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Karen O. stands at the front of the stage, paper bag in hand, as the opening pulse of "Miles Away" beats away in the background. She is pushing some sort of small, round food item into her mouth, one at a time, smiling flirtatiously with the audience all the while. They push up to the stage, furiously moving with the stripped down drumbeat, reaching out, perhaps expecting what is to come, perhaps not, but they seem not at all upset when punk rock's most charismatic diva leans back and begins to spit whatever it is -- jelly beans, peanuts, styrofoam pellets -- out into the crowd. No, that's too weak, the people in the audience are grabbing for her spit-moistened, half-chewed snack, and holding the pieces up like trophies.
Watching all this on DVD puts you at something of a remove -- there's no way you can truly understand this sort of performance without being there. But on the other hand, you're unlikely to be pelted with wet jelly beans in the comfort of your home. So, among other things Tell Me What Rockers To Swallow allows people to view one of the most incendiary female performers working today in action -- without any risk of personally catching on fire. Whether that's a good thing or not depends entirely on your point of view.
Tell Me What Rockers to Swallow captures the Yeah Yeah Yeahs in the spring of 2004, in the midst of a giant wave of backlash. They're playing the Fillmore in San Francisco to a packed crowd that, we later learn in an accompanying documentary ("They Don't Love You Like I Love You"), includes lots of people from small towns who have driven long hours to be there. It's a triumphant moment -- revenge of the kids, really -- because no one here seems to care what the NME or any other publication thinks about the band they love.
The show itself -- leaning heavily on Fever to Tell but also hitting the highlights ("Mystery Girl", "Miles Away", "Our Time" and "Art Star") from the self-titled EP -- looks to be a good one, showcasing the peculiar chemistry of this NY-based trio. Karen O., dressed in a flounce skirted metallic minidress, tattered tights (at one point, she tries to affix the microphone in a giant hole just above her knee) and high-tops, is typically hyperkinetic, visibly sucking the love out of the giant crowd and using it to fuel her edgy, way-out-there performance. Nick Zinner stands in the background, ironic and detached, only his hands moving most of the time, yet occasionally bursting into a studied whirl or bob. He is, as one fan puts it, "too cool for the audience." And Brian Chase, the drummer, just seems to be a regular guy, enjoying himself immensely as he pumps out that staccato groove. You see him in the candid, dressing-room shots with Karen O. and he is always playing the drums on his shoe, thumping away as she preens and cavorts and shocks.
The concert peaks late, with a four-song run through "Mystery Girl", the revelatory "Maps" (people for at least six rows back seem know every word), "Date with the Night" and the tense and sexually charged "Miles Away". After a break, Karen O. returns in a mylar bunny suit that stretches and bulges over her previous poufed-skirt costume, and the band plays a really gorgeous version of the ballad "Poor Song", followed by encore-worthy performances of "Our Time", "Art Star" (the screaming parts of this song really don't make sense until you watch Karen O. do them on stage) and "Modern Romance". To round things out, there are six bonus songs -- "10X10", "Rich", "Black Tongue", "Sealings", another version of "Miles Away" and "Tick".
The bonus features are mostly disposable. There's a short, frantic view of the band's recent tour through Japan, where we see civilized-looking but rabid Japanese fans fighting over a guitar Zinner has thrown, Townshend-style, into the crowd in pieces, and hear Karen O. describing the damage from a particularly brutal fall (chipped tooth, bruised leg, sore elbow). A Lance Bangs/Spike Jonze short film interviews fans about what they love about the band (Karen O. mostly) and the extent of their fanhood (extreme, in several cases, and involving four to five hour drives from rural towns). As the documentary closes, the camera captures the same fans at the concert, blissed out and bouncing in time to the music. It's a nice tribute to O., Zinner and Chase, but probably not worth watching more than once.
And then there are the videos, four of them, plus a live performance of "Maps" at the MTV Movie Awards. The first two are fairly straightforward performance videos, a staged run-through of "Maps" and a live, jump-cut filming of "Date with the Night". They're both fine and capture the vulnerability and energy of this very good live band. The third video, for "Y Control", is probably where the DVD earned its "Parental Advisory" sticker, and I found it deeply disturbing. In addition to the band, the video features a dozen or so children, probably ranging from about seven to ten in age, and acting out content that most kids shouldn't have to think about, much less perform on camera. A particularly luminous girl gives the camera the finger. There's a scene where one blonde female child cuts off another blonde boy's hand, at his request, and another where a girl slices open and pulls out the intestines of a boy. There's foul language and general misbehavior. I understand the concept. The song is about being out of control, and so is the video. Yet the images -- a young girl dragging an ax, a pack of children playing with a dog's corpse -- are so repellent that it feels like child abuse just watching the thing. A fourth and final video, Tunde Adebimpe's puppet-animation of "Pin", works better, with its butterfly-pinned-to-a-board metaphor for musical fame.
Tell Me What Rockers To Swallow is a pretty effective document of a great live band on a good night -- though it's not, by any means, as good as actually going. Still, at least no one will spit anything on you while you're watching it.
-- Jennifer Kelly
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