Eclectic Company: Laurel and the Electric Circus: The Recession Sessions, Michael Jackson, and Woodstock

When I first heard them, in the company of some of her starry-eyed fans, Laurel Barineau’s band called themselves The Untouchables, and for my money, they were just that: a high-energy cover band fronted by the long-hair-tossing bold-voiced alto, who soared, swooped, and delivered slinky, sassy, emotionally charged songs that made even ludicrous lyrics seem arch, witty, and meaning filled. Not another cover band in town could touch them.

I can’t even remember most of the long gone clubs where I saw Laurel play in Lake Charles in the early years, where I followed her gigs assiduously whenever I wanted a guaranteed-to-please girls night out, but I do remember one particular night at Crystal’s, where Laurel was promoting her newly released first record, “Sweet Insanity.” The usual crowd of smoking disco dancers came to a halt and surged around the band’s setup on the dance floor, listening with rapt attention as Laurel unrolled the new CDs tracks. Having by then heard all the songs individually, usually sandwiched between covers of numbers made famous by power-voiced women rockers and R&B artists from Patti Labelle to Melissa Etheridge, I had thought they were fine for a freshman effort. That night, hearing them spool and tear out of Laurel, one after the other, I found my appreciation for her original music growing exponentially.

Over time, the hurricanes came and The Untouchables scattered. In the wake of the storm surge, the old clubs closed, and like many others, I stopped going out for fun. But you can’t keep good women down. Eventually, Spring came back into my soul, Laurel regrouped with The Edge, and returned to touring. A month ago, with some personnel changes and a new EP, “The Recession Sessions,” her group was reborn as Laurel and the Electric Circus. Which is where we pick up our heroine, now in the throes of touring the new record all over this region.

As I’m writing this, Laurel is tuning up for a special in-store gig at The Gap in Prien Lake Mall, where she’ll be competing with 700+ bands across the country for a recording contract. I’m rooting for her, not only because she’s a client (full disclosure: haven’t done any work for her for several years), but because I know she’s a trouper, and in it for the long haul. Her new EP includes a rocked-out version of a previously released acoustic tune, “Could You Love Me.” And if you missed her at The Gap, you can catch her 9/6 at Sam’s Cove in Westlake, or you can join the Krewe of Illusions and get invited to their pool party 9/7, or you can see her headline Lake Charles’ first Gay Pride event at the Civic Center 9/19. Highly recommended, whenever, wherever. You go girl!

After promising myself that I would refrain from commenting on Michael Jackson, I find I just have to. See, I was just in airports in Houston and New York, and in all the magazine racks I found at least a half-dozen different Michael Jackson tribute covers, sporting different photos, many from the same recent session. In each of the photos Jackson looks weary but alert, posed in that confident dancer’s casual slouch that will forever make every other video dancer’s moves look forced and formal. And that made me realize how much I will miss him. Once, a long time ago, at a New York dance club, my snarky friend the club’s booker persuaded me and my rock critic husband to come over for a “surprise” appearance by Michael Jackson. This club had a very high, deep stage, and after an appropriate period of agonized anticipation, staring up at it through colored spots and fog machine effects, we could just pick out a man in a scarf, a glove, and a porkpie hat, dancing, as we had seen him do before, to “Billie Jean,” with turns, finger-to-toe points, and moonwalk. My ex- and I were convinced by the smoke and mirrors, but our friend, also a rock critic, refused to be taken in. “Apart from the fact that he’s too tall, too heavy, and that he’s here,” he said, sneering at the dancing man, “he’s just not smooth enough to be Michael Jackson.” And in hindsight, I realized he wasn’t. No one will ever dance that effortlessly, that engagingly, ever again, not really, and the imitators, even all of them in the “Thriller”-thons you can watch on youtube, where you know it’s not and never again will be him, as great as those sincerest flatteries might actually be, that will always leave me feeling just a little bit poorer for the untimely loss of the dancing master.

I didn’t go to Woodstock. Let me be clear about that. Unlike many of my contemporaries who didn’t go, I don’t even pretend, or fantasize that I did. I went to the warm-up concert at Tanglewood in the Berkshires, the Tuesday before, to see B.B. King and the Jefferson Airplane warm up for The Who, making their first U.S. appearance with the rock opera, “Tommy.” I was in the ninth row in front of Pete Townshend when he broke his guitar and set it on fire. Of course, I was tripping on mescaline at the time, so what I tell you I remember about this event should definitely be taken with a healthy shaker of salt. Do you think I really remember the ‘60s? I should hope I don’t. Otherwise, how could I prove I was actually there? Anyway, I was deep into Joan Baez’s autobiography “Daybreak” (especially interested in her explanation of her fear of throwing up, and my own fear that I would barf during the concert, sick on the mescaline high), out for the stolen weekend away from home with my first serious boyfriend, and both of us, 16 years old, were so adorable, that everyone treated us like we were mascots for the winning team, and watched our backs. Oh, yeah, the music was magical, too.

The Woodstock years have faded from the hearts and minds of most of the attendees (now on social security!), let alone the outsiders peering in with either longing or disgust. But somehow, the beat goes on. Kids grow up assuming it’s important to be eco-friendly, infant bands learn riffs from Jimi Hendrix via rockstar and wii, and the Jefferson Airplane/Starship’s Grace Slick shows off her paintings, saying she’s finally too old to rock and roll (will anyone ever get the word out to Mick and Keith?). In Woodstock, New York, where the festival never took place, and where I lived for a number of years, the best sushi in town is at the Wok ‘n Roll, which shows dueling Woodstock films on its wall-mounted TVs all day. Pete Fornatele, an old NY deejay, and Michael Lang, one of the promoters of the original festival, have both come out with commemorative book reports, all the major papers’ music journalists have weighed in on “what it all meant,” and there have been related documentary films and radio retrospectives going day and night on PBS, MTV, VH-1 and other music-oriented channels. You’d think after 40 years I would be sick of this. I mean, I own a handful of Woodstock books already, filled with photos and anecdotes and eyewitness accounts, and I’ve seen at least parts of the movies, oh, maybe 300 times. But I am still looking forward to Ang Lee’s “Taking Woodstock,” about the run up to the festival, which is soon to be out, I hope, in area theaters. Apparently, it takes forever (and a muddy tent city) to teach an old hippie the same old trick.