If you imagined the Jon Lovitz-voiced character from the old animated show The Critic somehow managed to escape a television set and become a real human, the resulting mental picture would probably be pretty close to Har Mar Superstar. He’s not very tall, balding, not thin, and has a penchant for taking off his clothes onstage (although the days of him taking everything off are now behind him, I’m told.)
Chalk this up as a victory for the wisdom of not judging books by their covers – Har Mar Superstar rocks. A seemingly endless fount of funk jams, he distills everything that was cool about the Jackson 5 and classic funk into short, sweet tastes of groove, and at a recent Troubadour show in the Los Angeles, the city where his latest record was written and recorded, he was on top of his game.
Although he doesn’t look like anyone on the top 40 chart, there is something very sexy about Har Mar; he proved this time and again with tongues-out make out sessions with various hot girls in the front of the stage. One rarely sees performers french-kissing their audiences between lyrics, and might suspect there’s a good reason for this, but Har Mar manages to make it look almost classy. Over the course of the evening, Har Mar took the mic all over the legendary Troubadour, including into the upstairs VIP room, where he did a hilarious impromptu riff making fun of the Very Important people.
Complementing his sense of humor and his sex-appeal are his songwriting skills; his songs are certainly top-40 quality. When spinning his latest disc “The Handler” at the office recently, one of my co-workers asked if it was a new boy-band. It’s an honest mistake; Har Mar has penned songs for Christina Aguilera and Kelly Osborne. He does the Justin Timberlake brand of funky R&B jams much, much better than Timberlake, but with an added twist of irony that makes him an icon for the indie kids, as well.
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