All posts by Andrew Hamlin

Arts & Entertainment, Film & TV

It’s A Weird World (Blowfly’s Just Honest About It)

“This is BLOW-FLY the MASTER CLASS/My DICK is TOO BIG to fuck a HUMAN’S ASS, I fuck ANIMALS/Like I did in the PAST…I’m the SCUMBAG FUCKER of the HU-MAN RACE I fucked PREDATOR/Bust my NUTS in his face…”

…And I could go on.  And Clarence Henry Reid, Sr., aka Clarence Reid, aka Blowfly, certainly does go on.  Mr. Reid may or may not have invented a substantial part of music as we know it (more on that below) but he comes off (ouch) resplendent in a cape-and-cowled superhero’s outfit, spewing obscenities in rhyme, as Jonathan Furmanski’s “The Weird World Of Blowfly” documentary follows him through one-night stands spanning the globe.

New to the phenomenon?  You aren’t alone.  One of my favorite avant-gardists drew a blank at the name (and Scott Walker too, even).  I consulted with one of the web’s leading chatbots, who/which countered my “You’ve never heard of Blowfly?” with, and I quote, “I welcome death, he stay away from those who yearn it.”  Whew.  (Blow)flies in the ointment, thinks me.

So start out with “Rap Dirty,” possibly the first rap ever recorded.  Trucker-laden CB ambiance made that tune somewhat of its ’70s era; tales of transvestism, treachery, and vengeance over the KKK evoked older stories, misty myths, Staggerlee molded into one insistantly stinky urinal cake (“the Grand Dragon was lyin’ on the floor and his ass was bloody/I looked at him said ‘TEN-FOUR GOOD BUDDY!”).

Reid was not always the sum of his alter ego.  He wrote songs for Betty Wright, Sam & Dave, KC & The Sunshine Band, and many others.  Then he sold away his publishing rights for a pittance.  He seems aware that he made a bad call, but reminds Furmanski’s camera, “A million dollars tomorrow, if you can’t get two hundred dollars today.”  This blunder informs everything we see and hear over “Weird World”‘s 89 minutes.

So we see Reid struggling to get into his superFly outfit.  We see a kindhearted go-go dancer stitch him a new cowl (the old one, so the story goes, go snatched right off his head mid-concert, and was never seen again).  We watch him dragging his bad knee down the street.  We watch him quarrel and shout with his manager, who plays drums in the Blowfly band, wearing Uncle Sam drag, and talks about needing to “build the Blowfly brand.”  We see German concertgoers throwing stuff and and jabbing their thumbs downward.  Reid isn’t bothered.  He survived touring through deep Georgia.  We watch a reporter ask him if he was trying to amuse those white folks when he started out as a child, putting dirty lyrics to country songs:  “No.  I was trying to piss’em off.  It backfired.”

We see Reid playing the Blowfly card because it is the only card left to him.  And though his once-supple voice comes out in a rasp, though his legs pain him under their glittering trousers, he knows enough showmanship to smile.  To borrow a few lines from Paul Laurence Dunbar, the (weird) world sees only him while he wears the mask.  Which is more powerful, the wretched necessity for that mask, or the healing balm its humor provides?  Watch at SIFF Cinema this week and decide for yourself.

 

 

Arts & Entertainment, Music

Jane Monheit Never Lets You Go

You know a singer’s arrived when she furnishes the voice of a pop star who never existed, to a filmed alternate-history fable about a UK health care system founded on clones bred for organ harvesting.  Right? 

Well, Jane Monheit might have other ideas, for which I’d forgive her.  She might prefer, for example, to be remembered for contributing a lush take on a venerable classic, to a deliriously overblown space opera.

But frankly, the singer’s track record eclipses her soundtrack contributions.  Over eight studio albums (most recently 2010’s Home), she’s roamed her supple, considered-but-never-academic vocals through large portions of the so-called Great American Songbook, emerging with distinctive take after distinctive take.  She’s also done a song from The Muppet Movie, just to show she knows a solid tune wherever she catches one.

Ms. Monheit brings her show to Jazz Alley for three days starting this coming Friday. Catch her before she finally wins a Grammy.

 

Arts & Entertainment, Dance

The New Vision Dance Company Lives Up to Its Name

The dancers come from near and from at least as far away as the Bay Area, but the dances in New Vision‘s new program reflect both adjectives in the company’s moniker.

