Review of Dramarama, Wyldlife @ Bowery Electric, NYC 8/20/11 Better than: Sitting at home playing your scratchy vinyl copy of “Cinema Verite.” It’s a sad fact of life that some bands age more gracefully than others. Mission of Burma still rocks. The Feelies still mesmerize. Dramarama, fellow Eighties survivors, look like they’re about to burst into a heady chorus of “Viva Viagra.” The last time I saw Dramarama – in 2006, on the tour promoting their last album, “Everybody Dies” – the band headlined to over 2,000 people at Starland Ballroom. This time around, they played to about 200 at the intimate Bowery Electric in Manhattan. The night before, they’d played to a sold out Stone Pony in Asbury Park, where frontman Jon Easdale blew out his voice. Struggling against hoarseness at the NYC show, Easdale admitted that he not only hadn’t bothered to rehearse to get his voice in shape for the two-gig “tour,” but he’d also started smoking again that weekend. Easdale never had much of a voice anyway, so the vocals weren’t the problem so much as Dramarama’s penchant for embracing every hoary rock cliché of the Eighties. Gratuitous drums solos? Check. Uninteresting guitar solos? Double check. Saving your one big hit for the encore? Triple check. The band took the stage around 9 pm and started vamping, with Easdale nowhere to be seen. About 10 minutes into the instrumental intro, he danced toward the stage from the back of the audience, replete in his trademark shades and black cowboy hat. For someone who’s spent the last 30 years on stage, the man dances like Elaine Benes . (If you miss the Seinfeld reference, just imagine your maiden aunt doing the funky chicken at a family wedding.) He did say that his patented stage moves – like rolling on the floor for the “bob bad a bop ba da ba da” chorus of “Classic Rot” - worked better on a bigger stage. We’ll take him at his word. For a band that’s mostly remembered for two songs – “Last Cigarette” and “Anything Anything (I’ll Give You),” predictably the last two songs of the night – Dramarama does have a very deep discography. And give credit where it’s due, quite a few of the middle-aged audience members welcomed most of the album cuts (with the exception of one exceedingly drunken white-haired gentleman swaying unsteadily next to me, who sang along to every word of every single song.) So we got “Wonderamaland” and “No Regrets” and “Classic Rot” and “Work For Food,” although a good half hour of lackluster ballads could easily have been cut from the set. And yes, everybody went nuts for “Anything Anything,” including the evening’s host, former WXRP DJ Rich Russo (who announced that his popular show “Anything Anything” – a victim of XRP’s switch to all-talk radio - would be returning to syndication in September.) The young Jersey City quartet Wyldlife opened with a strong set of energetically trashy rock ‘n’ roll, featuring several cuts from their soon to be released debut full-length. They mashed up one of their originals with a cover of T-Rex’s “20th Century Boy.” I’m not sure if that was directed at the headliners or not. Random Notebook Dump: The cowboy hat came off after a few songs, revealing a receding hairline and a ponytail. Not a good look unless you’re a character on The Simpsons. -Scoop McCoy www.myspace.com/dramaramamusic www.facebook.com/wyldlifeband Photos (click on photo see full size)