Band: The Fab Faux
From: New York, NY
Sound: everything from Please Please Me (and before) to Let It Be (and after); literally EVERYTHING
Similar Artists: The Bootleg Beatles, AC/DShe, Mini Kiss, Lez Zeppelin, The Machine, Dark Star Orchestra
Listen Now: “Strawberry Fields Forever” (live at Radio City Music Hall)

“The ’60s are gone, dope will never be as cheap, sex never as free, and the rock and roll never as great.” - Abbie Hoffman

As the sun rises for the first time on a New York city without Yankee Stadium, the metaphor is self-evident: New York is, in fact, a concrete jungle where the old is barely given time to expire before the new overgrows and replaces it. Death is fleeting in the jungle. This is not Athens or Rome where landmarks remain for thousands of years; rather, here people are forced to deal everyday with the passing of time and the manner in which it overtakes everything. It’s not a lack of appreciation of tradition, but rather a commitment to vibrance and progress and to the very nature of life itself. All things must pass… and just this year New Yorkers have been forced to bid farewell to three of the city’s most quintessential experiences: Coney Island, Shea, and Yankee Stadium. All that’s left now of these Twentieth Century behemoths of family entertainment are the memories.

The nature of music, theater, and dance, is very much the same. Once a great artist passes, all that is left are memories and the legend. Or, if we’re lucky, a few films, recordings, or photographs of the greatness that once was. Sometimes there are audio and video recordings of great performances, but the great performances themselves cease once an artist is gone. It’s a fact of life the classical music world has been dealing with for centuries: there is no Beethoven, there is no Gershwin, there is no Mozart, nor Bach. To see the music of the great composers of yesterday performed live today, audiences have to place a degree of trust in an orchestra and conductor to interpret, recreate, perform, and maintain those great songs. And one day, the same will be true of all music. All things must pass…

It’s a fact the rock and roll era has had a notoriously difficult time coming to grips with, likely due to the manner in which audiences have grown attached, not only to the music, but to the actual personalities who composed and performed the songs they love so much. For this reason, people cling to original studio recordings as the gospel of rock and roll. But! But this is ROCK we’re talking about here, man. It just needs to been heard and seen in concert. Live shows are what rock and roll is all about. And in order to keep the great music of the past alive, the rock world is going to have to fully come to grips with a cold hard truth. The truth: cover bands -tribute bands- are not only here to stay, they have actually reached the point where they need to be taken seriously. Yes, cover bands. Deal with it. It’s time to let the bastard children of the rock world into the party with the rest of us… Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, the best, and only, way you’re going to hear The Beatles in concert: The Fab Faux.

The Fab Faux are, without a doubt, the most well realized and musically satisfying Beatles tribute band that’s ever been. Anchored by two celebrity musicians, Will Lee (from “The Late Show with David Letterman”) and Jimmy Vivino (from “Late Night with Conan O’Brien”), as well as a trio of industry veterans (Rich Pagano, Frank Agnello, and Jack Petruzzelli), The Fab Faux specialize in doing what The Beatles themselves never did. This is the band to see if you want to know what it might have been like if The Beatles toured behind their later albums. Imagine hearing undeniably complex material like “Strawberry Fields Forever”, “Within You Without You”, and “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite”, performed in complete part-perfect renditions; or such harmony-driven songs as “Because”, “Nowhere Man”, and “Paperback Writer”, reproduced not only note-for-note, but with extra vocalists available to achieve a double-tracked effect. If it’s on the record, these guys put it on the stage. Other than lacking the actual tonal quality of the voices of the individual Beatles, The Fab Faux -dare I say it- perform the late-career music of the Fab Four better than The Beatles might’ve been able to do in concert. What?!

This past Saturday night, The Fab Faux took to the stage at Radio City Music Hall for a tenth anniversary concert celebrating the psychedelic period of The Beatles. Man, they were blowin’ like a hurricane…

The band ripped into “Magical Mystery Tour” to kick things off, laying down the law from the very first song. Every horn stab, vocal part, airplane sound effect, rambling drum fill, gliding bass run, fading piano solo - each part was impeccably in place and recreated on stage. Close your eyes and you’re suddenly within a classic Beatles record - seated in the audience in some imaginary land where The Beatles performed concerts for their entire career. You’re there, in person, with the band. It’s the most unlikely of things, but The Fab Faux have captured an undeniably large percentage of the magic of The Beatles and placed it up on the stage for modern audiences to witness and enjoy. They get it: in playing the music of The Beatles, one flies dangerously close to the sun. The songs need to be performed perfectly. Every member of the audience knows every little nuance of each and every song, listening to the records over and over is all anyone ever had to cling to when it came to The Beatles. If you don’t huff and puff “just so” at the end of “Lovely Rita”, the audience will notice and disapprove. The experience could be lessened by even the slightest misstep. The music must be performed with the perfect combination of love, respect, joy, and skill. The guys in the Fab Faux are well aware of this and make sure to nail each song, every time. And each song -every time- the band sends chills up the spine as they bring The Beatles to life.

