Garz: A Critical Review. Madison, WI 2/28-3/1, 2008

Garz performs every night up in Wisconsin. After a year and a half I decided to make the drive to go see Garz at the end of a blistery winter. The actual admission was free and I was able to sleep on Garz's floor in his two bedroom apartment, the blaring techno music ("Pump up the Jam") of his neighbors downstairs bothering me not in the least bit. Garz's apartment venue is pretty sweet and I dig the wood floors and overall coziness, and the thrift store photos of random people from the 1970's adorning the walls.

Garz started off with a bang by pulling out the Adventures of Pete n' Pete DVD's right on the first night. They were killer episodes, one of them where little Pete discovers his favorite song by Polaris (this info coming from Garz), and the song is still stuck in my head to this day ("I was around! Nobody knows, Nobody knows!") Then Garz followed up with some Mega Man classic video games. It was an awesome opening night.

The next day I was able to watch some terrible television with Garz, but even Garz has the ability to transform the awful into something grand. "What Not to Wear" and "The Dog Whisperer" were two standout highlights. Garz doesn't fear the cold nor the rowdy University of Wisconsin students, and he took me to some record stores near campus. He talked me into buying like 8 or 9 CD's, too. We went to the in-store performance of the Black Lips at Mad City Music Exchange. I dug "Boomerang" the most, and the songs sounded good stripped down. This also provided the only chance for me to actually "see" the band, as at the University venue the stage was low and it was so crowded I couldn't look at the band too much. Anyhow, on the way to the main show Garz demonstrates he can draw a real crowd, as we met up with 5-6 of his Madisonite friends. The show was great although Garz was disappointed with the sound. It included a Miss Pussycat puppet show beforehand, which was entirely incoherent and absurd. The crowd was somewhat obnoxious and a campus security lady's attempt at calming people down was worthless.

Garz really knows how to push the limits of what can be done in Madison. We ventured out to Middleton for some legendary chicken tenders, and then took in a Jack Black movie at the theatre. My Garz experience wound down with a few Saved by the Bell episodes and then some confetti cake baked by his next door neighbor, and hanging out with them across the hallway.

I would recommend Garz to pretty much anyone. His only real performance faults are occasional complete lapses in attention, like when he claimed not to have noticed the big fat guy who took his shirt off and was dancing behind the Black Lips for most of the show, or when he didn't realize there was in fact a merchandise booth at the gig, or when he let the wind blow his bag of records out of his hand and into a huge puddle. At any rate, Garz is an improvisational artist so you may not get the same experience if you head up to Mad-town today as you would yesterday, but it's a cool deal whether you end up hitting the streets of the big city with Garz or if you stay in watching Caddyshack and snarfing a whole pack of mint creme Oreo's.