CAFE NOIR: VIVE LA DIFFERENCE (CONCERT REVIEW)

Cafe Noir is a band that is lovable and extraordinary for its differences.

This is a band that plays a lovely song about a beloved uncle's loss of memory due to Alzheimer's disease. A band that plays a lilting Viennese waltz that's in fact an embittered breakup song.

The five talented musicians -- violin, viola, guitar, bass and accordion -- entertained in sparsely populated Academic Auditorium Thursday night, serving up Gypsy jazz, offbeat Romanticism, tunes as adventurous as Erik Satie's and as boisterous as a yodeled "Back in the Saddle Again."

Their music echoes the Gypsy Kings and French movie scores but there's Cafe Noir's own zip thrown in, a minor key sense of humor that titles a song "Schmoozin' With Susan" and uses as inspiration for another a Charlie Chaplin film about a bank teller who knocks off his rich wives.

This is David Grisman Dawg Music married to European classical formality. The result sometimes blisters the fretboards, sometimes sounds doleful. But above it all was playing that showed an appreciation for the loveliness of this combination of instruments.

One tune that sounded like a minor key double-time lullaby turned out to be based on a song Stravinsky wrote for his children.

On another piece, violin, guitar and voice all played the rapidly moving melody in unison and didn't miss a note.

Singer-accordionist Randy Erwin, who possesses a Bobby McFerrin tenor, served as the nominal spokesman for the Dallas-based band. But its focus is the jazzy stylings of violinist-clarinetist-accordionist Gale Hess and the speedy Flamenco rushes of guitarist Jason Bucklin.

Both played passages that were breathtakingly fluid.

Norbert Gerl, who founded the group with Hess, holds it all together on rhythm guitar and viola, while lefty bassist Lyles West contributes some of the band's strongest orginals.

If there is a criticism it's Bucklin's tendency to stray from Flamenco into near-heavy metal leads, and a small lack of attention to dynamics at times.

But all in all, Cafe Noir is more wonderful because it's the kind of musical entertainment that doesn't stop by Cape Girardeau often enough. The Community Concert Association is to be commended for programming such an extraordinary act.