Moving from the rock-forward songs of Revolver into the circus-nut territory of “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite”, the band expands and contracts as needed to fill out the parts of each song to perfection. “Mr. Kite” included a variation of harmonica/mouth organ I’d never seen before; it sounded perfect. During one of the true highlights of the evening, “Strawberry Fields Forever”, a cellist, violinist, and horn section joined the core band to animate the vision of John Lennon and arrangements of George Martin. Pause for a moment and consider the original version of “Strawberry Fields” and the difficulty that’s inherent in attempting to perform the song in concert. It’s a staggering proposition, and these guys nailed it. After playing the flute parts in the beginning of the song, Jerry Vivino and the Hogshead Horns deftly switched to brass and back again as the song required. In fact, much of what The Fab Faux does is made possible by the remarkable multi-instrumental skill of each member of the band. That coupled with a speedy group of roadies and instrument technicians that would make pit crews at the Indy 500 proud. Watching them dash on and off stage with guitar after guitar after sitar after Fender Bass VI (after who knows what) is an entertaining experience in its own right. The band is aware of this fact as well, discussing their instruments between songs Will Lee queried “are there any gear heads in the house?” The audience responded with applause and the band brought out even more Beatles-specific instruments in order to achieve ‘the sound’. And then, as a prelude to the organ-heavy “Only a Northern Song”, The Fab Faux unleashed an instrument unlike any other on the planet…

After a harmonically blazing “Paperback Writer”, the wall (stage-right) opened up to reveal the Radio City Music Hall house organ (above). It lurched forward, driven by mechanics of another era, as Jack Petruzzelli played an extended organ solo that became the intro to “Only a Northern Song”. In the many times I’ve been to Radio City for concerts, including seeing The Rolling Stones in 2006, I’ve never seen anyone make use of that Wurlitzer. It added an even greater sense of occasion to the evening and was a moment befitting of the concert that was taking place. Here were the songs of the greatest band that ever was being performed by some of the greatest musicians on the planet in one of the world’s truly great venues: past, present, and future were all bound together as one.

Time seemingly stopped for the two and a half hours that The Fab Faux was on stage. From the psychedelic break-beat romp of “Tomorrow Never Knows”, through a horn-heavy “Got To Get You into My Life” (and intermission), to a staggering rendition of “Within You Without You” and the rousing “All You Need Is Love” - it was all too much. Too much (hey), too much… In the moment it might never have ended, and yet everything happened so fast it was nearly over before you knew it.

The second set was bookended by the two medleys of songs that begin and end Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and the audience’s anticipation leading up to the climax of “A Day in the Life” was palpable. After all, these never-before-performed-live Beatles songs, these are our songs. We’ve listened over and over again to the records in our bedrooms, in our cars, on our iPods, and in our minds. Thankfully, so have the members of The Fab Faux. Their love of the music of John, Paul, George, and Ringo shines as brightly as the Sun King and once again brings to life some of the most important music ever made.

Since moving to New York in 2001, I’ve been fortunate to see The Fab Faux a number of times. I’ve seen them play Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the White Album, and Revolver in their entirety. I’ve heard everything from “Please Please Me” to “Get Back”, each time wowed by the performances. The experience of seeing the band live has been, for the past ten years, as quintessentially “New York” for me as a visit to Coney Island or Yankee Stadium. They’re doing what nobody else has ever done (including The Beatles), they’re doing it mostly in New York City, and they’re doing it to perfection. To get a partial understanding of what a Fab Faux concert is all about, check out the sixteen recordings from the concert at Radio City that are posted below. Of course, to really understand, you’re going to have to see these guys live for yourself. Because that is, after all, what rock and roll is all about.

The Beatles, and the era which spawned them, are indeed gone and not much more than memories in the minds of a single generation. Yet the music they made lives on forever. In concert, in New York City and beyond, it’s alive and well thanks to five musicians who carry the torch with pride. Long live The Fab Faux.

Setlist: The Fab Faux @ Radio City Music Hall - 20 September 2008
“Magical Mystery Tour”
“She Said She Said”
“Lovely Rita” (MP3)
“Good Day Sunshine” (MP3)
“Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite”
“Strawberry Fields Forever” (MP3)
“The Inner Light”
“Baby, You’re a Rich Man” (MP3)
“I’m Only Sleeping” (MP3)
“Paperback Writer” (MP3)
–Pipe Organ Interlude–
“Only a Northern Song”
“Fool on the Hill”
“Yellow Submarine” (MP3)
“Tomorrow Never Knows”
“Penny Lane”
“Got To Get You into My Life” (MP3)
–Intermission–
“Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” -> “With a Little Help from My Friends” (MP3)
“Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” (MP3)
“Rain”
“Doctor Robert”
“It’s All Too Much”
“Fixing a Hole”
“Glass Onion” (MP3)
“Within You Without You” (MP3)
“Across the Universe”
“Flying”
“Blue Jay Way”
“I Am the Walrus”
“All You Need Is Love”
“Good Morning Good Morning” (MP3)
“Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)” (MP3)
“A Day in the Life” (MP3)
–Encore–
“Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey”
“Day Tripper”
–Encore Two–
“Hey Jude” (MP3)

See The Fab Faux Live:
27 Sep - Ft. Lauderdale, FL @ Ft. Lauderdale-Parker Playhouse
4 Oct - Boston, MA @ Berklee Performance Center
25 Oct - Glenside, PA @ The Keswick Theatre
26 Oct - Glenside, PA @ The Keswick Theatre
1 Nov - New Brunswick, NJ @ The State Theatre

Visit The Fab Faux on MySpace.
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See the list of bands recently featured as EAR FARM’s Band of the Week HERE.