“Good evening ladies and gentlemen, my name is Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, and I’d like to sing you a song about how much I hate Dog Shit.” If you’re like me, you may be shocked that these words could emerge from the young Full House stars’ mouths, but don’t sweat, my pet, Bob Saget is nowhere in sight. These words are those of a revolutionary musician by the name of Pleaseeasaur, whose music has been deemed by one critic as “electronically generated music that samples...surreal lunacy and pop orthodoxy, a sonic-heterogeneity that is mundane only in contrast to the saur, himself.”
On September third, Pleaseeasaur descended onto the Lewis & Clark Community fully clad in an Elvis-style space suit, complete with a golden wrestling belt sparkling with odd Christmas lights. Though I couldn’t keep my eyes off him, the audience’s response was more or less confusion, wrapped in a burrito-like shell of delight. His musical style is truly unique and not easily replicated. In a nutshell, a small black box stands atop a pedestal on ‘stage right’, Pleaseeasaur presses the “right buttons” (on the box), bad mutha beats bump out, and the vocals explode. IUMA.com has a small page dedicated to Pleaseeasaur, and awkwardly tries to harness his wild stallion of musical style into the categories: “weird, experimental, electronic, and humor,” which in my opinion serves the saur no justice.
True, he does possess these qualities, but there’s much, much more to him than these broad labels suggest. In sync with the beats of an electronic synthesizer, behind the mask of a white furry yeti suit, and through well-regimented vocal chords, emerges the voice of a musical character best described mathematically as: There are no distractions during his performance (i.e. musical instruments such as guitars, drums, etc.). When you’re listening to the Pleaseeasaur sing, its like hearing a charming prince whispering sweet nothings into your ear, in the form of a large sweaty man singing loudly into the microphone. There’s just you, the electronic mixer, the saur, and the romantic sparks flying!
He embraced the audience with songs such as “Beef Flavored Island” and “Strangers Have The Best Candy” in his fully interactive performance. The backdrop consisted of a vases. Behind these canvases, Pleaseeasaur’s first mate, Tommy, ran the controls, using an old-fashioned school projector to animate the show with hand-drawn or photocopied cartoons to depict each song.
The highlight of the Pleaseeasaur’s performance dawned as the one and only “Dream Barge” cruised into harbor. By this point in the show, J.P. Hasson (the Pleaseeasaur) was adorned in a full-body yeti costume, complete with lush white fur and devilish red eyes, as he crooned into the microphone, “When your life feels like a party, and you’d like to be on a barge, put down that Michelob, and turn off the Charles in Charge,” to get you onto his Dream Barge. Pictures of happy teenagers flashed onto the canvases and all the ladies sighed with delight, imagining that Pleaseeasaur lounging about in a silken robe on the Dream Barge (or maybe it was just me).
After the show ended, and my body finally stopped pumping out buckets of sweat and adrenalin, I feared that I would never again see this angel in floral spandex. Much to my delight, however, this was not the case. Again, this star trekked from Seattle to Portland to perform at the Meow Meow on September thirteenth. Both star- and love-struck, I approached the man behind the music, the ambrosia of Philadelphia, to get a glimpse into the mind of a genius in a cardboard tree- shaped sandwich board. He proved to be not only devastatingly handsome, but dangerous and cunning, as well.
He proceeded to describe his oddest performance, which happened to take place at Reed College. While whoring his soul to the microphone, at a deep and self-introspective portion of the show (most likely during his song about his tri-toned Chevy Chevette) a wild, ravenous dog jumped upon the stage and bit the Pleaseeasaur. But he holds no grudge, and confides that he enjoys playing on the campuses of LC and Reed equally.
As one Olsen twin said to the other in the popular song, I am the Cute One, “I’ve got the looks, she’s got the brains (envision Mary-Kate pointing at Ashley and rolling her eyes), that’s why I am the cute one, she’s just my sister!” we see that one Olsen twin is smart, while the other is good looking. Pleaseeasaur, on the other hand is both ingenious and heart-stoppingly attractive, and I would wager that anyone else with the squatting muscles to see him in concert would whole-heartedly agree.