“Brooklyn City, are you feelin’ reasonable?! I said, Are you feeling reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeasonable?!”
The pitfall that most novelty acts fall victim to is that their gimmick is more interesting as a logline than an actual performance. In the case of acts like MC Hawking and The Traveling Wilburys, it’s more fun to know that they exist than to actually witness it, which raises the question as to whether they should have bothered in the first place. Acts that manage to surpass the basic value of their own gimmick (say, the Beastie Boys) cease to be thought of as novelty at all. Through some combination of a successfully executed musical adaptation and a stage show that rarely ceases to exceed its own standard of ridiculousness, Tragedy manage to dwell in the realm of novelty while far exceeding their worth as a concept.
“The tri-state area’s greatest heavy metal Bee Gees tribute band!” is the particular logline that Tragedy subscribes to and screams, verbatim, at least 10 times before leaving the stage. In actuality, it looks like this: Three guitarists, claiming to be brothers, all sporting flying-V guitars and looking like they had stood too close to the explosion of a cartoon glitter factory, every patch of skin uncovered by their too-tight bodysuits shining with a brilliance that can only be unhealthy; three female backup singers, all dressed differently, all with different hair colors, body types, and presumably vocal ranges (they were difficult to hear); a bassist and drummer who looked more like members of an actual metal band who had accidentally rocked out so hard one night in 1984 that they jumped forward in time a quarter-century; and of course, a manservant scurrying frantically around the stage, mopping the brows of the band members and absorbing their insults with sycophantic pride. In general, the aesthetic is somewhere in between the flamboyance of the disco-era Bee Gees and the flamboyance of mid-eighties hair metal, with some extra flamboyance thrown in for the sake of flamboyance. Tragedy know every rock cliché in the book and repeat them all with an undying exuberance.
All of this might get tired -- the long banter breaks between songs, the aggressive heterosexuality teeming with latent homoeroticism, the swinging from a trapeze in their underwear -- were it not supported by a solidly enjoyable musical performance. The music of the disco-era Bee Gees, with its falsetto harmonies, driving backbeats, and minor tonality, actually translates rather effectively into the heavy metal framework. By simply adding some distortion, doubling up on the bass, and widening their legs, Tragedy is able to produce lively, imaginative, and even danceable versions of hitherto too-familiar Bee Gees hits.
Their set at Brooklyn Bowl came to a climax as they closed with, unsurprisingly, “Stayin’ Alive.” This excellent re-imagining probably should have been the last song of the night, though the encore did allow for their joke of returning to the stage before the entire band had even left. The three-song encore was the first part of the show that felt unnecessary, but the fact that the audience didn’t seem to lose any energy is a testament to Tragedy’s worth beyond their basic concept. Who wants to see a Bee Gees cover band if they’ve already played “Stayin’ Alive”? In the case of Tragedy, the answer is “everyone whose face had not already exploded.”