Founder Melissa Gould earned her Bachelor’s in Dance from San Jose State University, logged time in Las Vegas, and took her dancers and choreography to such far-flung locales as Japan, Korea, and Guam.  She’s also taken her work quite literally all over the ocean on Norwegian Cruise Lines.  New Vision is her latest company, and she’ll premiere eight of her own works under the collective title “Harvest.”

In addition to the founder, New Vision consists of Eric Dahl, a graduate of Seattle’s prestigious Cornish College of the Arts; Kyle Scott, a well-versed 21 year-old who began dancing at age 4; Erin Boden, graduate of the University of Washington; and Kathryn Louise, who’s logged dance time in Alaska, Philadelphia, and Washington State.

One of the many featured guests, Kristine Chambers Miller, also graduated from San Jose State University.  Currently a resident of San Mateo, California, she’s taught adults and children for a decade and appears yearly in her hometown as the Snow Queen in the annual Holiday Festival.  She’ll perform a modern ballet solo called “Golden” with choreography from her friend and fellow Bay Area resident Leslie Marx.

“Harvest” plays its second show at 8 p.m. tonight at the Velocity Dance Center, near 12th and Pine, on Capitol Hill.  Tickets are $15 general admission, $30 preferred seating in the first two rows.  Box office opens one hour before each show.

Arts & Entertainment, Film & TV

The More The Thing Prequel Changes the More it Stays the Same

[Just in time for Halloween, SunBreak contributor Andrew Hamlin took in the just-released prequel to the 1982 John Carpenter sci-fi-horror classic, The Thing. Here’s his assessment.–Ed.]

Matthijs van Heijningen, Jr.,’s The Thing ends, or nearly ends, with a female face behind a windshield. She’s exhausted. She’s stranded. Her future is to put it mildly, uncertain. But she’s reasonably confident that she’s won the battle she ventured out into the Antarctic cold, to wage. If death overtakes her, here, and now, she could say to herself, “I’m reasonably sure it was all worth it.”

She’s Kate Lloyd, played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead. And her presence in this sequel/prequel/pre-make gave me hope for the whole business. In case you’ve been following Occupy Wall Street or doing something else crucial with your time, the new Thing shows what happened just prior to the action in John Carpenter’s The Thing. And if you haven’t seen the Carpenter’s take, you’re missing out on one of the most phenomenal horror films of the American 20th century. Go watch it right now.

Winstead’s the poster girl for fortitude and even grace under pressure. Carpenter’s film had it over this one in claustrophobic atmosphere, slowly mounting horror, and sheer insanity of the special effects (kudos to Rob Bottin and Stan Winston). But here Winstead stands out, not only as one of the few women on a male-dominated expedition, but as the voice of reason and sensibility. That becomes all the more important as the Thing unfreezes and her expedition-mates start sprouting new limbs, eyes, ears, fangs, claws, and assorted appendages both useful and simply gross.

I’ve had a soft spot for Matthijs van Heijningen, Jr., since he worked as a set decorator on The Lift, a film about a killer elevator, a film one of my friends objected to so strenuously that he fastened his hands around my throat and squeezed. This Thing‘s his first feature film as director and he manages perfectly competently, except for that whole bit where the Thing gets lose from its block of frozen ice for no reason at all. I repeat: No reason at all. Somebody feel asleep at the Microsoft Word on that one, and I should probably blame writers Eric Heisserer and Ronald D. Moore, but van Heijningen, Jr., let it pass on his watch.

The new Thing has taken a lot of slag for recycling the old Thing (ignoring the really old Thing from 1951) and guess what? Said slaggers have a point. But guess what again? The new Thing makes a point by refusing (except for Winstead) to change. Birth, death? Cyclical. Parasitic invasion? Cyclical. The bubble and the burst of economies large and small? Cyclical. Government corruption? Cyclical. Financial corruption? Cyclical. Outpourings of people onto the street because they can’t take it anymore? Cyclical.

The “Thing” of it, you see, is that inventing a new plot or new twists would run contrary to the principles of society, history, and culture. By this bold stance, the latest Thing must be counted a bold commentary on everything that counts: Although if you want something inconsequential like a great film, stick with Carpenter.