Cash Cash isn't a big band - relatively unknown and vertically challenged, the N.J. natives stopped by Ram's Head Live last week while on the Dance Rawr Dance 3 tour with Family Force 5 - but I braved Baltimore's public transportation system to see them anyway.
The lure of spending a Wednesday night rocking out to fizzy guitar riffs and bubble-gum lyrics is simply too hard to resist, and a hundred-odd high school-age fans agree with me.
Painted-on jeans and terrible scene hair dominate the crowd. A few kids stand out - a pair of boys rocking glowsticks and cleverly illuminated gloves, two girls caked in makeup and a boy with a scary resemblance to Trace Cyrus around the eyes. I feel right at home.
The attraction of Cash Cash depends on their sugary, super pop, neon approach to music and not so much on emotional depth and musical innovation. This is not the band I listen to in remembrance of a poorly-taken organic chemistry midterm.
The lyrics are woefully upbeat. The melody is heinously catchy. Cash Cash will not help you through a break-up, a blow-out with your parents or a bad case of swine flu. What they will do is make you dance like a fool.
The music is 10 times as addictive when played live. Jean Paul (JP) Makhlouf bops onto stage, a tiny, be-hatted bundle of energy. His brother, Alex Makhlouf, rocks out behind his keyboard while Sam Frisch plays his bass earnestly.
They all move around a lot. The drummer, Anthony Villacari, has a truly impressive head of hair. It's not just his purple drum kit that lights up the stage; their energy infects the audience as well.
The crowd loves them. The Makhlouf brothers banter with the audience, asking if we have any questions for Villacari. "Any sexy questions?" the singing Makhlouf shouts.
There is a question about how long Villacari has been playing piano - since the first grade - but on the whole, we only find out how many women the keyboardist has slept with. The answer is 39.
They play songs off their EP Take It To The Floor, a collection that chronicles the discovery of sex as a legitimate pastime. Or at least, that's the basic gist of the album.
Songs like "Sugar Rush" incite impromptu mosh pits as Makhlouf belts out "So I can taste you on my tongue/ With your lips to kiss like the red hot sun/ You're one big sugar rush/ Suck me in, suck me in, hold me down till the very end."
They don't generally inspire random violence, but Cash Cash nonetheless rallies and covers Sean Kingston's "Fire Burning."
Their rendition follows the original pretty closely, though the instrumentals add something a little different to the mix, but all in all, the aim here is enjoyment.
The crowd sings along, moving their bodies to the well-known beat. They end with perhaps their most notorious song to date, "Party in Your Bedroom," one that has all the kids singing.
Cash Cash is effective, not necessarily because the members are musical geniuses but because they know how to have a good time and they know how to make their audience have a good time. They are an energetic, fast-paced, electric band and their appeal is simple.
They play pure pop, jazzed up with synthesizers and bubble-gum beats, but their tendency towards lighthearted dance songs isn't something to be ashamed of. It isn't something I'm ashamed of and it comes down to this - I like pop; therefore I like Cash Cash.
