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SITE OF THE WEEK

Some rare bands look as good online as they do live. That's expeicallu true of this Boston band. But then again, their leader is also a webmaster. Listen and learn.

VISIT Jim's Big Ego web site

Jim’s Big Ego is the wittiest, most tuneful and the most relevant New England band I’ve heard in decades, and their web site teeters on the cusp of perfection. Such praise does not come easily from me. Like the rest of you, I am cynical, bored and overstimulated. Like you, I have seen too many movies, eaten too much fast food, worked too many hours at a thankless job and had more than my share of heartbreak.

Jim Infantino is the troubadour of modern angst, a Woody Guthrie for the wireless generation. As the leader of Jim’s Big Ego, a popular Boston band, he writes and sings to the very heart of the American condition. If you think way too much, mostly about yourself, Jim has an anthem for you.

Thousands of us caught an interview with Jim on National Public Radio a few weekends back. It took only a few seconds of "They’re Everywhere", the title song from JBE’s new compact disk, to thwack a deep hook into my brain.

I’m a paranoid schizophrenic
With surround sound speakers

They’re everywhere!
They’re everywhere!
They’re everywhere!

I rushed to their web site, BigEgo.com to hear more. The band, including drummer Dan Cantor and bassist Jesse Flack, even manages to make fun of its own audience, and get away with it. The song "In a Bar" is the antipodes of the cute theme song of the TV show "Cheers", although it is sung as sweetly. Bar patrons love the satire and love to sing along.

It's time to get liquored up
'cause that's why you're here
in a bar
it's time to drink aqvavit
whiskey and beer
in a bar

There's too many faces
but not enough room
in a bar
we're just a bunch of babies
looking for a womb
in a bar

THE WEB SITE MAKER

Bigego.com also comes from the brain of Jim Infantino. The Flash opening loads three lopsided bubbles in sharp primary colors. They hover and sing. The red button, a graphic of Jim’s shaved head, takes you to the main information – band pictures and media links, reader comments, gigs. The green button with the radio antenna lets you listen to randomized selections from the first seven JBE albums. Every 50 cuts you have to reinitialize. The blue button with the TV set offers six animated "rock videos". Start with "Y2K", a brilliant Fisher-Price video starring a stick-figure Jim playing a great pop tune. This song is only thing about Y2K worth remembering.

"I had a web site in ’95, even a web page in ‘94", Jim says, remembering back when he was a solo act. "I was taught by a guy from MIT. There were very few bands with web sites. The first site was a cut-away picture of my head where you could press different parts of the brain. It took a big leap when I discovered Flash in 99."

Not surprisingly, when not writing or performing as JBE, Jim develops web sites under his company name Slab Media . He’s working on a project for Boston University at the moment, does a couple of pharmaceutical and educational companies, does web sites for a lot of other bands. It’s a good living he says.

"It distracts me from music," Jim says. "The band definitely takes up half my time."

With the new album, he says, they are doing more promotion and less touring. Tours have taken JBE to the Midwest and to England, and up and down the East Coast. Touring, he says, is just time spent not writing new music or promoting. Jim expresses no interest in taking the standard road to fame by signing a record contract. The control the artist gives up to be commercially successful that way, he says, is not worth the hassle. The Internet, however, offers great promise.

I’m not asking too much of it financially," he says of the music business. "It’s a great thing to do, but I don’t see it as a great business. I’m okay with myself if I don’t get on the Leno Show."

THE UP SHOT

The first thing that prevents me from labeling Jim Infantino a "comic genius" is that the phrase has been abused to death. Sorry, but Bill Murray is no comic genius. Neither is Drew Carey of Bernie Mack or that "Everybody Loves Raymond" guy. Bill Cosby used to be a comic genius before he got his own TV show. Secondly, Jim’s Big Ego is much more than funny. This is fantastic music, diverse, well orchestrated, inventively mixed, danceable, singable, memorable. Jim winced over the phone when I described his sound as Frank Zappa meets Simon and Garfunkel. It’s more than that, much more. But you get the idea. This work is angry, edgy, rude, yet sweet and lovable. Go figure.

When Jim Infantino advocates self-amputation in "Cut Off Your Head" he is hacking away at just about everything that keeps us from thinking creatively – dumb toys, drugs, commercial branding, religious obsession, body decoration. This stuff is more in the class of Jonathan Swift, who for those who didn’t study 18th century literature, wrote "Gulliver’s Travels" as a biting satire, not a children’s book. In his essay "A Modest Proposal" Swift suggested that, since the starving Irish had so many children, they could end their famine by simply eating their young. He was kidding by the way.

So is Jim in "She’s Dead", which sounds, at first, like the most callous love song ever composed. But listen on. Use your brain. Work for the message. Or if you’re not in the mood, just sing or dance along. Life, if nothing else, is pretty damn funny.

The underlying point here is that, without the Internet, I could not have discovered this brilliant band. I don’t hang in clubs and bars on the JBE concert series -- The Lizard Lounge in Boston, The Knitting Factory in New York City; Jammin' Java in Washington DC.

But I was among those thousands of NPR listeners who ran to the Web to learn more about Jim’s Big Ego during their recent radio appearance. So many people went, in fact, that the JBE site crashed twice, sucking up 20 gigabytes of use that day. But plenty came back. Jim says they sold hundreds of CDs the day of the radio interview, hundreds the next day, and hundreds the next, before the rush tapered off.

"On Amazon.com for a couple of days we were outselling Britney Spears, Barenaked Ladies, Warren Zevon, R.E.M. and Nora Jones," Jim says.

That’s because the Web works in waves. People tell people. Those people emailed the link of the archived radio show to friends, who then mailed the JBE web site link to others.

"I don’t hate people. I don’t have the kind of anger that is necessary to be a punk rocker. I’m frustrated, disappointed and sad, but I’m not alone," he says of life in general.

That’s the truth. There are lots and lots of us. But despite the hard edge of some of JBE’s songs – songs like "Bite Me Hard", "You Piss Me Off". "Ugly People" – this is not an angry band. These clever tunes are infused with hope and optimism. They are harsh, at times, because the truth can be harsh, but never self-destructive or malevolent like so much rock music is.

My only regret is that Jim Infantino is happy where he is. He talks, not about making it to the top, but about artistic control, excellence and sustainability. That’s great for him. That’s fine for me too, since I have discovered Jim’s Big Ego. But what about millions of young disgruntled people who need a dose of this uplifting "unpop" band? They will not discover JBE on commercial radio or see them on Leno.

This looks like a job for the Internet! Here's how it works: I told you about the JBE web site. You visit, then pass the news along.

Lyrics © 2003 Jim Infantino. Used with permission.