FEBRUARY 2008 ONLINE EDITORIALS

TVS and two fingers - Big Treasure

album cover

By Nate Harper

At its core, the music and words of TVS and Two Fingers is a fight against apathy. For every person who’s willing to self medicate and spend the evening watching cable television only to wake up to his job again the next morning, TVS and Two Fingers are there to try and cajole him into taking interest in his world by expounding on the extraordinary things that surround us every minute we’re alive. Yes, on some level these men remind you of old hippies from “The Simpsons” that Homer once moved in with to find out about his past, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing - after all, squares still need a good freaking out once in a while, and TVS and Two Fingers have happily volunteered for the job.

The three-guy collective makes “performance poetry and sound art,” and they have just released a compilation album, “Big Treasure,” to mark their first 10 years together. There’s a term for poetry that doesn’t rhyme, and TVS and Two Fingers are blank verse poets if ever there were – each track on the album, none over five minutes long, is a collection of ideas presented over a sparse rhythmic backing of percussion and occasionally guitars and woodwinds. Not all the tracks are serious, some just languidly enjoy the meanings of words juxtaposed with how they sound, while others delve deeper into life and death and time, all of it evoking the kind of perspective that men likely reared on Hawkwind and early King Crimson should have.

But if you’re not already a fan of performance poetry and sound art, is this the record that will open your eyes to the genre? Hmmm… Have you ever bought a movie that you liked in the theater, usually an epic, only to discover while watching it on your TV at home that the cinematography projected at movie-screen size was a large part of why you enjoyed it? Well, this album is a little like that. Live, doubtless, would seem the best way to enjoy TVS and Two Fingers, where the reverb of the ratchets, slide whistles, Kalimbas and balloons would be that much more personal, the vocal inflections and facial expressions more easily caught.

If you don’t have the time to experience them in person, though, “Big Treasure” could work nicely as a home companion the next time you feel like all you’re getting is a summarized version of life. You can check out the band, and get their hit Sonny Lubick’s Last Game, at www.TVSandtwofingers.com.