The Battle of the Denmark Strait.1

The Battle of the Denmark Strait

the preperations

In the area of my greatest concern, the nite went well. Outside of my most pressing concern -everything after The Battle of the Denmark Strait performed - also went well. But first, and mainly, to The Battle of the Denmark Strait.

I'd gotten enough oats into me several months ago when I thought it mite be a good idea to snatch 10m of stage time for the upcoming Klas.2 show. 10m would not be a killer for a concert, and I realised that people are punk enough to give me that 10m slot. So, an email to rocky eventually got me that spot. What to do, however.

Originally - and now I can finally spill the thought processes - I was gonna do a take of "Pets" by Porno for Pyros. My first though was to stick GF on stage w/ a American Idol drum I happened to find. She said no, after complaining 40-50x that I don't use her in my projects. Seriously- maybe one of the next 20 things I ask her to do she mite. Also a guitarist who would play the various solos in the song. Kool little minimal thing using Gf as well. Slap a name on it and call it Art. from this mustard seed eventually came The Battle of the Denmark Strait's four part secquence of skits/music.

However, several guitar players didn't come up. Chickened out, philosophically disinclined, etc, whatever - seemed no guitar. It was so early in the process and improvisation was easy. I figured, then, to just to it myself - drum myself, then just hit a button on my laptop to play the solo, etc.... basically, the idea of a one man show and prerecorded stuff had taken the fore. Music would butt it's way into the act eventually, but things had changed from the orig. idea of a single song.

So -what to do a show on? Not a show yet- scattered skits, so far. But a theme came in when I contacted Processed to cover an old General Strikes song from 5-6 years ago - the "Alleluia" song. Processed - like the General Strikes music guy- is a multi instrumentalist. I wanted an organ, but we mite not get an organ @ Klas. So, if we didn't do it on a churchy sounding organ, then we could do it this way: the verses would be accompanied by a shimmering guitar, then to the chaos - he'd have to switch to bass. Good visuals. A guitar as well.

And the song was accepted because that 'theme' had came up. I decided to have a little 'sporting event' involving the new 'theme', with the earlier idea of just playing baking tracks and have me act it all out coming up. Funny -when I have ideas, a lot of the time a person to use comes up, and I just gotta have that. For this skit, it was to be Chemical Man. he was to reprise the 'Brent Musberger' 'you are looking live...' character.

What eventually became the backing track was worked over for 4-5 days, w/ ideas going back and forth. We kept putting it off until we had to finalize it, and we did. Didn't go exactly right, but it didn't matter. Chemical Man came over to my crib 4-5 times in the week previous to klas as dint of hard marching finally delivered us a four and a half minute soundtrack we could deal with.

So, two of four parts to the show were in the bag, more or less. The first part was written, and the last part Processed and I had practiced a few days before. These done, the hardest stuff was over. A lot still needed to be done - the presentation looming most of all- but a great deal had been gotten done. Now the battle to actually link the two substantial parts of the act took place..

I had created a character a while back out of several characters from film/tv. Part the top judge on "Breaker Morant", the older English dude talking about his brother in "Four Weddings and a Funeral", and a lifetime of Monty Python characters (most importantly John Cleese's in one skit in particular), the character was to be an amagamalm of them all, w/ the 'Weddings' character having the dominant role. Lots of twitching and loud English tinged "Whaaaat???" 's. I likke the character and will reprise it again sometime.

However, with all the grand effort to nail the rest of the show, I got so tired and didn't want to write up fully a skit with this English character, so I decided to fall back on the prerecorded deal again - this time I had Mom yeling @ me to get off the stage and that I was embarrassing her. Since the skit was now to her and away from my character, I almost completely didn't write anything - instead it was radically redone to have frenz heckle me from the audience, and then Mom yell @ me, then a dragooned Dagwood came out of the audience and told me to.....well, impress everyone. This was decided on the fly, and preperations for this were being rushed around minutes before curtain. Sheesh. But, the third of four parts was substantially finished. The last part was easy. Sorta.

The costume change part. This is an idea that I'd stolen from the Smiths : In 1986, @ the Aragon, the entire light system of the concert hall was turned on the exact moment the sound system started to blare Pokrivs "Romeo and Juliet". This song haa a giant abrupt ending - and in 1986, the instant the song ended, all the lights in the Aragon were turned ON and the Smiths walked out onto the stage. Greatest band entrance ever. I nicked this for the act. I had to change into the priests outfit for the final church deal, so it was decided that I was to go behind - originally I was to go behind a box from a refrigerator - a sheet and change from doctor to priest while the bombastic "Romeo and Juliet" played loudly away.over the sound system. When the abrupt ending happened, I was to walk up in my priests collar and sing the "Alleliua".

And then the song. Four parts.

So, how was the execution?

I was pretty unprepared, i will tell you that. I spent hours of writing and stuff, but left off much until late. The full show wasn't even done until the actual presentation. So, unwalked through prepartion should have been done more. But, this was also the kinda show where we, didn't have to be....super prepared. It was more about being on stage and enjoying it, rather than hitting marks and all that.