Clown Band is a loosely configured, slap-scary, cosmically-pseudo-organized phenomenon that cannot be controlled by humans or even by the Clowns that participate in it. It's somewhat mysterious, very freeform, and extremely ridiculous in nature. And it's not funny.
Windpipe the Clown brought the idea of playing music as Clowns to Tucson's underground art freak community at the turn of the century. The first ever Clown Band show erupted after he was playing sax with some other freaks in the basement of Tucson Puppet Works, and someone suggested opening the doors for the Club Crawl and playing upstairs. Windpipe said, "I'll dress in my finest Clown suit," and the others said, "Hey, let's ALL be Clowns!" A monstrosity was born...
Windpipe blows wind through several types of pipes: saxophones, wooden fifes, didjeridoos, conch shells, metal flutes, glass flutes, honky horns, lead pipes, painfulness, bamboo quenas, trumpets, PVC drainpipes, rubber rat heads, and his own larynx. He also plays analog synthesizers and programs effects processors (electronic pipes) for Clown Band from time to time.
Mister Bizzo is the original coconspirator whose bent passions , along with Windpipe's, helped create and maintain the magic that powers Clown Band.
He plays guitar and bass, drives puppets, occasionally sings vocals and writes really scary lyrics. He's a very worldly Clown—he wears a Clown suit custom-made for him in India (with a tie from, of course, Thailand), and he spent a month in Ireland as a circus Clown before he ran away from the circus. He's also done several birthday party performances for kids, and is in charge of Clown Band's corporate department of videography. He has a secret symbiotic relationship with a puppet named Cledd, a movie star hand puppet with no eyes.
Mr. Bizzo, along with Windpipe, are the only two Clowns who have been with Clown Band since it first erupted at the turn of the century. At times, Clown Band consisted only of these two Clowns. Mr. Bizzo yearns to walk over hot coals while wearing ice cream shoes.
Shyclops is an amazingly versatile Clown. She plays cello, electric bass, drums, flutes and almost any other instrument she gets her lithe hands on. She also juggles and occasionally rides a unicycle.
She has hosted several enchanting Clownvergences in her home and practice space, where amazing music has erupted and evoked spirits from other worlds. It's been difficult to send those spirits back sometimes.
Shyclops sometimes watches circus movies on a TV that only works if beaten repeatedly with a large stick.
Woodles plays a mean clarinet, as well as various flutes including the two-headed flute. She also is one of the most capable jugglers of the troupe, and juggles many intellectual pursuits with her Clownly endeavors.
She is a devoted Clown who offers lively, abundant and scary energy to the show along with her sultry, moaning clarinet vibrations.
Woodles taught the rest of Clown Band several circus tunes that were too frenzied and complicated for our limited attention spans to learn on our own.
Mothafunka the Clown play a mean, low-down bass. Watch out... she's full of fire, and you'd best not give her any shit.
She's been seen careening about the world in a motorhome with Docktor Fuckoffski, and she's always ready for a circus.
Luna is another original founder of Clown Band, a truly evil Clown and an intensely sexy creatrix and wearer of the finest in designer tails. After the first Clown Band show, she flew off to eastern Europe, and since has gallivanted around the world, occasionally stopping for visits in the desert and fraternizing with her fellow Clowns.
She sings, plays guitar, writes amazing songs, and plays well with fire. She's the founder of Fir Snah Ké, an amazing fire performance/dance/ritual troupe based in Never-Neverland.
Like an apparition, Luna has been spotted in such places as the Playa in the Black Rock Desert of northern Nevada rampaging about with hundreds of other Clowns during the infamous Burning Man festival.
Clownopatra, the exotic Clown Princess, was one of Clown Band's singers during its heyday just after the turn of the century. She was featured on live television singing beside Glossy Dosey, and being carried about by other Clowns paying homage.
She lost her long black wig in a mysterious house fire, but now has grown her hair out to the same length, so she no longer needs her wig to show off her ancient and silly beauty.
Grossey Dosey sang and provided reality-altering assistance to Clowns and others for a spell during Clown Band's long and sordid history. Her amazing voice is capable of sending anyone into an instant trance state, and her presence is as shiny and bright as Bozo's red nose.
She has been traveling about, for she's a gypsy Clown, for several months. Occasionally she is spotted with other Clowns in the desert and among the trees of the northwestern United States.
Drumbo the Clown is one of the original drummers in Clown Band, who joined us right after Buzz (of whom we have no photo, lamentably) melted down and moved away. He coined our motto, "It's not funny," and has illustrated several Clown Band fliers and other propaganda with extremely weird graphics.
In addition to the drum kit, Drumbo is an expert at percussion and several other instruments. He currently lives in San Francisco.
While visiting the desert, he recently spoke of a rainy night in the Haight district on which he found a Clown nose floating in the gutter. It made him cry, he missed Clown Band so, and he wrung it out and put it in his pocket. This touching story one day will end up produced as a posh, slick Clown Band rock video.
Suppozo the Clown lives in a silver bus loaded with drums. There are at least two full drum kits on his bus, and he frequently parks in strange places and rocks out. Suppozo also has contributed many ingenious lyrical notions to Clown Band. We don't know exactly where he is right now, but we hope he'll drum with us again soon.
