0 w a a is = . W-W w mw mr w 4B Thursday, October 20, 2011 // The d THE VAULT 'IT'S A SUNSHINE DAY: THE BEST OF THE BRADY BUNCH' (1993), MCA When TV and music mix, the songs shine on # TR ENDS COLUMN The ways we question reality Thursday, October 2C, 2011 / The B-Side 5 CLUB SAND WICH Layers of glitz in Cavern complex By LEAH BURGIN Senior Arts Editor Everyone went bananas when "Glee" hit the small screen two years ago, hooking the shower singers, the high school drama queens and critics alike. And if the show itself wasn't enough to blow your socks off, the music sure did: Each of the "Glee" albums (except the soundtrack from "Glee: The 3D Concert Movie") hit within the top five on Billboard. It seemed as if "Glee" had finally created the ultimate combination of music and TV. But no matter how special "Glee" might seem, the concept of mixing music performance and TV was popular before everyone on the show (except Jane Lynch) was conceived. And if it had been con- ceptualized back in the late 1960s Bet Mercedes wouldn't screw up "American Pie." and ear been a Bi tac wi Whil music h of mop- toms w 1968) a: (1970-1 never in "Daydr the nex to anot: of free I forgott ger) co side of7 How cheesy, forgett] episode ing whi become son 5? P rehears him out coldly l ly 1970s, "Glee" would have in a quest for fame, Greg learns a sing-a-long dime-a-dozen. valuable lesson about the impor- tance of family and rewrites the audition piece to incorporate rady Bunch Peter's puberty. The resulting song, "Time to kled puberty Change," stands out on 1993's often-forgotten compilation It's ith panache. a Sunshine Day: The Best of the Brady Bunch as one of the syndi- cated siblings' best tunes. And it's this album, more so than re-runs le most notable of the TV- of "The Brady Bunch," that sticks tybrid shows from the time with me. The days of watching the -top haircuts and bell bot- Bunch (and "Get Smart," "Green ere "The Monkees" (1966- Acres" and "The Andy Griffith nd "The Partridge Family" Show" - I was a nerd) on Nick 974), these shows were at Nite with my family are over. mportant to me. Sure, I like But, walking to class, I just might eam Believer" as much as tune my iPod to a classic Brady t person, but I was drawn Bunch '60s groove such as "We her TV show from the era Can Make the World a Whole Lot ove and fringe that is often Brighter" or "Gonna Find a Rain- en for its (admittedly mea- bow." My sister and I fell in love ntributions to the music with Barry Williams's (Greg) ver- TV: "The Brady Bunch." sion of "Sweet Sweetheart," and could fans of the beyond- when he came to Cincinnati as larger-than-life family Captain Von Trapp in "The Sound he few performance-based of Music," we waited backstage s like "Dough Re Mi," dur- for his autograph with the mid- ch the bunch auditions to dle-aged women still hot for him a family act a la The Jack- after all those years. 'eter's voice cracks during The Bunch kids were not al and Greg wants to kick nearly as talented as the cast of of the group. Instead of "Glee." Not one of them could eaving his brother behind belt like Mercedes or command the stage like Rachel. In fact, a lot of the songs off It's a Sunshine Day are just plain awful. There is an annoyingly sweet (and out of place) rendition of "Frosty the Snowman" and a shortened, ter- ribly off-tune and completely lackluster take on Don McClean's immortal "American Pie." These songs are so bad that they some- how end up being good. More than that, though, they represent nostalgia for me in a different sense than the nostal- gia "Glee" evokes: I remember my grade-school self jumping up and down on my bed singing the Bunch's "Cheyenne" into a hair- brush; I remember geeking out over "Glee" with my roommate my freshman year in our prison cell-sized dorm room. Similar to my disinterest in watching "The Brady Bunch," "Glee" as a TV series has lost all appeal to me, but I'll still listen to the "Glee" station on Pandora when I need some fun music to study to. This is the fate of music/ TV hybrids - "The Monkees," "The Brady Bunch," "Glee," even "Flight of the Conchords." These shows entertain for awhile, but which do you do more often: watch the shows, or listen to the tunes? The beat goes on. t's highly rare that 24 hours SinAnn Arbor will roll by without a person coming in contact with "Is this real life?" If not that phrase exactly, slight adapta- tions of it are expressed - but always familial ones, like a jaguar to a lion: unreal, not real, real life. A lot of JULIA times, I may SMITH- not even be EPPSTEIER receiving the information through my ears, but through the visual world of social media - par- ticularly in the form of hashtags on Twitter. Why do we do this? I'm fairly positive it isn't our generation harkening back to "Bohemian Rhapsody." We are not Queen dis- cussing remorse, but it's unclear what we are doing. Unlike the trend of "Keep Calm and (fill-in- the-blank-here)," which originates from the World War II morale- boosting posters producedby the British government, the trend of #isthisreal has no home. But no home doesn't mean no parent. I think there is a very distanced parent of this trend - a young boy named David who got high on Novocain, his terrify- ing but