce a song in its entirety and gently point out to us what we may have misinterpreted, and what time and circumstance may have wrongly exaggerated. It's a beautiful gift. Check out the recorded version: