Townsman Saturnismine raised this topic in an earlier thread, suggesting it be brought to The Main Stage. Definitely!
What are some homespun/cheap stage show effects in you’ve seen used in arena and club shows?
When Saturnismine asked this question I was quickly reminded of seeing Hugo Largo at JC Dobbs in Philadelphia (circa 1988). Singer Mimi Goese, who probably weighed 90 pounds but looked like she weighed 110 when the show started, wore at least a half dozen layers of clothes. Each time she took off a dress, as she does at the beginning of this video, another dress was waiting beneath it. Her pretentious act, which also included feigning stabbing herself during one song, wore on me so greatly that the removal of each layer of clothing quickly lost its luster and sense of anticipation.
Then I thought about some goofy punk band we played with at CBGBs. They closed their set with a song called “Putt-Putt Golf,” during which the singer took out a plastic kid’s golf club and Whiffle golf balls and hit them into the crowd. Cheap. Memorable.
Finally I thought of Miracle Legion, for whom we opened at Dobbs in 1987 or so and could not get in a soundcheck because the singer, Mark Mulcahy, spent an hour setting up his puppet show. Yes, we opened for a puppet show, and it was as lame as you might imagine.
If you’re a musician who’s appeared on a stage of any size, have you ever been involved in this practice?* Budget-conscious Townspeople want to know!
*I’ve done a few cheap effects in an offshoot bands. We gave the soundman a tape of wild crowd noises compiled from classic live albums and an album of Mussolini speeches and had him run the tape over the PA system in between each of our songs. Not everyone enjoyed the bad joke as much as I did, but my enjoyment was more than enough to go around.
About a year or two ago, I saw Euros Childs (formerly of Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci) play at Johnny Brenda’s. Most of the set was Zombies-esque piano balladry. But he had one synth-pop song, during which he and rest of his band (bass player and drummer) donned 3-D glasses.
I was in a band that played 3-5 minute songs and one fifteen minute jam band song towards the end of every show. My brother was the singer and tried to do something unique each night in the 6-8 minutes that he had nothing to do. On Haloween he carved a pumpkin. One night he repelled up the side of the club and crawled through the rafters to the bar. He shaved off his full beard with a $.50 safety razor, painted a watercolor, left the club and came back in a three piece suit, on 4th of july he left and came back in a Uncle Sam costume with stilts that made him 8 feet tall….anything to not have to play air guitar or a tamborine for 8 minutes…
I never see bands do this kind of thing anymore
I’ve got a million of them, most of which I’ve already recounted here. The most ambitious one was when one of our singers began the set (he didn’t sing on the first couple of songs) by coming out of the shower (yeah, there was one) with his robe on and a face full of shaving cream. By the end of the set, he was fully dressed, groomed and coiffed.
Those guys in Phish bounce on little trampolines. I don’t like their music but that’s an impressive side talent.
Who was it that rode the motorcycle to assembly? That’s one of my favorite stories.
TB
That was Hrrundivbakshi, and whenever he tells the story I end up with tears rolling down my face. I summon him!
Hrrundi’s motorcycle story will be republished in the Halls of Rock on a regular basis, maybe even with a public reading, like Bloomsday or Alice’s Restaurant. I’ll re-run it shortly, and then we can try to remember the date to commemorate it next year.
I am quietly proud. I believe the idea was to re-tell that very true story every year around holiday time. My goal this year is to get Peter “Pubes” Horn to chip in a few recollections from behind the drum throne. Doubtless he’ll correct me on a few points of detail.
Yours, etc.,
HVB
Supposedly, “Uncle Ted” Nugent — back in the loincloth days — used to wheel a crystal ball (probably more like an over-inflated christmas ornament) on stage during an extended guitar solo. At the end of his solo, he’d leave his guitar leaning up against his stack of Fender Twin amps, producing an earbleed-inducing screech at about 1,000,000 decibels. The “crystal ball” would shatter, the crowd would roar, and Uncle Ted would re-emerge from the wings to lead the band through the final out-chorus of “Great White Buffalo” or whatever. Here’s the deal, though: if the crystal orb *didn’t* shatter, Ted had a midget with a ball-peen hammer hiding underneath the fabric skirt surrounding the trolley, whose job was to give the sphere a good whack if the feedback didn’t do the job. I believe this story is true, but even if it isn’t, I choose to believe it.
hmmm….i’m a little sheepish that a thread was begun out of my off-the-cuff suggestion…
but:
in ’83, as a lad of 16 years, i saw quiet riot and black sabbath (on sabbath’s ‘born again’ tour, post-dio, with noneother than ian gillain on lead vox, and bev bevan on drums).
there were many memorable things about that night:
-what seemed like the faded beauty of the older suede and leather clad drunken blonde in her mid-20s who said to me, quite plainly, “you’re cute, hun” and frenched me until her very mellow mid 30s-ish boyfriend came back from the concession stand, where he had been, no doubt, frenching her even prettier teen aged sister.
