Hooo boy. I’ve been sitting on my hands for weeks, not knowing if/when I’d be allowed to say anything, but I just got the go-ahead from Nils. NOW IT CAN BE TOLD.
“Look out, you’re dead like us. Dead like candy.”
photo by Katherine Copenhaver
For really and truly. The four core members of one of the most unclassifiable, unbelievable underground bands of the 80s/90s met up in Oakland late last month to get reacquainted and talk shop. They’re currently in the studio recording the final tracks needed to complete an album left unfinished since 1998, and they have tentative plans to do some live reunion shows as well. A bit of background on the band from the Idiot Flesh wiki entry:
Known to tour the US in a converted city bus with [member] Rathbun as the driver/mechanic, with the windshield destination banner of “HELL.” Besides their “rock against rock” attitude, they were also known to defy classification with marching band routines, performing puppet shows, and playing household items as instruments (in tune).
“Idiot Song” video directed by Annmarie Piette
If you’re already a rabid cult follower, chances are you are doing an exuberant wiggle dance right now. If you’ve never heard of Idiot Flesh, try to place their sound, guerilla theater tactics and spookylicious attire in the context of the 80s and early 90s, before Tim Burton’s aesthetic became quite so zeitgeisty. While they often draw comparisons to Mr Bungle (and there’s merit in that, seeing as both groups formed in 1985, wore obfuscating costumes and displayed frenetic, mathrock/metal/funk shredder chops), Oingo Boingo, Crash Worship and other unhinged California weirdos from that time period, Idiot Flesh and their roving pack of Filthy Rotten Excuse Chickens inhabited a world all their own. Their influences range from the Residents and Zappa, to SWANS, the Art Bears and Henry Cow, to T.S. Eliot and John Kane. The band’s live act –which places emphasis on audience participation and non sequitur antics– is the stuff that Dadaist wet dreams are made of.
Storyteller du jour Si Spurrier just introduced me to the Mayor of Nightmare Town. Would you like to meet him?
Usually I have a lot of trouble finding common ground with the average YouTube commenter, medicine but in this case, sovaldi sale I concur wholeheartedly with dud8112084:
“If i ever see that thing ima blow its brains out with a 12 gauge.”
In the name of all that is good and wholesome, ed will someone please tell me who was working in ads and marketing over at Ferrero for the Kinder Surprise line in the 80s? Leprechauns? Crackheads? Seriously. I am confounded and terrified. Can anyone out there tell me where these demonic puppetmasters have gone? I must know.
Send any and all pertient information regarding the unholy Eggmaster to [email protected].
Please help. Please. The kinder eggs grow restless. They rustle and mewl in the dark oh please god help me I may never sleep again.
A puppet can sometimes express more with a tilt of her head than we do with several sentences. I was introduced to Bunraku when I watched Takeshi Kitano’s Dolls. The film’s storytelling is interspersed with scenes from a Japanese puppet play. The mix of dramatic narration, movement and beautiful costumes of the dolls immediately became a point of interest. Bunraku originated sometime in the 1600s, thought wasn’t called that until the 1800 after a theater in Osaka. It’s a well-loved traditional art form – puppet plays accompanied by shamisen music and fantastic narrations, that use complex life-size dolls operated by three masters.
The music ascends, building to manic excitement and subsides into sparse tranquil strumming in accordance with the play. The narration, performed only by men, aligns its melodies to the shamisen’s and is adjusted in pitch and tone, ranging from guttural to somewhat feminine. The dolls themselves are sophisticated creations of carved wood, the males equipped with expressive facial mechanisms, and the women mask-like and even more expressive through gesture, instead. Sets used in Bunraku are design masterpieces, minimally conveying any location necessary, rearranged throughout the show by fully-masked attendants.
On the morning of Sunday 7th May the little girl giant woke up at Horseguards Parade in London, took a shower from the time-traveling elephant and wandered off to play in the park…
Watching this immense puppet filled me with all the awe that watching the awkward rubbery Japanese androids never could. She is absolutely alive, curious and..hungry. What’s interesting is that both the Little Girl Giant and the skinjobs are essentially human-operated, though the robots are programmed beforehand. Wearing pseudo futuristic outfits, some of them even eerily emulate human expressions with facial “muscles”, while the little girl can only blink and open her huge accordion mouth. To me it’s almost disappointing – I want amazing robots! I want technology sophisticated enough to impress me with its humanoids! I know the day this happens can’t be too far off [right?], but until then this Little Girl Giant PWNS.
By far the most charming place I visited during my recent Japan-o-dventure was the Jusaburo puppet museum.
Nestled between bigger buildings in Ningyocho [literally translated to City of Dolls], a less busy district in Tokyo, this place is something of a landmark – signs and maps point to its location starting at the train station. Jusaburo Tsujimura’s early life story reads like a novel – he was born to a geisha mother from an unknown father and spent his childhood in a geisha house surrounded by the colorful rustling silk which inspires him to this day. Today, after a lifetime of achievement he is one of many puppeteers living in Ningyocho, his atelier-museum and impressive gamut of work attracting recognition since its opening in 1996.
Entering the place I was instantly entranced. We seemed to be the only visitors at first. A helpful employee led us past cabinets filled with tiny figurines, past a small work area with dolls and puppets in varying levels of completion to the back room where an assortment of cabaret music played and an elaborate set took up the entirety of the back wall. An homage to Moulin Rouge, a miniature multi-tiered stage illuminated by a twinkling color light show and adorned by several rows of chorus girls, with their gorgeous blue-feathered Prima Donna at the forefront. By the time i took it all in my jaw had begun its decent.
