John Wesley Harding’s Cabinet of Wonders

John Wesley Harding, with dummy

This is the kind of thing Le Poisson Rouge is soooo good at. The (sometimes terminally) hip downtown Manhattan club that has, in its less-than-one-year of existence, provided a home to Mos Def, Simone Dinnerstein, Hun-Huur Tu, Steve Reich, Deerhunter, and Afrika Bambaataa (often on back to back nights), recently gave itself over for a series of monthly concerts by veteran English pub-rocker and polyglot John Wesley Harding. The formula:John Wesley Harding gets together a bunch of talented, ridiculously disparate people onstage — novelists Jonathan Ames and Rick Moody; hipster comedian Eugene Mirman; English folk-rock legend Graham Parker; Dan John Miller, the reedy rockabilly-throwback dude behind Goober and the Peas, and god knows who else — and they do their things as well as each other’s things. Rick Moody reads a short story, but then he stays onstage and sings harmony (!) alongside John W.H. on a cover of the Beach Boys’ “In My Room” (sung, inexplicably, in German). Eugene Mirman gives a droll slideshow presentation on how to snag a husband, but then does a weird and hilarious lip-syncing routine with John Wesley. And John Wesley bounds on and off-stage all night, grinning like a Cheshire cat.

I have seen been to two of these vaudeville-styled “Cabinet of Wonders” concerts in the past two months, and they have given me some of the most satisfying cross-genre warm fuzzies I have experienced at a concert in years. The love that everyone has for what they do is palpable; NO ONE takes themselves the least bit seriously. Seeing the goofy side of artists is a rare, wonderful thing. I cannot think of any brilliant example off the top of my head (it’s late in the day, and my brain is starting to feel crowded by cotton balls) but I wanted to pose the question: What are some examples of your favorite artists stepping outside of themselves and allowing their audience to see them just goofing around?