Music Style Indie

Musical Influences Liz Phair, They Might be Giants

Artist History I am a novelist who writes songs to blow off steam.

Group Members Judith Basya, Brian Robinson and Aviva Patz

Instruments electric bass and acoustic guitar

Press Reviews from the Village Voice, 9-8-98: WHIP SMARTER "It smells like 12 messages on your answering machine," she pronounces, "and I reek of it." Bassi voices the obsessive-compulsive passive-aggression I wish Liz Phair's new album voiced. Born Judith Basya, poeticizing in public (often about not getting laid) since Riot Grrrl days, she's a master at undercutting embarrassingly hostile confession with stand-up comedy. Shortest poem: "I hate men/But they don't love me back." In great Soho boho tradition, her poems are now songs with titles like "All I Need Is Cleavage" and "The Dysfunctional Family in F Minor," which her trio Smirky Clown now fleshes out from skeletal monotonality with trumpets, acoustic guitars, and maracas. There's a tough sing-songy drawl to "Kids," where Bassi wants a one-night stand not a wedding band - then alludes to Humpty Dumpty, wobbling Weebles, and "I'm Rubber You're Glue." In mid-July at the Café Lalita Java, she wore a brand new polka-dot prom dress (which she couldn't find a hoop for in time) and stood on a chair (because she's 4-10) and kept her chin in the air but managed somehow to keep a straight face deadpan, with an untrustworthy smile. Her funniest bit of music criticism is about a mix tape she made for use at her health club, where side A was her favorite early-'80s alternative songs and side B was the same songs in reverse order; so "if a particular song was working for me on a particular day, I could listen to it as many times as I wanted without wasting batteries on rewind and fast-forward." Her second funniest bit of music criticism involves Donny and Marie Osmond doing a "Word Up"/"Never Gonna Give You Up"/"Rio"/ "Paradise City"/"Baby Got Back"/"You Oughta Know" medley. Then there's her hilariously hammy Hamlet-soliloquy parody about oral sex: "To swallow or not to swallow, that is the question.... insecurity doth make fellatiers of us all." Fill in your favorite Monica Lewinsky joke. (Smirky Clown performs at Avenue B Social Club at 5 p.m. on Sunday, September 6.) -CHUCK EDDY

Location LA & NY, CA & NY - USA

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