– the moment when, after playing ‘metal health’ and before FINALLY playing “cum on feel the noise,” kevin dubrow asked the crowd: “who did you REALLY come here to see? huh? HUH???? Say it LOUD!! Who did you REALLY come here to see tonight??? Quiet Riot, right??” we were close enough to the stage for me to be able to see a *person* through all that bravado, a mere mortal rather than a rock god. “FUCK YOU ASSHOLE” the 35 yr. old boyfriend yelled. But he was drowned out by all the tools who really did yell “Quiet Riot” in response to dubrow’s invocations. In my teen-aged comic book and pot addled mind, I remember thinking that dubrow probably angered sabbath enough for them to use their pact with satan to ensure that he would never have another hit.
and when they came out to play, they started their set with a monotonous din so loud and evil sounding, that it could’ve killed a baby. as they struck each chord, red lights would shine on the crowd (not the band!), and we could see silhouettes of Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler, and as the chord rang out, they were giving the audience the SATAN sign! I’m telling you, this was nasty shit. They were really pissed at Quiet Riot!
And then, the cheap effect: when they kicked into their first song (‘born again’s’ “trashed”) and the stage lights came up, we could see that the heads and the cabinets of their marshalls and ampegs were covered in grey sheets that had been spray painted with black vertical jagged lines designed to make them look like stone henge.
cheap….stage….effect.
the rest of the night was sad: it seemed like the red lights that flooded the audience came on for every power chord. a white upside down cross on the bottom of the drum riser turned on and off so many times that i counted the light bulbs it required: 24.
post script: aside from that awesome intro, the only other highlight was ‘war pigs.’ the lowlight? they actually played ‘smoke on the water.’
Puppets!!
About 5 years ago I went to the 7th Street Entry to catch a band. The warm up was a female trio that were just awful. They had puppets as part of their performance. They were also very cheeky yet not at all funny. Anyway, I remember looking around the room (while they were singing with these little puppets in a box theatre). The faces on the guys all around were like faces of shock and disbelief and horror. I doubled over laughing per we were all one in our experience….
I think here only Saturnismine knows these guys, but there was briefly a local band called Bear Attack who were all dressed in costume. Guitarist was the hunter; bassist was the bear; drummer was the owl. They played incredibly loud, hard, screamy, punk-based rock. I enjoyed them immensely.
Another Philly music question: Does Darren Finizio belong in the category we’re discussing, or is he in another realm entirely?
oh WOW, Oats.
i LOVE bear attack. do they still play? watching a bear play bass was worth the price of admission. so entertaining.
re. finizio: i have a good hoppy the frog story which i’ll have to save for later.
as far as their qualifications for this thread go: absolutely yes.
and you have reminded me that one year, for a brother jt and vibrolux halloween show at the firenze tavern, JT played the show as JFK, post-assassination. He wore one of those paper cut outs of JFK’s face and stained his suit with ketchup.
Bear Attack broke up when the drummer got tired of wearing his costume.
HOWEVER, I just checked out their MySpace and it looks like a reunion is in the works. Very exciting!
http://www.myspace.com/thebearattack
oats reports:
“Bear Attack broke up when the drummer got tired of wearing his costume.”
i say:
who could blame them? I mean, can there BE a more serious artistic difference?
Darren Finizio = creepy genius
another cheap stage effect (albeit one that never panned out):
one of the bands i was in truly intended to duct tape our stomp boxes to our torsos and pound our chests every time we wanted to turn the on and off.
it would’ve made for great post-apocalyptic fun, but we were too lazy to actually go through with it.
cdm, have you ever heard darren’s prank phone call tapes? they pre-date the “jerky boys” and they’re just as good.
No, I’d love to hear those. Are they available anywhere?
