New York City's over/underground sensation Polygraph Lounge is the duo of Rob Schwimmer and Mark Stewart. Conceived in the musical hotbed of New York's Lower East Side, Polygraph Lounge now plays regularly to packed houses in hot spots that range from Joe's Pub at the Public Theater to Fez and BAM. Since getting off the road with the Simon and Garfunkel 2003/2004 tour (ending with the concert in Rome in front of the Colosseum attended by 600,000 people where, to the delight of the audience, Rob and Mark shed their respective roles in the 7-piece band and emerged as Polygraph Lounge, literally stopping the show with their wild antics in "Feeling Goovy") our heroes have been gearing up for their imminent Off-Broadway show directed by Academy Award winner Marshall Brickman. They are also featured on the new Simon & Garfunkel CD/DVD, "Old Friends: Live On Stage."
After their national debut at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis playing "Smorgasmusic" in November '02, the 'phlounge' closed the Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music with two nights of Wave-centric mirthmusic composed for & commissioned by BAM to celebrate their 20th Anniversary.
Seeking fulfillment outside their respective lives as virtuoso soloists and sidemen, Schwimmer and Stewart created the Lounge as a place to unleash inspired lunacy from an arsenal of musical instruments and plunder the cultural currency of our times. Polygraph Lounge has been described as "Spike Jones for the 21st Century," "Weird Al, only highbrow," "Striptease music for geese," and the always acceptable "brilliant."
Schwimmer and Stewart have individually worked with Paul Simon, Wayne Shorter, Bruce Springsteen, Steve Reich, Muddy Waters, Bob Dylan, Laurie Anderson, Willie Nelson, Charles Wuorinen, Queen Latifah, Phillip Glass, Paul McCartney, Uri Caine, the Everly Brothers, Bang on a Can, Stevie Wonder, Fred Frith, Tan Dun, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Anthony Braxton, Kurt Vonnegut, Eliot Feld, Sam Rivers, Burt Bacharach, Alwin Nikolai, Vernon Reid, John Cale, Sammy Davis Jr., Hanson, and Denise Rich.
Polygraph Lounge is what they do when their keepers aren't looking.
With Polygraph Lounge, Schwimmer and Stewart engineer an epic train wreck of the American cargo cult, aiming directly at the funny bone of pop culture:
o a car alarm dance that will forever change the way one hears noise pollution
o Inna Gadda Da Vida as Gregorian Chant
o Led Zeppelin meets Aaron Copland
o an audience of hundreds of nostrils flaring and blaring on nose flutes in The Good, The Bad,
and The Ugly
o Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake as surf guitar paradise
o Purple Haze, Green Acres and Stravinsky's Firebird living happily together
o much, much, much, much more
Be it the periodic table of elements, SUVs, Herman Melville's Moby Dick, or Mozart's Eine Kleine Razzernacht, all are fodder for the cannon of hilarity fired directly to the world's Medulla Oblong Gadda Da Vida.
WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING:
"Of all the quirky bands in New York, Polygraph Lounge stands out for its sheer ingenuity... Once their mischievous, hyperactive creativity gets loose, there's no stopping it... Mr. Stewart and Mr. Schwimmer have the kind of chemistry one expects from a smart, funny rock band that has been together since childhood, goofing off and punning left and right like fresh young Beatles."
--- Ben Sisario, The New York Times (Arts and Leisure Section)
"Fearsome prowess...These two can hook anything in the deep ocean of pop effortlessly, which frees up their attention to wring melody from a theremin, daxophone, PVC bassoons, and cardboard alpenhorns (e.g.). The stage looked like the Cat in the Hat ransacked a gamelan."
--- David Krasnow, The Village Voice
"If you pine for one more Spike Jones, Firesign Theatre, or Tom Lehrer show, get yourself to the BAMCafe this weekend. The zany, musically tight, and lyrically brilliant duo Polygraph Lounge has been enlisted as comic relief..."
--- Alicia Zuckerman, New York Magazine December
"Polygraph Lounge is REALLY smart and REALLY funny-
we were laughing out loud!"
--- Paul Simon
"Polygraph Lounge is today's pop culture meets Spike Jones meeting John Cage!
A great evening on every level--They're explosive!"
--- Arif Mardin, Legendary multi-Grammy Award winning producer including 2003 Grammy Award Winner--Producer (Norah Jones)"
"Inventive and brilliant, brilliant, brilliant! I have not been so entertained on or off-Broadway. This is great family entertainment. The whole show is a must-see gem!"
--- Geoffrey Holder, Tony award-winning director/choreographer/actor
"Wonderful, animated, spiritually uplifting inspired madness."
