Short-order critics are a Web hit

There's more than blueberry pancakes on the menu for breakfast at Sulimay's.

For the senior-citizen music critics Bill Able, Ann Bailey, and Joe Walker, a morning meal at the Fishtown diner typically involves listening to indie-rock and hip-hop acts like Jay Reatard and Young Jeezy.

The trio - Able, 75; Bailey, 66; and Walker, 84 - sit in a rear booth listening to music through earbuds, passing judgment American Idol-style for a periodic series of five-minute videos.

And now, fueled by positive notice from such cultural gatekeepers as the New Yorker and the music blog Stereogum, their show, Breakfast at Sulimay's, has become a Web sensation.

A clip from March in which Walker opined that the much-buzzed-about indie band Animal Collective isn't "going to get very far from Baltimore, Maryland," is approaching 100,000 hits.

National Public Radio recently aired a segment on Sulimay's. And the online taste-making bible Pitchfork, which avidly follows Sulimay's, found the latest episode - featuring Memphis rocker Reatard and Chicago rap crew BBU - to be "still funny."

The critics haven't been as impressed with Pitchfork. "This is why Pitchfork sucks," Able declared, in a dismissive review of celebrated harpist Joanna Newsom's album Ys, which Pitchfork awarded a stellar 9.4 out of 10.

The edgy music that Sulimay's mastermind Marc Brodzik plays for his trio of crusty, charming critics isn't exactly music to their ears.

"You won't remember any of these songs you listen to today years from now," said Able, a former boxer who pans - with a smile - almost everything he hears, on a recent morning at the Girard and Berks eatery.

By contrast, Bailey - the feisty mother of seven and grandmother of 17 who's gotten up to dance to R&B singer Raphael Saadiq's "100 Yard Dash" and makes an obscene gesture at the camera during the show opening - says she has an open mind.

"Lady Gaga, 'Poker Face,' " she countered. "You'll remember that one."

Walker, the sage thinker of the show who serves as a Fishtown Simon Cowell, usually weighs in last. "Lady Gaga," he repeated. "I tell you it did not impress itself in my mind, because I do not remember Lady Gaga."

The idea for the show occurred to Brodzik, 42, an artist and filmmaker who lives in Collingswood with his wife, Jen, and two children, when he overheard a group of seniors at Sulimay's a couple of years back. Brodzik, a Pew Fellowship winner, works nearby at his Woodshop Films office in Northern Liberties.

"One day when Marc happened to be having breakfast here, he overheard three very witty, erudite gentlemen talking," said Walker, a retired city employee and former stage actor. "He thought our wit and humor was so amusing that he wanted to put us on tape."

"I just remember being thoroughly entertained," said Brodzik. "I was an outsider looking in. I was talking to a friend of mine and said, 'Wouldn't it be funny to have them review music?' And I just came in and asked them, and we did it."

Breakfast at Sulimay's, begun in 2007, is the showpiece of Scrapple.tv, a compendium of left-of-center shows such as Smut Cave, which Brodzik says he produces "with sweat and spit and interns." The site's logo is an animated pig who sings, "Someday we'll get paid for this." For the most part, the Sulimay's crew doesn't, except with fame and pancakes.

Along with Able and Walker, the third original was a regular, Moon O'Brian, who dropped out after six episodes. "Moon didn't care for the hurly-burly of showbiz," said Walker.

Bailey "saw the opportunity and crowbarred her way in," Brodzik said.

"And you fell in love with me," said Bailey, a retired legal secretary.

Soon Bailey will follow Walker in doing interviews, focusing on metal bands (and donning leather outfits, naturally, for the shoots). But Walker is the breakout star of Sulimay's. In one episode, he compared Eminem's hyperspeed rapping on "We Made You" to the "patter songs" of Gilbert and Sullivan. His favorite Philadelphia musician: 1920s jazz guitarist Eddie Lang. "Compared to Eddie Lang," he said, "the modern guitar player is sadly lacking."

Walker has thoughtfully chatted up acts such as the Scottish rock band Mogwai and Brooklyn brother-sister duo the Fiery Furnaces, as well as bands whose names cannot appear in a family newspaper. Such language doesn't faze Walker, who performed profanity-strewn comedy skits for GIs during World War II.

"I found his perspective very valuable," said the Furnaces' Matthew Friedberger, who was interviewed with sister Eleanor before their recent gig at Kung Fu Necktie in Fishtown.

"It's not just cute old people in the neighborhood diner. He really understands the continuity between working musicians playing in a swing band in the 1930s or working in a hotel bar or driving around in a van playing rock music."

In an insular indie world in which critics often write for one another - and, in Friedberger's words, "most reviews online are written by 13-year-olds or people pretending to be 13 years old" - the Sulimay's crew provides a fresh point of view, free of self-referential context. And as the show's popularity has grown, the trio are clearly being watched by an audience of indie music-makers.

Walker's frequently voiced bugaboo is that there's too much percussion in contemporary music. One sign the message is getting across: In a Scrapple.tv interview last month, Dan Bitney, the drummer for the Chicago band Tortoise, spoke directly to the camera to ask Walker to "stop hating on drummers."

Breakfast at Sulimay's has changed the way its stars listen to music. "I hear Kings of Leon playing when I go to the supermarket," Bailey said, "and I say to myself, 'I hated that song to begin with.' "

And it's turned them into unlikely celebrities, in Fishtown and beyond.

"The other day I was walking down the street and some kids pulled up in a car and said, 'I've got a CD for you,' " Bailey said, incredulously.

"Somebody asked for my autograph at church!" she added.

Not that anyone's complaining. Brodzik told Walker that a woman in Alaska sings his praises in comments on YouTube. "Tell her I take a size 91/2 mukluk," he quipped.

The other day, he was recognized by a nurse when being treated at a hospital for a sprained knee. "The nurses were all looking at Breakfast at Sulimay's on their iPods or whatever," he said. " 'Twenty-five thousand hits, that's a lot!' I said, 'That's it, honey! Tell everybody!' "

Episodes of Breakfast at Sulimay's can be found at Scrapple.tv or through Dan DeLuca's blog at www.philly.com/

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