Time Out Chicago / Issue 117: May 24–30, 2007
Original Article Online at:
http://www.timeout.com/chicago/Details.do?page=1&xyurl=xyl://TOCWebArticles2/117/out_there/they_got_the_funk.xml
They got the funk
Two of Chicago’s premier marching bands bust out their colorful shows where you least expect them.
By Leah Pietrusiak
Environmental Encroachment
The members of the Environmental Encroachment Marching Band, or EE, have been popping up at art openings, naked bike rides, war protests and farmers’ markets (one time dressed as carrots, grapes, a chicken and a “frankentomato”) around Chicago for almost ten years. They most recently appeared at the Houston Art Car Parade, where they played on a flatbed trailer pulled by the plastic fruit-covered “Fruitmobile,” and met George Clinton (one member wearing a rainbow wig had him autograph his arm, and then had it tattooed).
BIG BANGS Environmental Encroachment hoops it up at Dulcenea Gallery.
The anarchist Mardi Gras band likes to shake things up with its African-and-funk–inspired rhythms. “We can really get a party started, we can play anywhere, we don’t have to plug in,” says EE cofounder Mike Smith (when they do, expect a killer theremin). “The color and playfulness—it gets people in a good mood, it’s contagious. It’s like that first person on the dance floor—except we’re providing the first two or three.”
The veteran street performers bust out pieces like a cover of Radiohead’s “National Anthem” (they call their version “National Anthrax”)—and bust in unexpectedly at times. In Houston, they marched into a club and took the stage—and got called back for three encores. “We totally wrecked that place, they loved it, they’re our MySpace friends now,” Smith says.
If the music doesn’t get your attention, the outfits will. “We’re big into the bunny costumes right now—pirate bunnies, space bunnies,” says Smith. The costumes were inspired by the Billion Bunny March at the Burning Man Festival. “If we’re in a crowd and our ears are sticking up, people know who we are.”
On Saturday 26 the band will play at Buddha’s Peace and Happiness Birthday Parade in Ravenswood, and on Sunday 27 it’ll hop to the Orphanage with Black Bear Combo, another mobile festival band from Chicago. In October, it’s headed to New York for Honk! Fest, a growing street band fest .
The musicians won’t have their bunny ears on for Buddha’s birthday, where they follow a procession of chanting Buddhist monks. “We usually wear robes, and we don’t have horns,” says EE music director Dan Merlo, “so we can better pick up [the vibe] from where the monks leave off.”
EE plays Saturday 26 at Ravenswood Buddhist Temple and Sunday 27 at the Orphanage.
Visit myspace.com/eeenvironmentalencroachment.
or www.encroach.net
Mucca Pazza
You never know where the rock & roll, big-band antics of Mucca Pazza might pop up—even at one of its shows. At a gig at Martyrs’ last week, almost 30 players congregated to open for Slavic Soul Party from Brooklyn—one minute a cheerleader was pumping her pom-poms as she snaked toward the stage, and 15 minutes later trombone players magically appeared in the crowd to battle it out with the rest of the orchestra, which included a girl rocking an accordion. One time they marched into a gallery corner and played facing a wall. Sometimes they’ll stop altogether. Until the audience eggs them on.
Mucca Pazza rocks the studio of painter Wesley Kimler.
Formed by composer-extraordinaire Mark Messing three years ago, Mucca Pazza brought its tightly orchestrated performance art to Lollapalooza last year, was a musical guest on Late Night with Conan O’Brien when the show taped here in 2006, and some members popped in for the alt-activist Art War during ARTropolis. The band plays the Empty Bottle on June 2, and at the end of August, it’ll take part in a New Orleans tribute show at Millennium Park with bands from the Big Easy.
“I love the idea of the rise of the big band—there’s been an inundation of four-person indie-rock bands, and I think it’s time you hear more people using more instruments doing interesting stuff—still on the fringe of what music can be,” says Jeffrey Thomas, pictured, who plays a mean surf guitar. Many of the band’s compositions are inspired by TV show themes from the ’50s and ’60s, like the theme from Stingray, a puppet show on which Team America: World Police is based.
Messing says breaking down the walls that can form around performers is at the core of the experience. “As opposed to say, pop music, where you have a star, this is more about everybody participating,” he says. “We don’t have bouncers…there’s no line between performers and the audience. Historically, marching bands would have drums to inspire fear [in battles]…but we’re part of the movement that turns that on its head and makes it about the people.”
Members of both Mucca Pazza and EE once played with the All-American Anti-War Marching Band, and Messing mentions the local Lakeside Pride Freedom Band as part of this movement. “It’s an idea that goes back to the marching bands of New Orleans—whenever the community needs them, they’re there.”