{"id":17,"date":"1996-11-30T22:26:06","date_gmt":"1996-11-30T22:26:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/1996\/11\/30\/an_entertainmen\/"},"modified":"2024-11-27T15:43:47","modified_gmt":"2024-11-27T20:43:47","slug":"an_entertainmen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/1996\/11\/30\/an_entertainmen\/","title":{"rendered":"An Entertainment Bonanza"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"MeI don\u2019t know if it\u2019s possible to really explain Marty and Elayne.<\/strong> At least, I don\u2019t think anyone could express exactly what it\u2019s like to see them, to hear them.<\/p>\n

Marty and Elayne are a husband-and-wife lounge act who perform nightly at a Los Angeles restaurant\/lounge called the Dresden. This place is the toniest. It\u2019s all brown velour walls and furniture and gold light fixtures. Circular booths and small tables surround a baby grand piano ringed with a counter and chairs.<\/p>\n

Elayne sits at the piano with a pile of sheet music and a couple of extra Casiotone keyboards. Next to her is Marty and his stand-up bass, with a drum kit on the side just in case. Marty is the stone-faced protector of Elayne, the ethereal artist who lives through the music she plays. It sweeps her away, and Marty makes sure everyone respects that. Together, as they\u2019ve done for the last twenty years, they wail out popular favorites and old standards. They don\u2019t just perform simple smarmy covers, though. Every song is transformed into something unique, something unbelievable, something bordering on the incomprehensible.<\/p>\n

Without fail, they start every song in a simple way, with either Marty singing in his pitch-for-pitch Sinatra voice, or Elayne in her own jazzy, high-frequency way. After a verse and a chorus, though, the fun begins. Elayne scats. She scats like a cat in heat. She scats in song and plays improvised, otherwordly riffs on the piano. Marty keeps the beat and keeps it strong, plucking or pounding away a steady rhythm that moves Elayne along like a runaway roller coaster. The overall effect seems pretty cheesy, but there\u2019s something about it \u2014 something way beyond the humor and the impossible.<\/p>\n

You see, these guys have passion for what they\u2019re doing. They\u2019re serious and it shows. If they were just going along in a happy state of shtick, I don\u2019t think it would work. It would be too over the top. This is the real thing, and it makes all the difference. Their enthusiasm is infectious. Of course, I saw people in the room who were watching them with a superior, Lettermanesque shit-eating grin, but most everyone, the people who looked like they kept coming back, was having fun: they all really appreciated Marty and Elayne in a goofy way. Dresden is by no means a cheap gin joint. There\u2019s no cover, but people wouldn’t pay those drink prices if the show wasn\u2019t worth it.<\/p>\n

Marty and Elayne perform a huge selection of tunes, mostly on request, like
\n\u201cGirl from Ipanema,\u201d \u201cStaying Alive,\u201d \u201cFever,\u201d \u201cMack the Knife,\u201d \u201cMuskrat Love\u201d and other crowd-pleasers. The most amazing number I heard of them all, by far, was \u201cLight My Fire.\u201d This transcended mere performance. I think it transcended mere music. With Elayne taking the vocal reins and the keyboards, and Marty on the drums, these two wailed away in a frenzy I couldn\u2019t have ever expected. I haven\u2019t seen musicians swept away like that in a looooong time. All hail Marty and Elayne, keeping the sanctity of the lounge alive!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s possible to really explain Marty and Elayne. At least, I don\u2019t think anyone could express exactly what it\u2019s like to see them, to hear them. Marty and Elayne are a husband-and-wife lounge act who perform nightly at a Los Angeles restaurant\/lounge called the Dresden. This place is the toniest. It\u2019s … Continue reading “An Entertainment Bonanza”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,2,5,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ultracultural","category-ultrahistorical","category-ultrapersonal","category-ultraphotographic"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71321,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions\/71321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}