Review
28 Orange Street
Live at the Third Rail, Cortland, 10/6/00
BY GREG STORMS - Staff Writers

The Third Rail, a train station-turned bar in Cortland, is cold. The wait for music, if you get there early enough, is long, lonely, cold, and torturous if the only options of entertainment available are to watch MOS "Powerpuff Girls" on the bar television as your friend orders beer after beer, and you try not to snatch longing looks at the enticing $5.50-a-pack cigarette machine, knowing thatyou have a Lincoln in your wallet and your friend is the type of girl who's sure to have two quarters on her.

If you are fortunate enough to be waiting for the NYC-based folk/funk band 28 Orange Street, the wait is worth it. As soon as the warm harmonies of vocalist/guitarist Eric Kufs and singer Adam Busch burst through drummer Professor Ken Beck and six-string bassist Chris Elsener Jr., you drop wishing you were wearing pants that didn't have holes in the knees. The fact that the soundman seems impervious to all insult and indeed, all suggestion of mixing to the band's requests, becomes only a minor annoyance-an amusement, actually, once Busch starts using him as the focus of many an aside throughout the set.

This is the main delight of 28 Orange Street's live show. Busch, credited as "actor/singer" in the band's bio, spends the moments between his low-honey half of duets with Kufs engaging the crowd, from good-natured joking to downright I'm-not-staying-when-they-beat-this-guy-up antagonizing. Luckily, it is acting-hence the fear of violence-in reality he's just a good guy trying to make his band a little more unusual.

During a spot-on, lively as all get-out rendition of calypso classic "Jump in the Line,"-remember, from the end of "Beetlejuice?"-Busch turned what must have been everyone's thoughts into punchlines. Between "shake, shake, shake, senora"s,

Busch shouted out, "That movie, that movie!" As if just remembering for the crowd where they've heard the song before, he and Kufs continued festively, "Winona Ryder, Winona Ryder!"

Even more uproarious were moments in the set's centerpiece, "Payback," a longer song that begins with a typically bouncy riff but soon ventures into showmanship territory. Busch continually stops the song to wonder rhetorically if they are playing what the audience wants to hear. Then, with skilled precision and witty showmanship, the band proceeded to play the song in classical, jazz, and trance styles. Topping them all off, however, was Busch's vocal realization that the crowd probably wanted to hear something they know, "like 'American Pie,' or Eminem."

He then led 28 Orange Street in an Eminem-ized version of "American Pie" that could have beaten Madonna's mauling of the classic any day.

Though the sense of liveliness was present throughout the set, even just through Busch's mic-stand dances or Kufs' jumping around in mid-strum, 28 Orange Street never failed to show serious musicianship in its unique sound. This sound was most often driven by Kufs' acoustic guitar (which suffered from the much-attacked mixing) and the band's four-part harmonies. Songs like "One Step Up," "Way We Move" and the excellent "Oklahoma"-from their album "Common Rotation"-exuded enough warmth to overwhelm the drafts of cold air moving through the old station.

The few covers that the band played were precisely done, as well. The superb Digable Planets hit "Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like That)" was redone with enough slick and cool that the fact that it was played by four white guys slipped unnoticed. The Beastie Boys' "Root Down" got the sparse crowd pumping, nearing an energy they'd achieve towards the end of the set with "Jump in the Line." It was endlessly surprising to see, considering that two hours before, the stage's only companion was the PowerPuff Girls.

The Third Rail may not have been the best venue for 28 Orange Street, as they have shunned the NYC bar scene for more receptive crowds in New York area coffee shops. But Friday night's show proved that the band has enough strength to move between venues. Though they are moving to the west coast within a week, let's hope that if 28 Orange Street hits the Atlantic side again, they'll make a stop in Ithaca.