I’ve never seen him live either. I’ve only met him a few times and seen some episodes of a web show. I can’t tell if he refuses to break character or if it isn’t a character at all.
I wish I had seen Hoppy the Frog or Muscle Factory.
One of our local favorites is called Superstar Donkey Donkey. It’s a two man band that features a drumer/guitarist and an upright bass. But the real attraction is a smoke machine.
http://www.myspace.com/superstardonkeydonkey
TB
The local band with a smoke machine reminds me of the time we opened for a very young Flaming Lips at Revival. The bassist operated a little bank of colored lights and smoke with his feet!
cdm, i don’t think those tapes are available. but to give you an idea…he used to answer Musician’s Grapevine ads from metal bands.
he would call as an old man with a thick philly accent. at some point, the conversation usually reached a point where the metal lunkhead on the other end would say “you know, you sound like a fuckin’ old man, to me…”. At this point, darren would always include the stock response: “heh heh…yeah….now i know your ad says ‘must have look’ and i will admit that, yes, i AM balding…but i AM also the metal messiah…heh heh…and i can sing, too. i sound like Geddy Lee from RUSH.”
Mod, the Uptown Bones opened for the Lips at the Khyber and their entire stage show was: no house stage lights, just the two strobes and the black light they bought at Spencer’s gifts. Cheap, but VERY effective.
When we opened for the volcano suns at the khyber, their effect was: no house stage lights, just christmas lights. cheap, but not so effective.
and finally, there was a local band called Grisly fiction who began their show by turning on a Teddy Ruxpin doll they had programmed to say “Repeat after me: I accept Grisly Fiction as my personal savior.” Cheap, but effective.
How about playing guitar with a KFC 20 piece bucket on your head?
I saw Buckethead in 1991 in a SF club with an extremely (and purposely) annoying band called the Jazz Butchers. He was wearing that same bucket when he was in Guns and Roses.
The bucket works in as well clubs as it does in stadiums.
Sat, that’s classic. metal messiah…
We had Jerome “Bigfoot” Brailey (formerly of Funkadelic) in the studio a little while ago — he’s played with Buckethead numerous times. That dude had some funny Buckethead stories. B-head isn’t just pretending to be weird by putting a bucket on his head. He *is* weird, *and* he wears a bucket on his head.
I was witness to some hoppy the frog recording sessions. Then there was Zen Guerilla, you had to wear your goggles when they were in the studio. Very freaky.
Because of Marcus’s emphatic use of delay, my peeps and I used to say Zen Guerilla’s name (affectionately, of course) as if talking through a delay box.
In other words, it would go…
“hey, dude, who’s playin’ at the Khyber tonight?”
“I believe that would be one Zen Guerilla.”
“Oh…you mean, ZEN..Zen…zen…en….GUERILLA…Guerilla…rilla…illa…la…?”
“that would be them.”
in the early days, those guys were all about the cheap stage effects, albeit somewhat traditional psyche inspired.
however, they weren’t homespun, stage effects: mostly projectors and strobes and the like. they were probably stolen from the 9th grade world cultures teacher’s AV closet.
and by the way, i still think sabbath’s spray painted bed sheet stonehenge amp covers win the day: SO HOMESPUN, so SIMPLE, yet SO WELL CONCEIVED TO PLAY TO THE CHEAP SEATS! what brilliance. it pays to have satan in your corner, i guess.
Yeah, they had the projectors in the studio too, along with a record player which had its speed controlled by (I think) a pedal from a sewing machine.
Hoppy the Frog… nothing like innuendo disguised as “children’s music” from a weird guy in a frog costume.
Remember the Serial Killers and their crazy tower o’ toms?
“one of the bands i was in truly intended to duct tape our stomp boxes to our torsos and pound our chests every time we wanted to turn the on and off.”
Oh yeah; I was in an “offshoot band” where I taped one of those bike horns with a squeezy rubber bulb to my shoulder, and the guy next to me punched it to make it squawk. This wasn’t Harpo-inspired between-song schtick; this was the hook to one of our songs.
In my Bob’s Revenge days, I always wanted to set up a wall of thick clear plastic at the foot of the stage, shine lights from behind the band through it, and hand out water balloons filled with colored liquid to the audience, which they could hurl at the wall as we played. This would create a home-made psychedelic light show, beamed back on the creators, while we rocked on triumphantly in incredibly cool, back-lit silhouette.
