Brion's Song

SINGER-SONGWRITER JON BRION REINVENTS THE LIVE ACT

'I was sick of going to see artists perform their record exactly the way they made their record," says Jon Brion. "It was like listening to the record, loud, with people pressed up against you, talking."

So, every Friday night for the past five years, he has performed two one-man shows at Largo, an L.A. club owned by his friend Mark Flanagan. And whether it's a perfectly executed rendition of a Fats Waller tune on piano, or a hilarious, oddball version of "Purple Rain" on ukulele, Brion gives the shows he wanted to see. He leads sing-alongs, dazzles the sold-out crowds with witty onstage patter, plays every instrument, makes up songs on the spot, and displays his command of what seems like every song ever written— from Cole Porter to the Clash or, as he puts it, "from Gilbert and Sullivan to Gilbert O'Sullivan."

His original material (from his solo album, Meaningless, finally available on-line through www.artistdirect.com) ranges from the romantic to the irritated, with lines like "You don't have the pull that you used to, but you can still ruin my day."

In addition to his own, he's produced albums for Aimee Mann, Rufus Wainwright, and Fiona Apple, whose When the Pawn ... was nominated this year for two Grammys. He has scored all of Paul Thomas Anderson's movies, including Magnolia (the soundtrack was also nominated for a Grammy this year). As a studio musician, he's all over records by Macy Gray, the Wallflowers, Elliott Smith, and the Eels, and one forthcoming from Perry Farrell. He's toured with Apple, Beck, and, most recently, drum virtuoso Matt Chamberlain.

Currently, Brion is scoring Paul Thomas Anderson's next film, working with pal Grant Lee Phillips, recording with jazz pianist Brad Mehldau, and starring in a documentary shot by V.F. photographer Sam Jones.

"I'm working really hard to make my life what I want it to be," says Brion, 37, a native of New Haven, Connecticut, who now lives with actresscomedienne Mary Lynn Rajskub in Los Angeles. "It's not that people aren't capable of doing a lot of things, it's that other people aren't capable of seeing people as being able to do lots of things."

LISA ROBINSON