hilarious reaction to the drug made public when his father scored footage of it and uploaded it to YouTube. "David After Dentist" went viral in 2009, featuring the boy asking his dad the questions, "Why is this happening to me? Is this going to be forever?" and most importantly,-"Is this real life?" More than 100 million people watched David's wise question, leading me to believe that this is not an orphaned trend, but rather one that started with the child's sincere moment and has since been unleashed on Generation Y. #Isthisreal appears to have reached its current state as its own sensation, running wild on social media. The phrase is first and foremost used to question and comment on the minor absurdities in our lives. Many times when Iread or hear the variations of this "real life?," it is referencing an excruciatingly long day, an excessively difficult exam or anything overwhelming going on in a person's life. It's not- ing something negative, perhaps a certain level of stress or exhaus- tion because of the specific situ- ation, and maybe expressing it to the public makes one feel better about his or her life, which is so busy that it can't be real. It's comedic, though, because when asking, "Is this real?," there is a great possibility thatthe person inquiring thinks that the subject in question is not real or normal-seeming, but rather ridicu- lous and #unreal. Yes, this is real life. Since you're wondering. When the phrases aren't in ref- erence to an impressive amount of work, they are likely referencing an impressive amount of party- ing. Whether it's that fifth tequila shot or the trippy light show at the Deadmau5 concert, it's typically something enough to deem the evening far from reality. But things seem to be "not real" so often for late teens and early 20-somethings in present day that the phrase might be losing meaning before owning anything definitive to begin with. Anytime I hear the hypotheti- cal question fall out my mouth or anyone else's, I want to say, "Yes, of course it's real. We are alive and tangible." But the idea is valid in a big way. Life can get fairly crazy and be worthy of takinga step back and asking about its nature: How are you, yourself, interacting with the crazy world? Little kids ask the essential question numerous times a day in their own simplified ways. They wonder about almost everything they see, hear, touch, smell and experience. Something that is full See SMITH-EPPSTEINER, Page 8B Four clubs stacked up with cages, live tunes and popcorn By JULIA SMITH-EPPSTEINER Daily Arts Writer A place where Greek Life comes to grind, hipsters come to sway and older folks come to not feel like grandparents does exist - it's called Cavern Club Entertainment Complex and it's a bit out of the way from the normal nightlife spots. Ann Arbor is a town geared toward the crazy disposition of college students, and places like Rick's American Cafe and Scorekeep- ers Sports Grill & Pub are the obvious answers to the nightlife dilemma. But there happens to be an underexposed alternative a block past Main Street. The club may have a mere 20-per- cent college student demograph- ic, but Jason Segel and Emily Blunt jammed to the DJ's beats there during the filming of "The Five-Year Engagement" this past summer. Nick Easton, the owner of the complex, manages the four eclectic bars within the building: listed from bottom on up, Cavern Club, Millennium Club, Gotham City and Circus Bar & Billiards. Easton's life trajectory has changed wildly - he began his career as an elementary school teacher and is now the success- ful manager of a quartet of con- nected clubs. "I wanted to be my own boss," Easton said. "I had that entre- preneurial spirit and I'm inter- ested in histories, so I started an antique store here back in '94. I bought this building and it just kind of evolved over time." The place that currently houses the complex's Cavern Club used to contain antique items, but Easton took it upon himself to convert the space into a banquet hall. After this was well received, he took it a step. further by getting a liquor license and remodeling. More than a decade later, it seems the transformation was a wise one. Now the Cavern Club, which is rented out for private soirees like sorority-fraternity date par- ties and events for the dental school and the business school, resembles nothing I've seen before. As I walked into the under- ground club, I was confronted by a deer head hanging from the wall, twinkle lights in garland outlining the bar and over-sex- ualized modern grinding juxta- posed up against a large painting that echoes Michelangelo's The Creation. That made the place feel like a Christmas cabin gone wrong. All of that said, the cherry on top was that the DJ seemed to have a man crush on Usher. Frankly, the club is the perfect place to givea handful of disposable cameras an authentic night out on the town. Venturing upstairs, I found myself amid the neon lights of the Millennium Club walking by cages, a glittery fish tank and empty poles seen in the front window. These used to be alive with hired dancers back when the club launched in 2000. This particular venue is open on Sat- urdays, when a live band plays. See CAVERN, Page 7B