--- Rinde Eckert, Obie award-winning composer, performer, writer and director
"Polygraph Lounge is the the Jonathan Winters/ Robin Williams of music!"
--- Marshall Brickman, Academy Award winning screenwriter of Annie Hall, Manhattan, Sleeper, etc.
"Probably the most intelligent, biting, witty song team in the business today."
--Ron Delsener, promoter and Co-Chairman/ Co-CEO of Clear Channel Entertainment
"In this era of institutionalized mediocrity, Polygraph Lounge offers a rare opportunity to get back to what music and culture was supposed to be in the first place: fun, challenging, multi-layered, sophisticated, relevant. They engage the audience intellectually and emotionally, something that doesn't seem to exist anymore. I leave every one of their shows feeling enriched, connected, and itching for another hit of Poly!"--- Limor Tomer, Music Curator at BAM, Lincoln Center Festival, Symphony Space
"Polygraphically perverse, they leave no pun, musical or otherwise, unturned!"
--Elliott Sharp, Renowned iconoclastic composer and performer
"Everyone likes them. It's educated tomfoolery, expertly performed. It's the musical equivalent of Spike Jones filtered through the brainy wit of Oscar Wilde, the intelligence of Herman Melville and sophomoronic genius of Pee Wee Herman. And connected to a performing capability that is profoundly campy and expert. They really deserve their own TV show."
--- John Hammel, host of "From Mozart to Motorhead" WNTI-FM
"If the world were the Moulin Rouge - full of trap-doors, endlessly subtle, absurd and effortless jump-cuts through history - then P. Lounge would be the house band and everyone would show up in the Grand Canyon for a dance. Were there a world where Spike Jones was revered as a Beethoven's Beethoven, P. Lounge would be the band that Paganini would have started with Little Richard if Dorothy had won the revolution in Oz. But she did win! And P. Lounge lives!"
--- Anthony Gatto, director of Headwaters Music and producer of the annual Festival Dancing in Your Head, Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis
"I'm crazy about your maniacal duo-you guys have references in your TRANSITIONS from reference to reference! Will you be preparing new material for the upcoming concerts, or did you reference all extant music already? One of the most fun things about your show is how you turn virtuosity into a game, truly "playing."
- David Garland, host/ producer of "Spinning on Air" and "Evening Music" WNYC -FM
"...by far the funniest, most ridiculous combo I have heard/seen since the Mothers at the Fillmore!"
- Bruce Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery
"...one of the strangest and most wondrous musical collaborations in New York City! ...they are the best damn players you've ever seen...Their flock is devout and growing....rare and special instruments in rare and special hands."
--- Linus Gelber, MusicDish
"Right from their first performance at Joe's Pub, through their recent fall residency, Polygraph Lounge have developed an enthusiastic and growing following of true believers, attracting sold-out houses and major press attention in The New York Times, NPR and more. Quirkily brilliant, they combine musical virtuosity, an encyclopedic knowledge of music (high and low musical references fly by at lightning speed), an almost psychic on-stage rapport and a childlike playfulness. This gives them an uncanny ability to get jaded New York audiences to open up, and join them playing nose flute sonatas, dancing to car alarms and generally just being silly. P-Lounge always pull a surprise or two (including guests like Paul Simon, Geoffrey Holder and Edie Brickell) out of their overstuffed bag-of-tricks. They are also some of the nicest guys you'll ever work with, or drink an overproof Belgian beer with."
--- Bill Bragin, Director of Joe's Pub at The Public Theater
"The ultimate in pop-cult mixology"
--AOL City Guide: Boston
"PaulSimon recruited players with whom he'd had success on his solo recordings and tours, and whose musicianship and versatility put them in a class by themselves. Class? Maybe "species" is a little closer to the mark. To call virtuosos Rob Schwimmer and Mark Stewart a keyboardist and guitarist, respectively, is not inaccurate, but it almost misses the point. As the duo "Polygraph Lounge" the two regularly wow New York audiences with their astonishing wit and musical inventiveness, reworking and recombining everything from Tchaikowsky to Led Zeppelin into a side-splitting review. A large part of the allure is the sheer number of bizarreinstrumentsonstage, a number of them handmade by the lads themselves.....But few sideplayers bring the audience to their feet quite the way he (Rob) does when he nails the solo on "The Boxer" - on Theremin.
