flower drum song, the musical
I’m always down for a live performance. Regardless of event type, seeing things live always adds a new dimension to appreciate, be it a baseball game, stand-up comedy routine or concert of any genre. Last week, I experienced a Broadway style musical, Flower Drum Song on an extended run at Diamond Head Theatre. These performers are working it, singing, dancing, acting… they have my full respect. Having a live, mini-orchestra there was also unexpected and fun.
This youtube clip of a 2006 performance looks like someone snuck it in the theater. Minus the thong(!) it is very much like what we saw at DHT. (The last minute or so appears to be some… thing… else….. perhaps was under the recording?)
The dailies of course loved the show. They love everything that’s locally produced; it’s the CODB in Hawaii. (see comments) Me I’m not really a “musicals person” (and yea those are “scare quotes”). LoL. But I tried to put that aside since I was there for a class assignment to think about the performance in terms of the reading we had done the previous week in a book by Coco Fusco called English is Broken Here.
The task was to consider what Fusco would say about the Flower Drum Song performance at DHT. As concerned as she is with Latino/a issues, I do not think Fusco would speak too directly to the content of a supposedly reappropriated (re-reappropriated?) performance of Asian otherness in a United Statesian* style in the illegally occupied Kingdom of Hawaii. But that’s an admittedly presumptuous guess.
Filed under Hawaii, current projects, music | Comments (6)flashback to my first interview
One of the first real interviews I did after graduating from journalism school was in 1998 with Del tha Funkee Homosapien, a solo emcee and official or unofficial head of the Hieroglyphics crew. Their whole collective came to Honolulu to film a video for the song “You Never Know.” The song and the video don’t even really go together, but the week or two they spent here confirmed that Hawaii and hiphop did.
As an eager, wanna-be, hiphop journalist, I finagled a bunch of interviews for RE:ACT magazine, which was actually more of a zine, but I would never call it that. I spent hours talking with Del, A-Plus, Tajai, Casual, Pep-Love and the video director, whose name escapes me, as did his interview, due to an amateurish technical error on my part. The Del interview was the most in depth and exists online on a very early version of the quadmag site.
Filed under current projects, published writing | Comment (0)Sheriff Norm sledgehammers his television live on Radio Free Hawaii
If you recall, Radio Free Hawaii was conceptualized and piloted by Sheriff Norm. Below is some classic audio of Sheriff Norm calmly ranting about the corrupting influences of television and superiority of radio as a broadcast medium. Then he smashes his television set with a sledgehammer, in the studio. Because that is the kind of man Sheriff Norm is.
Considering it is over 10 years old, the battered cassette tape this came from is lucky to be alive! Quality is poor, there is Hawaiian music running underneath and all kinds of strange distortions and static, but that just gives it a way-back feeling. Hope you enjoy?!
This bit of violence against consumer goods was recorded from a rebroadcast on the late-night talk show of the inimitable Mad Mohammad, a popular and controversial dj. The topic that evening was violence on television and “do you agree with Sheriff Norm’s decision to sledgehammer his tv?”
Because he cares about the kids, Mohammad also offers some helpful safety tips for listeners who might decide to sledgehammer their own television.
These snippets came from cassette recordings by Shawn Speedy Lopes, former production director at Radio Free Hawaii and current owner of Stylus Music and Clothing Exchange.
Filed under Hawaii, current projects, music | Comment (0)
