Daily Iowan

Issue date: 2/20/07 Section: Arts

Media Credit: Publicity photo

"Ya know how some bands do co-headlining tours? We're doing a co-supporting tour," Darren Keen laughed over the phone, as he instructed his driver to pull over to the side of the road. Keen, the frontman, and sometimes (including on this tour) the only man in the Lincoln, Neb., band The Show is The Rainbow, accidentally ended up with the road map in his van. This was only problematic because he was supposed to be following his co-supporters, Yip Yip.

The famously costumed Floridians are not only one of Keen's favorite bands, but Yip Yip's particular brand of antics should prove the perfect foil for the madcap high jinks of Keen, especially when the two acts take over the Picador, 330 E. Washington St., at 6 p.m . today.

"I channel a lot of my emotions," Keen said about his over-the-top performance style. One facet of his bizarre tendencies is his shunning of the stage. "That's for bands," he said flatly. He usually puts himself in the middle of the audience with a projector and screen set up somewhere in the vicinity - often showing vulgar flash animation.

He sits somewhere among rap, performance art, slacker rock, and standup, an act that often garners comparisons with the pot-bellied, balding, and often shirtless Har Mar Superstar. However, Keen admits that his Midwestern upbringing left him a little out of touch.

"I'm from Nebraska, ya know, but until I started touring, I hadn't heard of Har Mar Superstar," he said.

After talking, often times very crudely, about female genitalia - after which he added, "You can put anything you want in the paper, my parents know I'm an asshole" - and propositioning me with aspirin, cheeseburgers, and free CDs to put together a press package for him, he finally got around to discussing his upcoming album, Gymnasia.

Of course when a band is as famous for onstage - or offstage, in this case - buffoonery, how can an album possibly live up the visceral attack of the live show?

"It translates to record well," Keen replied, after checking with his driver to be sure. In fact, he thinks the record is the preferred way to experience The Show is The Rainbow. When you listen to the CD, "you don't get distracted by the big, fat guy trying to hump your girlfriend." He showered further praise on Gymnasia: "I listen to my band all the time. I'm my favorite band."

Brian "Brain" Esser is far more modest about his group, Yip Yip, and he never once made a reference to genitalia - female, male, or otherwise. In fact, the discussion of the bands' costumes was in order. The perpetually costumed Yip Yip actually had very good reason. "When we first started the band, we didn't play instruments live, so we were nervous."

At the onset, Yip Yip - still a duo consisting of Esser and Jason Temple - was just two guys manipulating synthesizers and samples. Now, after six years, the two have moved to almost strictly synths, opting for as few transformed samples as possible. "If there is a sample from a song, there would be absolutely no way of telling where it came from," Esser said about the intense manipulation even a single horn stab would endure to make it onto a record.

Now that Esser and Temple have settled into their roles, nerves no longer play a role in their hidden identities. Esser sees it more as a way to "inject some fun randomness into music" that has become more concerned with "serious art."

E-mail DI reporter John C. Schlotfelt at:
john-schlotfelt@uiowa.edu

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