Since he was playing to a half-full audience during a sleepy holiday weekend in Philadelphia, at the tiny Tin Angel, one could feel sorry for MARK EITZEL. Eitzel, however, seemed fully cognizant of that fact, and of his general predicament (critical adulation and a rabid but small cult following). So he spared a critic or other audience member by using self-effacing humor to turn the joke on himself.
For instance, he mentioned that he performed at a BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN tribute concert the night before in New York City, and that at some point he found out that the Boss is a fan of his band AMERICAN MUSIC CLUB. Eitzel then jokingly said that American Music Club should have opened for Springsteen at some point.
Another bizarre, but funny, thing that he did was introduce each of the first six or seven songs by saying that they were from a series of books by a fictional Zen master named Suzuki. And of course he gave each a funny title. One song was introduced by Eitzel as being from his “bitter years.”
While his sense of humor is always part of the performance, and part of his showmanship, an Eitzel solo performance is most compelling because of the many excellent songs he’s written over the years. He has quite a well from which to draw. On this night he focused on 2004’s excellent American Music Club comeback album Love Songs for Patriots , playing songs off of it such as the excellent “Patriot’s Heart.” He deftly combined those with oldies like “Last Harbor” and “San Francisco” in this short (slightly over an hour), quiet, but in the end quite pleasurable show.
