the hum / By Bob Doran

Please, Please, Please

The Pleaseeasaur Farewell Tour, plus assorted jazz by Sex Mob, etc.

(May 21, 2009)  Can’t say exactly when it was, maybe nine or 10 years ago, when I first saw JP Hasson performs as Pleaseeasaur. The made-up dinosaur was one of many personas he took on that night in the Plaza Grill View Room, singing and dancing to intentionally cheesy nightclub music in front of a portable back-drop that looked like something salvaged from an elementary school play. Pleaseeasaur went through multiple costume changes as he shifted from dinosaur to Yeti to faux lounge singer to baby eagle to pizza parlor crew — the costume had cardboard pizza guys attached on either side — and so on. It was a serious lesson in post-modern irony, and the hipster crowd ate it up.

Fast-forward a decade, and we find JP embarking on The Pleaseeasaur Farewell Tour, including a stop in Eureka. “Yes, the final Pleaseeasaur show in Eureka is on Thursday, May 21, at The Accident Gallery,” wrote JP in an e-mail from his L.A. headquarters. He’s retiring P-saur in part because of the character’s success. After catching the eye of cable-TV’s Adult Swim, Pleaseeasaur signed a multi-album deal with Comedy Central Records in 2006, launched with a CD/DVD combo The Amazing Adventures Of Pleaseeasaur. A couple of year later he wrote the theme song for The Xtacles, an animated superhero series spin-off from a show called Frisky Dingo. And yes, irony abounds in all this.

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At this point, says JP, “I now have a new project for Comedy Central called JP Incorporated — just finishing the album now — and we begin production on the web series for ComedyCentral.com in June. JP Inc. is very similar to Pleaseeasaur. The live show will again rely heavily on multimedia (video) and feature many, many costumes. It is a solo performance I’ve been doing for the past year — it felt like the next logical progression after 12 years of Pleaseeasaur.”

The Accident show teams him with local boy band Eureka Garbage Company and some short films by no-budget filmmaker Jon Olsen and experimentalist Michel Sargent. Extra bonus: “The final P-Saur shows will include many old songs I have not done in years,” says JP.

It’s by no means as over-the-top, but there’s a touch of irony in the music of Sex Mob, a quartet that emerged from New York’s downtown jazz scene a few years back. Led by slide trumpeter Steven Bernstein, the band includes alto saxophonist Briggan Krauss and a killer rhythm section with Tony Scherr on bass and Kenny Wollesen on drums. The Mob’s specialty is the unlikely juxtaposition of covers. Take their latest disc, for example: Sex Mob Meets Medeski (a collab with the MMW organist). It includes Mob takes on Count Basie’s “Blue and Sentimental” and Duke Ellington’s “Black and Tan Fantasy,” alongside a couple of Prince tunes, excursions on music from James Bond movies and a wild romp on “Little Liza Jane,” with all the music going way outside.

Sex Mob’s show at the Red Fox Friday was originally scheduled for the Jambalaya, but a double booking moved it to Eureka. There was already a band booked at the Fox, too, so expect a bit of contrast that night: S.M. is preceded by San Francisco-based alt. country-rockers AcaciaCollective, celebrating the release of a new disc, House of Cards.

Turns out there’s a lot of jazz Friday night. Pianist Darius Brotman has a concert in HSU’s Fulkerson Recital Hall where he’s teaming up with bassist Richard Saunders, a former local who now resides in the Bay Area. What will they play? “We’re jazz musicians; we never tell,” said Brotman. He did let on that the repertoire will involve “exciting bebop and ballads.”

Meanwhile, down SoHum way, drummer Michael Curran, who owns Persimmon Garden Gallery in Redway with his wife, Holly, holds forth with another version of the Michael Curran Trio, this time featuring stellar saxophonist Francis Vanek.

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