---Ernie Rideout,, Keyboard
"Two highly sought after pop-to-jazz-to-20th century experimental sessionmen go all Spike Jones and/or Weird Al on your fanny with puns decipherable only by scholars equally versed in Ornette, Iron Butterfly, the muckamuck European tradition, Alvin and the Chipmunks' testicles, and Moby Dick-using didgeridoos, theremins, car alarms, and 'whirlee-copters' no less."
--- Chuck Eddy, The Village Voice
"They're funny as all get out and smart as can be, but they wear their erudition lightly, so few people will ever realize just how smart they are -- or how talented as musicians.The pace is breakneck: The instrumentalists leap from instrument to instrument -- some homemade and some quite obscure -- but one thing remains constant and that is the level of musicianship is astonishingly high...Go hear Polygraph Lounge the next chance you get. You'll have a fabulous time, although your abs might hurt for a week, and you'll be supporting several of the smartest, most talented, and funniest musicians you'll ever have the privilege to hear."
Wes Phillips, ONHIFI.COM
"Polygraph Lounge has forgotten more about music than they ever knew."
Rob Schwimmer
"OK, they're not clinically insane."
George Robinson, The Jewish Week
"I beg to differ."
--- Joe Mardin, producer/ manager
Polygraph Lounge harmonizes eras of music
By Richard Dyer, Globe Staff | February 14, 2005-----
Polygraph Lounge is like a lot of things. Rob Schwimmer and Mark Stewart, the two merry minstrels of the ensemble, cite Victor Borge, Tom Lehrer, Firesign Theatre, and the immortally anarchic '40s bandleader Spike Jones among their influences. They might as well have added Johann Sebastian Bach, who put two popular songs into counterpoint and entered them into his ''Goldberg" Variations.
But nothing today is much like Polygraph Lounge, and nothing like Polygraph Lounge would have been possible earlier, because its work depends on more than 250 years of music since Bach's day, and on modern electronics -- not only electronic instruments, but the electronic world that all of us inhabit, in which the music of the world can fill the air at a touch of a button, and everything we have heard can be simultaneously present in our memory and imagination.
Schwimmer plays keyboards and theremin, the wailing progenitor of all modern electronic instruments; Stewart plays electric and acoustic guitars. Both have big hair and favor polyester Hawaiian shirts -- Stewart's shirts had wood-paneled station wagons. Both sing, and sing well, and both play other instruments, like the Stylophone (a Mattel toy of the 1970s), or instruments of their own devising (like a trio of slide whistles, played by a single blower, or the Daxophon, fashioned from plastic household plumbing).
Their show lasts two nonstop, high-energy hours, and there's no way to know what's going to happen next. Like Borge, for example, they tour with a soprano. Melissa Fathman sings a duet for soprano and mezzo from Delibes's opera ''Lakme" made famous by a television commercial; because there is no mezzo, she sings in close harmony with Schwimmer's theremin. She offers ''Goldfinger," with moves even Shirley Bassey never thought of, and after the slide whistles have approximated the ''Dance of the Sugar-Plum Fairy" from Tchaikovsky's ''Nutcracker," Fathman bursts into the ''Waltz of the Flowers," with double-entendre lyrics a lot gamier than the ones Fred Waring brought to the airwaves back in the days of network radio, accompanying herself on the Vietnamese DanMo.
To ''Fever," popularized by Peggy Lee, Schwimmer and Stewart sing Lehrer-style lyrics about ''Dubya." A country-and-western number celebrates the SUV (''Don't emasculate me with a station wagon," it begins). A sequence about Moby Dick includes parodies of ''Memories" from ''Cats" and Barbra Streisand's hit ''People" (''Mammals . . . mammals who eat mammals"). The voice of Alvin the Chipmunk is heard, along with that of Arnold Schwarzenegger, and there are jokes about everyone from John Cage to ''Ornette Funicello." The range of musical references is staggering, and -- who knew that Oscar Rasbach's setting of Joyce Kilmer's ''Trees" would show up among the rude noises, along with Khachaturian's ''Sabre Dance," the finale of Stravinsky's ''Firebird," the familiar car alarm melodies, and a reprise of the Roy Rogers and Dale Evans signoff song, ''Happy Trails."
In a way, Polygraph Lounge's show is frustrating, because no single listener is going to catch every musical reference as it whizzes by; listening is a little like trying to play trivia games with the thousand-year-old man.
But there is nothing trivial about Polygraph Lounge's pursuit, amusing as it is. The political commentary is alert and the musical humor intelligent; what appears anarchic is in fact the product of well-stocked brains, strict performance discipline, and killer chops. The juxtapositions of tone are startling, as is the ricochet between high art and popular culture, but they tell us something about the world we live in and how our minds deal with it.
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