Death of a band

In a sense, there was a funeral march at Uncle Fester's three weekends ago. Ab Fab, a band that formed only three months earlier, played their final gig at 11:00 p.m. on a stormy Saturday. Seemingly, in the tradition of New Orleans' jazz funerals, Ab Fab went out with the requisite bang. The impending end wasn't apparent in the members' faces; they just enjoyed the ride and the crowd, until the music stopped.\nAb Fab's ephemeral life cycle mirrors that of many bands in the Bloomington area. In fact, the whole of the town is a combination of changes and community stalwarts. Nick's English Hut has been here for over 70 years, but the clientele changes with the student body. Some get older or get new fake IDs and go to the bars, some graduate and new faces move in. The music scene is not immune to this cycle of renewal. Bands and orchestras in the School of Music get new members every year -- seniors graduate, and underclassmen take their place. The independent bands like Laborius Clef and Three Minute Mile all change too. Laborius Clef split up before school ended this year -- two are headed to New York and one to Los Angeles. Three Minute Mile left town for Chicago, they come back every now and then to play. Alma Azul, a latin/jazz band, played its last performance this year as well. As they leave, new bands and new sounds will take their places on the posters and in the bars.\nIn a previous IDS Weekend article, Laborious Clef drummer Rory Sandhage said he had done some soul-searching before leaving the band.\n"Each and every one of us has a path to follow, if we are honest enough with ourselves to see it," he said.\nSearching for that soul is part of what drives music, and part of what drives people away. Sometimes, peoples' souls tell them to go on their own roads.\nIn Ab Fab's three-month life span, the band's sound could be best described as an amalgam. The five members all hailed from different lifestyles and musical backgrounds, thus agreeing on one sound was not an option. So they played them all. Everything from Latin music to light metal to Radiohead was in their repertoire. Maria Eisen, the lead singer/saxophonist, was a music student of Brazilian origin. She may also have been the biggest draw for the band -- she couldn't help but bring in the drooling males. Austin Bale, guitarist/synthesizer/vocals, was another music student, but on stage he appeared to be channeling Andrew W.K. with his thick black hair falling around his face. Connor O'Sullivan and Mike Levee were the non-music school kids, and it showed -- O'Sullivan's wild bass had a heavy punk influence, and Levee wielded his lead guitar with B.B. King in his left hand and Robert Crawford in his right, almost as if every note he played was an homage to them. Drummer Erik Rassmussen was easily the most versatile of the bunch, switching from a punk to a techno beat at the snap of a guitar string. At the end of the night, he would be one of the few Ab Fab members remaining in Bloomington -- the other three guys graduated that day, and Eisen signed her transfer papers at the end of the semester. And just for the sake of variety, the band added a guest trumpet player, Jackie Coleman, to the sound the night before the concert. \nLike many other bands, Ab Fab got both its start and its name out of coincidence.\nO'Sullivan and Levee decided they wanted to jam, and by connections got hooked up with the other three. They played, liked what they did and "got educated," O'Sullivan says. "It's music for the sake of the groove."\nAs for the name, O'Sullivan named the band after his favorite TV show, the British Comedy "Absolutely Fabulous."\nSince then, the band members agreed that they hate their name.\nJust three weeks after the band members came together, Ab Fab got their first gig, opening up for another band, fittingly, at Fester's.\nRassmussen says the band put a set together only because it had been awarded a performance.\n"It's funny how quickly a band gets gigs around here," he says.\nThe Bloomington populace's hunger for live music is a direct product of the college town environment. Over 30,000 students live here, and thousands more make up the community network that feeds off the intellectual and artistic freedom that higher education brings. In a college town, if you play it, they will come. On most nights, any bar that has the space is featuring live music. On weekends, people come out in droves to shows at bars, clubs and house basements. No place, not even the local coffee shop, is immune to the virtues of live music. When a band is good, it brings in customers for whatever drinks a place serves. Thus hiring of new bands continues on a trial and error basis. If you play it, they will come. If it's good, they will come back. \nWhen one first walks into Uncle Fester's on Kirkwood, the door is like the door to a friend's basement. A few steps later, one enters the pit-like stage area. A wooden hole of sound, the band plays in the lower level while patrons stand around the edge of the upper balcony over the stage. The dance floor, being on the stage level, is at optimum ear-blasting height with the main speakers.\nFor their last performance ever, Ab Fab was finally the headline act, but even that doesn't guarantee success in this town. At Uncle Fester's, bands still have to compete not only with other bands for performance slots, but with the giant projection TV directly above the stage. ESPN can put a fork in a boring band's performance, but Ab Fab caught the audience's attention. Even the tall, statuesque snooty girl (there's one in every bar) couldn't keep the uninterested look on her face. Her impatient foot tapping soon began to go along with Ab Fab's beat.\nIf music is a journey, then Ab Fab played the part of the cab driver. For the ride, O'Sullivan's bass and Rassmussen's snare and hi-hat steered the car, Bale's organ sung from the backseat and Eisen's razor-sharp, yet sex-hungry vocals screamed out the sunroof at the awaiting roadside dancers. Ab Fab, in its three months, grew a soul, and that night shared it with Uncle Fester and his partygoers.\nThat soul, that spirit of music lives on in the numerous incarnations of bands and the players in them. Levee, O'Sullivan and Coleman are still in Bloomington for the summer, and they have formed another band with more of their friends.\n"We're playing all (Frank) Zappa tunes," Levee says.\nBloomington is a town of change. Bands form and break up, and people leave. Though the bands themselves might be ephemeral, the music lives on.\nLevee summed up the experience perfectly that night at Uncle Fester's, "I just play for the love of the tune"