The First Hipsters didn’t even have a band until a benefactor (drummer Benny’s dad) bought them matching outfits for a Mardi Gras party. Then it was inevitable.
FH play their own style of party rock, mixing colorful cocktails of sound out of a literally random assortment of instruments. Benny totes a snare just in case, but prefers to bang on a stainless steel cocktail shaker which once belonged to his grandmother. Keyboardist ginny Gilbert has taught herself to play tuned water-filled martini glasses (at least she says it’s water). Likewise, B. Diamond plays guitar in his other bands (bar band extraordinaire Maverick Head-Kick and the blues duo The Troubles I’ve Seen, with Ginny– the two are also married), but for First Hipsters gigs has built and learned to play… a lamp.
“It’s this atrocious old tacky tasselled thing I found at a garage sale. It was already strung all around with these hard wires, and I found I could ping them and even tune them. So I took it as a challenge. I can get least six real chords out of it now.” And how many do you really need?
So far, the First Hipsters have only played living rooms– we caught them at our (full disclosure) girlfriend Millie’s house on her mom’s birthday. They have only four or five “real songs” (including “Hungry Mental Lion,” “See You in Hell, Alligator” and “American Mystery Man”), B. and Ginny admit, yet they played all night. It’s a relaxing ambient sound that catches your attention afresh when Benny starts beating his sticks on the furniture, on Ginny’s glasses, on dripping faucets, on whatever’s handy.
It’s the best party trick in town, and may eclipse their blues duo in popularity. Which should improve everyone’s mood in the process.

Maverick Head-Kick has its own gig this week, a full-bore blues nite at Hamilton’s also featuring Trucking Through the Tears and Little Bit West of Chicago… The Bullfinch has yet another mosh marathon, a real free-for-all this time with City of Scars, The Failure Business, Suicide in Toyland, Our Lunacy in America, Blackburn and Kiss the Blood Off My Commercial Realism… At D’ollaire’s, the same old party-band drivel with Making It!, Studs Daley, Hearing the Roar and—what’s this?—a bonafide HOST, as in Master of Ceremonies, for the otherwise by-the-fakebook show: Lox-and-Bagelman, an undergrad comedy act from the college on the hill. Nice of them to spread it around a little…