I saw Alice Cooper play many years ago, before they were even slightly famous. There were two huge fans at the sides of the stage, pointed at the band, probably because there was no air conditioning. At the end of the show they turned the fans towards the audience, and Alice cut open feather pillows so that the feathers blew out onto the audience. It looked mildly interesting from the back of the hall. The people down in front didn’t seem too keen on the idea.
The fans in front should have been thankful that Alice couldn’t find a tar mixer.
I saw Sabbath when Ozzy was still around, and their only effect was a big black sheet with a Day Glo orange and green skull and crossbones on it. Sort of a Psychedelic Jolly Roger. They were great. It’s one of my favorite big concert memories. They played lotsa cool stuff, and Smoke on the Water was nowhere to be found.
Mr. mod, I finally watched that video you used for the header. Did you want to see Hugo Largo, or was that a doctor’s prescription for acute insomnia?
Good question, 2K! With connections to Glenn Branca (Tim Sommer and an Asian guy, both of whom played with Brance when I saw him a couple of years earlier), The Big Takeover (Sommer was a key contributor early on), and Brian Eno (whose label put out their first album), I was CERTAIN this would be a band I would love!!! I hadn’t heard a lick of their music before showing up at the club. Man they sucked – on many levels!
I used to project old super 8 film onto the Three 4 Tens back in the mid/late 90s.
It worked really well until i got my hands on some super8 porn from the mid/late 70s. It really alienated their female fans…
forever.
I have to suggest a show I didn’t personally see, but wish I did: Devo on treadmills in 1979, 80, or so. A very hot theater, and those nuts jogged through their whole show!
We did a show at Bacchanal once, where someone had trashpicked a photo light gizmo with 4 300w bulbs on a t-bar. We all wore sheets, kind of toga-style. We turned off all the lights, and every thirty seconds or so, someone would hit the band with 1200 w for a half-second. The frozen image would really stay on your eyes a long time in the dark!
Once at the East Side Club we brought a green front-yard christmas spotlight, and hung it over Christine’s head, and turned off the rest of the lights. Everytime you would whack the light it would sway like crazy, making really disorienting shadows. Then we inflated 2 boxes of white garbage bags all over the stage (almost as good as whippets, kids!) and they were like huge amoebas that oozed around slowly when you walked through them. The went really well with the green lights…
We also opened there for Brian Brain, former PIL drummer, who did a hideous show in which all the drum parts were tapes of drums or tapes of machines. At the end of our set, we threw out several hundred LaSalle Security Service rape whistles, for our song about the joys and sorrows of “slam dancing” which is what people in those days called what would eventually become “moshing.” When he came on, it was a stunning cacophony. And when people heard what he was performing, it only got more shrill. I admit it was passive-aggressive of us, but we were young, and he was awful.
Great examples, General. Junior Mints always made use of cheap, effective effects. I liked when that guy Michael (Dura?) used to come up and paint during a song.
I saw Devo on the treadmills. I would put it in 1981. Wasn’t that before treadmills were common in gyms? These were actually longer than today’s exercise treadmills, maybe twice as long. They didn’t really jog, as I remember, but they had keyboards mounted on the front, and they walked to stay in position to play. And sometimes they would stop playing and pose or dance as the treadmill carried back away from the keyboard, and then they’d have to catch up to get close enough to play again. It was silly, but when you’re wearing a flowerpot hat you can get away with anything.
I like the thing Prince does where he gets bodyguards down in front in the pit, and then while he’s playing a solo he turns around and falls backwards off the stage. The bodyguards catch him and then put him back upright on the stage in such a way that he doesn’t miss a lick. I suspect this effect works best if the guitarist only weighs about 110 lbs.
cdm, have you ever heard darren’s prank phone call tapes? they pre-date the “jerky boys” and they’re just as good.
no one will ever hear Darren’s crank call tapes because Fravel got his hands on them. He was gonna “put them out on his label”
instead, he lost them.
the originals.
kilroy, thanks for the text last night, man! we kept on a rockin’.
i’m gonna give the Frave a WORLD of shit the next time i see him. those tapes should be digitized and in an archive somewhere, with each moment properly catalogued.
but there’s hope….i think i know where that tape is (not in my possession, mind you, but if i can get my hands on it, i will).