“We are Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger,” Sean Lennon says.
And then, “It’s an unfortunate band name.”
“It kind of just stuck,” Charlotte Kemp Muhl chimes in, “like toilet paper on a shoe.”
They start to play.
Foul prick of time’s unraveling like twine.
All roads lead to Rome and there’re no words left to rhyme.
We’ll make caves from our bones and make shoes from our skin,
And we’ll try to pretend that this world was made for men.
The crowd is wary. Prior to the performance, most admitted that they had not previously heard of the band’s psychedelic folk sound. But there were 400 people, about 100 of whom were Stony Brook students, in the Staller Center Recital Hall on Oct. 15. And tickets had been sold out for days. It was the first show of the season. And the audience was seemed ready to give the band a nibble.
Sean Lennon is the son of Beatles musical icon John Lennon and artistic legend Yoko Ono. On stage, he looks like a magician. He wears a neat black top hat, which he admits was a birthday present, on the tip of his head. And, like any good magician, he is able to transfix a skeptical audience into his illusion and pull out a following.
Charlotte is serenely silly. She taps her toes in her short brown boots and sways in her forest green skirt. She looks cozy in earth tones. And she sounds like an angel.
Where does the time go down Lavender Road
Turn left at the post where memories grow
Like weeds in summer snow and firefly galaxies glow
Charlotte finishes singing and coughs. “I had to burp that entire time,” she chuckles. The crowd laughs with her.
And this is exactly their style. Their humor. Their quirky banter. The two repeatedly mention how grateful they were for the “bucket of hummus” backstage. During the night, edible jewelry, wimpy samurais and making rolling paper from textbooks also elicit giggles from the crowd.
The music is dreamy. It is a smooth blend of ’60s folk pop, acoustic guitar and a tinkling of drums, trumpet and vibraphone – just to name a few. Through the performance, soft notes can be heard twinkling about the room.
From Socrates to Aristotle
Man’s greatest thoughts and deeds
Are mere love notes in cheap beer bottles
Floating out to sea
Sean and Charlotte are accompanied on stage by Brooklyn-based trumpet played CJ Camerieri. Several audience members agreed that he “helped steal the show.”
And steal the show they did. It seemed that people didn’t quite understand them. And yet, they didn’t quite want them to leave. When the performers left the stage somewhat suddenly at the end of the show, the audience immediately requested an encore. They needed to hear more.
“The concept of an encore feels sort of deceptive,” Sean said as he took the stage again. “We’re gonna play because it feels like that’s appropriate.”
Alan Inkles, the Director of Staller Center for the Arts, said he loved everything about Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger (GOASTT). He was glad to have invited them out.
“They knocked it out of the ballpark,” Inkles said. “They were just spectacular.”
His only complaint? The lack of students. For their next performance at Staller (he’s definitely inviting them back) he hopes to draw more Stony Brook students to the show.
Julie Greene, the Staller Center marketing director, said they invited the band to culminate the Yoko Ono Imagine Peace exhibit.
“We thought it was an exciting end to a great exhibit,” Greene said.
Sean and Charlotte had to see it for themselves, and wandered over to the exhibit as well at the conclusion of the show.
Susan O’ Callaghan, a Stony Brook native, brought her son to the show. A music enthusiast, she was hoping for a blast from the past with GOASTT.
Did she find it?
“Some mannerisms he [Sean] had were so similar to his father,” she said. She happily points to her Beatles shirt. But she really enjoyed Sean’s band as well.
“They were wonderful together,” Callaghan said.
