Jalopy, Nigh the Battery Tunnel

Last night I got to Jalopy for the first time to enjoy the Bargainland/Highland Shatners lineup. The two acts led us on an ironic sojourn full of pathos which wound from the Scottish Highlands to Coney Island and back past scenes of cannibalism, venereal disease, copious bananas, foggy foggy dew, a lucky man a dyin' on the battlefield, a sultry Coney washboard player, a Salty Dog and places where Jethro Tull once stood, and many other bardic tidbits that I have sadly forgotten. Below, Bargainland, all staged up (left to right, Spike McClure, Potter Palmer, Cindy Brolsma and Karen Brown) and The Highland Shatners, whose motto is "Highland Lowbrow" (forgive me, I can only identify Henry Tenney in the center, so lame am I).

















At Jalopy (nigh the tunnel), rows of odd instruments attached to a 2 by 4 line either side of the theater, where people seated in pews watch performers on the high stage draped with cozily dingy red velvet curtains. The instruments bring to mind the work of cubists and surrealists because of their angularity and oddity, the guitars made of boxes in different shapes, others made from found objects including a turtle shell and, I believe, a toilet seat, there's also a triangular guitar with a hubcap resonator. The bathroom sink is made of wood, there's a fishbowl on the toilet tank with no fish in it, and where you expect a mirror you only see a skim of pressed copper, so that all us ladies look like fiery heart-breakin' Scottish lasses.