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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2009 > April > 10
Friday, April 10, 2009
Explore Austin’s other live music scene
We’re in the midst of a five-week project exploring Austin’s ‘other’ live music scene — classical music. Recent coverage: Q-&-A with Austin composer P. Kellach Waddle | Tango: The original alt classical music | Itzhak Perlman concert
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King Arthur meets heavy metal
Guest blogger and American-Statesman staff Geoff West finds intrigue with the Getalong Gang’s theatrical mash up of heavy metal and the legend of King Arthur. Camelot? Not exactly…
We were intrigued when we got the press release for the Getalong Gang’s latest production, a heavy metal imagining of the King Arthur tale. Co-artistic director Spencer Driggers answers our questions about “Arthuriosis,” which opens this weekend at the Blue Theatre. It’s not the group’s first foray into this territory. Driggers says their production of “Ben Franklin: A Rock Opera” was “a Promethean tale in which Franklin had to climb a mountain and steal lightening from the gods. On his quest, he was beset by the siren song of a French lady of the evening and a giant three-headed eagle.”
American-Statesman: What’s the theme of the show and how did it originate?
Driggers: The show is actually adapted from a concept album we created with a group of friends over a decade ago. We took a long weekend and half-wrote, half-improved our own absurd version of the Arthurian legend. Then we recorded it on a busted-up four track recorder. For years, there was only one existing cassette tape, and the sound got progressively more awful with each listen. Luckily, we were finally able to convert it to digital, so the legacy shall remain intact.
Is there a metal opera (or any other performance) that you could compare to Arthuriosis?
The album was inspired by a Manowar song that chronicles the Trojan War, called Achillies: Agony and Ecstasy in Eight Parts. We strive to be as epic and over-the-top as those guys. I’ve never been to a metal opera myself, but we did see a German rock opera on YouTube that was based on Faust. That looked pretty bold. And hilarious. Not sure it was intentionally funny or not, but they seemed pretty serious about it.
How closely will the performance follow King Arthur’s tale?
We tried to hit the high points, but we did add a few narrative flourishes. For instance, we felt the story needed a gnome.
Did you read any specific text by a particular author?
We drank a lot of beer and watched the movie Excalibur. That’s about the extent of the research we did. The rest was based on memories of high school English class and The Sword and the Stone.
What interests you about his story?
It’s got all the components of a classic myth. Archetypes like the hero, the innocent, the sage, the betrayer. Utopia, ruination, love, war, the supernatural. Basic good vs. evil.
Who’s the target audience?
I think metal heads will appreciate the authenticity of the music. There’s no shortage of satire for comedy fans. The overblown spectacle of the costumes, lights and set should appeal to followers of Broadway musicals and/or GWAR. There’s even a smattering of language jokes for all the grammarians out there.
Are the musicians the actors or are they separate?
The band performs live on stage, and the lead guitarist plays Arthur’s son, Mordred. He has a couple of scenes, but he only speaks through his guitar. That being said, he speaks volumes.
What was Blue Theatre’s reaction to the idea?
The Blue has always been cool with whatever shows we’ve done there. The sound was initially a challenge, since the space is not really acoustically designed for a metal show. But we got it under control once we put some foam castle walls around the drum kit.
What can the audience expect?
They can expect to laugh, cry and rock like there’s no tomorrow. Free earplugs with admission.
‘Arthuriosis’ continues at 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays through April 18 at Blue Theatre, 916 Springdale Road. www.bluetheater.org
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Lordy Rodriguez sees new states of America
It’s been a long road trip for Lordy Rodriguez.
The Phillipine-born Texas-raised artist has spent ten years systematically re-mapping the United States state-by-state according to his creative imagination.
Now Rodriguez’s 55 imaginative maps — he added the five new states of Disney, Hollywood, Internet, Monopoly and Territory — fill the walls at the Austin Museum of Art through May 17.
Rodriguez’s maps are immediately familiar. Who hasn’t seen similar vividly colored hand-drawn maps in an atlas, on the walls of a school room or held in the lap during a road trip? And Rodriguez has all the expected cartographic components there: the topographical symbols, the road numbers and river names, the border lines, the formal typeface.
But these maps are also deliberately absurd. What if Kansas collided with the Southeast? What if Texas bordered New Jersey? What if every state in America had a port? What if there were new borders, new bodies of water, new mountain ranges?
By re-imagining the entire country, Rodriguez considers the deeper meaning of place in the 21st century. He situates our nation’s capital half-way between the newly imagined states of Hollywood and Monopoly. The names of the towns and cities in Hollywood are taken from the movies; in Monopoly, cities are named after the cites that headquarter Fortune 500 companies.
We long to define ourselves by where we are from, where our families came from or where we choose to live. But in today’s mobile, shifting world, place is more fluid than ever before.
The lacklustre installation at AMOA disappointments and doesn’t do justice to the potency of Rodriguez’s richly imaginative ink drawings.
That’s too bad. Because in his charming, beguiling colorful maps, Rodriguez — who himself has perhaps the ultimate multi-cultural, multi-national background —ask trenchant questions. And perhaps the most important is. how would you map your world?
“Lordy Rodriguez: States of America”
When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays, (Thursdays until 8 p.m.), noon to 5 p.m. Sundays through May 17
Where: Austin Museum of Art, 823 Congress Ave.
Tickets: $4-$5
Information: 495-9224, www.amoa.org
Image: “Monopoly” by Lordy Rodriguez. Courtesy AMOA.
