PICKS, June 25




XAR

Professional Idiot Michael Portnoy has been pissing people off for years with his performance-art provocations, such as jumping onstage at Luna Lounge and sabotaging a lame Colin Quinn set. (Is there any other kind?) Most infamously, Portnoy crashed the live broadcast of the 1998 Grammy’s when he danced topless next to Bob Dylan with "SoyBomb" written on his chest, thus raising the bar for all future live television interruptions. Maybe you’ve seen him around town as "Professor Kiffy Apocobe," a phony CUNY professor of experimental jokes compiled from around the globe. Whatever guise he’s using, he’s consistently smart, bizarre and surprisingly talented. What many of his random fans don’t know is that he’s also a skilled musician and singer and his new project, XAR, performs his unique "majestro" music this evening. (That’s "majestic-electro", but it sounds to us more like operatic-prog-metal-electro.) Watch out for his blistering cover of "Man from La Mancha."


and from NEW YORK Magazine
http://www.newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/arts/features/n_8671/index4.html

and regarding The Liquid Tapedeck, the hypothetical rock band XAR recently stopped moaning for