Beck sheet music turned sweet music

Tuesday night upstairs at World Cafe Live, a one-night Woodstock-in-a-phone-booth broke out, with the title "Philly Plays

Song Reader

: a New Album by Beck Hansen."

It was an introduction to both a major new album and to the local music scene, as 20 Philly-region acts played through the 20-plus songs of Beck's Song Reader.

This disheveled hoot of a hootenanny left the packed, sweltering audience with two impressions: (1) Song Reader is full of various, witty, retro-futzing, often poetic songs, in an exciting and challenging new/old package; and (2) the Philly area is a trove of DIY indie talent.

The crowd (think: knit caps and beards) hadn't heard Song Reader yet. Published by hipper-than-hip McSweeney's, it's all sheet music. That's why the event's emcee, songwriter Ben Smith, said, "You're listening to a record that you can't listen to, and that's why you're here."

The real pleasure, one Beck clearly intended, was to see what the various artists did with and to these tunes. Would the artists stay close to the sheet music? They'd fling down and dance upon it, delightfully, whether it was the Levee Drivers sledgehammering through "America, Here's My Child," or the Great Unknown turning "Mutilation Rag" into performance art, maybe, all angel wings, masks, and shouted narration over tricky piano.

The Naked Sun led off the evening with "Don't Act Like Your Heart Isn't Hard," starting soft (as many did that night), amping up - and crashing into David Bowie's "Ziggy Stardust," on the Thin White Duke's birthday.

Standouts were many. Avery Coffee had a sweet guitar solo on Up the Chain's version of "Do We? We Do." Caroline Stratton wielded mesmeric viola in New Sweden's whomping "Saint Dude."

Alison Wadsworth torched the instantly permanent "Eyes That Say 'I Love You.' " Vanessa Winter of the Lawsuits gave a lovely account of "Why Did You Make Me Care?", another ironic feely-buster.

Chris Kasper was the first artist all night to heed the printed note, with the bouncy yet melancholy "Just Noise." (It's the same song that the band I'm in, Combo Bossa Nova, tackled for a Dec. 25 Inquirer article on Song Reader.)

And the crowd encouraged Sean Hoots as he manfully tackled the 7/4 - "It's weird!" he exclaimed in midsong - of the noirish Freudian mystery "We All Wear Cloaks."

But one act kicked out all jams: the crypto-anarcho-neo-faux-hippie stampede Johnny Showcase and the Lefty Lucy Cabaret. Their assigned tune was "Now That Your Dollar Bills Have Sprouted Wings," marked "Doleful" in the sheet music. They opened a can of clavinet-driven Parliament/Funkadelic, mixed well with Delaney & Bonnie & Friends, threw in good-natured hip-hop, and got the crowd yelling and jumping. Oh, and they threw play money with the band name on obverse, refrain on reverse.

Despite frequent disorder onstage, and the woeful lack of a program, the music, and the fascination of Song Reader, were what everyone was talking about, on this very XPN-ish (in every good sense) night of good songs and good bands.

For a performance by John Timpane and Combo Bossa Nova of Beck's "Just Noise," go to www.philly.com/justnoise.EndText