[music] Emperor Norton's Stationary Marching Band
Wow. Just.... wow.
Today was what I gather was the premier performance Emperor Norton's Stationary Marching Band (ENSMB, ensmb). ENSMB is two things.
First of all, it is a ~10 piece circus band. They play in a style which has been generally out of fashion for approximately 100 years, give or take a decade, but which modern audiences recognize as "that's the music circuses use!" That is to say, it's the heavily eastern-European (including Klemzer) influenced jazz form from which we associate with late 19th/early 20th cen. popular entertainment. ENSMB has a whole lot of horns, a clarinetist (nacht_music), a fiddler (coraline), an accordianist, and a couple of percussionists, at least that I could see. They played a high-energy, high-volume ~90 min set. They unflaggingly, er, rocked. (For want of a better term.)
The other thing ENSMB is, is, well, a circus. [Edit: I've been corrected: it has a circus, or maybe the circus has it, and the whole shebang is The Madcap Rumpus Society.] It's a band, see, but a band which specializes in a genre of music intended for accompanying live performers, so, of course, they had to have live performers to accompany. So it turns out there's quite an amateur circus perfomer scene hereabouts these days. They had clowns, and dancing girls -- hoola hoops, poi-style flag spinning, and Belly Dance (I hope that's the right term) -- and "The Grindhouse Marionettes" stupid human act, and, of course, most importantly, acrobats.
No, really: amateur (I think) acrobats. Silks (three acts), supended ring, something like silks only with two straps with loops in the end, and trapeze.
ENSMB has reinvented variety shows -- in particularly the "small time" vaudeville show. It's a home-grown, home-spun Cirque du Soleil.
The variety acts were a bit raw. Theatrical seams showed. Performers concentrated so hard they forgot to smile. Props got dropped. Comedic timings got missed. Costumes were home-made.
It was absolutely fabulous.
It was raw enough to look hard, and that made it all the more impressive. Remember: if you make your act look too easy, it better be darned something else, or the only people who will be impressed are other experts who can tell how hard it was.
And the energy that the band and the performers put out kept it all going.
It was, in a way, more real than any circus I've ever seen. Certainly more intense and intimate -- we were close enough to the performers to touch them, to smell them. It was all of what I -- and I think most everybody -- want out of a circus, but which I had never ever gotten from a circus: that sensawonda, that gee-whiz he's doing that incredible feat right before my eyes, that AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH! OOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!, that enthralling spectacle.
It was FirstNight and NEFFA rolled into one, and condensed down to a two hour show.
The one thing I haven't mentioned so far is their opening-act-and-MC, Uncle Shoe, who bills himself as a "vaudevillian songster". You can listen to him at his myspace page. I gather he sings what is known as Tin Pan Alley, though I don't know if those are historical tunes or original to him; he self-accompanied with a banjo for the opening act. It was a perfect opening. Then late in the show he came back to do a number with the band, for which he used a ukulele. He was also the MC throughout, and did a lovely job. I kinda feel there needed to be less story around the acts -- I have a hunch that a more i-Sebastiani-Intro style huckster/barker approach would have worked better. But, you know, whatever. He has a great voice, both spoken and sung, and it was nice to listen to him whatever he was saying.
Today was what I gather was the premier performance Emperor Norton's Stationary Marching Band (ENSMB, ensmb). ENSMB is two things.
First of all, it is a ~10 piece circus band. They play in a style which has been generally out of fashion for approximately 100 years, give or take a decade, but which modern audiences recognize as "that's the music circuses use!" That is to say, it's the heavily eastern-European (including Klemzer) influenced jazz form from which we associate with late 19th/early 20th cen. popular entertainment. ENSMB has a whole lot of horns, a clarinetist (nacht_music), a fiddler (coraline), an accordianist, and a couple of percussionists, at least that I could see. They played a high-energy, high-volume ~90 min set. They unflaggingly, er, rocked. (For want of a better term.)
The other thing ENSMB is, is, well, a circus. [Edit: I've been corrected: it has a circus, or maybe the circus has it, and the whole shebang is The Madcap Rumpus Society.] It's a band, see, but a band which specializes in a genre of music intended for accompanying live performers, so, of course, they had to have live performers to accompany. So it turns out there's quite an amateur circus perfomer scene hereabouts these days. They had clowns, and dancing girls -- hoola hoops, poi-style flag spinning, and Belly Dance (I hope that's the right term) -- and "The Grindhouse Marionettes" stupid human act, and, of course, most importantly, acrobats.
No, really: amateur (I think) acrobats. Silks (three acts), supended ring, something like silks only with two straps with loops in the end, and trapeze.
ENSMB has reinvented variety shows -- in particularly the "small time" vaudeville show. It's a home-grown, home-spun Cirque du Soleil.
The variety acts were a bit raw. Theatrical seams showed. Performers concentrated so hard they forgot to smile. Props got dropped. Comedic timings got missed. Costumes were home-made.
It was absolutely fabulous.
It was raw enough to look hard, and that made it all the more impressive. Remember: if you make your act look too easy, it better be darned something else, or the only people who will be impressed are other experts who can tell how hard it was.
And the energy that the band and the performers put out kept it all going.
It was, in a way, more real than any circus I've ever seen. Certainly more intense and intimate -- we were close enough to the performers to touch them, to smell them. It was all of what I -- and I think most everybody -- want out of a circus, but which I had never ever gotten from a circus: that sensawonda, that gee-whiz he's doing that incredible feat right before my eyes, that AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH! OOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!, that enthralling spectacle.
It was FirstNight and NEFFA rolled into one, and condensed down to a two hour show.
The one thing I haven't mentioned so far is their opening-act-and-MC, Uncle Shoe, who bills himself as a "vaudevillian songster". You can listen to him at his myspace page. I gather he sings what is known as Tin Pan Alley, though I don't know if those are historical tunes or original to him; he self-accompanied with a banjo for the opening act. It was a perfect opening. Then late in the show he came back to do a number with the band, for which he used a ukulele. He was also the MC throughout, and did a lovely job. I kinda feel there needed to be less story around the acts -- I have a hunch that a more i-Sebastiani-Intro style huckster/barker approach would have worked better. But, you know, whatever. He has a great voice, both spoken and sung, and it was nice to listen to him whatever he was saying.