Vincent Gargiulo doesn’t tolerate dead air, especially those moments at concerts between songs when, as he puts it, “The band looks at each other and are like, ‘Uh, what’s next?’”
Gargiulo is driven to fill those minutes to their full capacity for audible and visible entertainment.
His onstage antics include costumes, running off into the audience, moshing and awkwardly grinding. For his upcoming show with his band Vincent Gargiulo National Park at East Village, he cryptically promises to incorporate juggling and “a giant raisin.”
Visuals are almost as important to Gargiulo as song-craft – even though his songs can stand alone. Absurdist, surreal lyrics are set to tight art-pop arrangements delivered by his band’s skilled musicians, who include former Forrest Day members Jasper Skydecker on drums and Jeremy Greene on sax and keyboards.
Gargiulo, who studied filmmaking at San Francisco State, always intended to enhance tracks from VGNP’s debut album with his own music videos.
Take the track “’80s Theme Song.” The video depicts an opening credits theme song to a sitcom not unlike Full House. Gargiulo wears a knit Cosby sweater and awkwardly smiles at the camera. Then, the rest of the cast of cheesy, stereotypical characters are introduced. They include child actors with forced, mischievous grins. Greene’s sax solo reflects an additional cliché of the time.
The song and video go beyond being just farcically amusing. They capture a kitschy nostalgia that millennials crave in a bleak time: “I could feel it in my hands/ it was there for me to grab/ sometimes you get a second chance/ but you botch it up again/ when everything goes wrong/ my ’80s theme song comes on.”
Terrell Liedstein, formerly of Forrest Day, opens with a solo set. Also appearing are local garage rockers El Camino Sutra.
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