Clown Band often conducts intensive, hand-wringing rehearsals aboard Suppozo's bus while on the road touring. It's a fine gathering place for Clowns and others.
Schmootzie is another of the old-school Clown Band creators. He started playing bass with Clown Band in its early days, randomly showing up at shows and jam sessions when we least expected it. For awhile, his musical mastery and natural leadership lent an air of order and tightness to the Clown Band musical set. That lasted about a week before it erupted into cream pie fights, balloon animal battles and all other manner of chaos.
He's recently earned his master's degree in musical performance, and he plays percussion and everything else with a degree of precision and excellence that makes other Clowns gawk. He sometimes seems to wonder just exactly why he's wearing a Clown suit and hanging out with a bunch of buffoons, but we quickly distract him whenever that happens.
Aggro the Clown, without face paint and Clown suit and booze, is a kind sweet cello virtuoso living in the snowy mountains. Clowned up, however, she's extremely dangerous, especially when armed with a squirt gun or her own two fists.
Coulrophobics and other people who don't know how to defend themselves from physical aggression probably should avoid too much close contact with Aggro the Clown.
Clowndia experimented with her Inner Clown as a therapeutic exercise initially, and found that it complimented her continual exploration of divergent human experiences (if you consider Clowns to be humans, that is).
She has scared the public at large and created much merriment in the twisted lives of several members of Clown Band, and we hope to see her Clown up again soon.
Runout helped spearhead the famous Clown Rampage at Burning Man festival in the desert wastes of northern Nevada. He has appeared with his honky horn in hand randomly and with serendipity at several Clown Band occasions, lending his support and a raunchy, scary vibe to every affair.
Runout plays mean congas and is a badass Clown DJ, as well.
Izmist is a Clown of the rather nasty variety. He has a long and sordid history of spinning excellent electronic Clown music, as well as producing disturbingly lovely works of art
He can usually be spotted downtown at Epic Café or any number of other Clown-friendly establishments in Tucson. Whether you realize it or not, Izmist is ubiquitous.
Romance is an avid Clown Rights activist based in San Francisco. She founded Noses In the Bedroom (NIB), a progressive Clown Rights organization aimed at gaining respect for Clowns in society and in the media. Romance has orchestrated several Clown-oriented socially conscious events, such as a traditional (clothing optional) pie fight in Dolores Park, and a charity bar crawl called Kissing For Peace.
If she asks you for a rubber Chicken, it is highly advised that you give one to her, promptly. Otherwise, someone could get hurt.
The lovely and talented Lulu the Clown has graced Clown Band with her antics and her large, bulbous Clown toes on several occasions, and she assisted in birthing Baby New Year in 2004, which proved to be a fairly complicated process.
Prissy is not just a princess, she's a savage. A prissy savage. Now, who ever heard of that? Well, here she is. Watch your manners at the dinner table around her.
A Clown of exceedingly particular taste, Prissy won't tolerate anything less than the finest Clown treatment, so you'd better be on your very best behavior!
Although Prissy is quite the princess, you might be shocked at the condition of her scorpion-den habitat, at her anarchist nature, and at the way she wields her tongue.
Frenchie is a more of a Mime than a Clown, but since she's not prejudiced against Clowns, we won't be prejudiced against her. Not all Mimes are that bad. Plus, they give us Clowns a chance to really be heard when we yell and honk our horns!
Frenchie's good around children, and hardly any of them are afraid of her, which is kind of amazing if you think about it.
Hi-breed is a hybrid Clown and Bisbee Gulch Girl. She was the official liaison between members of Clown Band and members of the Gulch Girl brigade that attacked Bisbee with cancan dancing and strip tease antics during the parade on New Year's Eve 2002.
She also lent her house at the time, the Hi-house, perched atop a precarious ledge above the rest of Bisbee, to all the Clowns in a gesture of hospitality and serious daring.
Hi-breed also is involved with candles, wax and art cars, and has dated six of the Killer Clowns From Outer Space at one time, among her many other illustrious accomplishments.
Whimzie is, technically, not a Clown but a Jestress. However, she has been with Clown Band almost from its sordid beginning, and has constantly contributed mirth and fine singing and strumming of strange, exotic stringed instruments.
Accustomed to transcendental consciousness and occult magick, Whimzie lends spiritual inspiration to the other Clowns.
At times, she has performed belly dancing, with a Clown nose on her navel, under the alias of Fatima Ha Ha Ha.
GiGi Dee brings glamour and dreamy .musical bliss to Clown Band through professional operatic training gone terribly awry. Her Fraggle drag style of dress, along with other fine embellishments such as a stuffed-animal pelt coat and more than a dozen different shades of neon hair, make her one of the most alien-style conscious of the Clowns.
In addition to singing like an ancient opera diva, GiGi Dee can produce such an accurate imitation of a crying baby that it freaks out even the most jaded scary Clowns, not to mention the audience at a Clown Band show.
Scairdy the Clown claims to be a Coulrophobic... that is, afraid of Clowns. However, she's fairly obsessed with the daily activities of local Clowns, and she's been caught sleeping with a giant squirt flower. Scairdy is living proof of the age-old axiom that anyone who truly professes a severe phobic terror of Clowns, in fact, really loves Clowns and suffers subconsciously from Clown-envy.
Clown Band was first conceived in 1883, when an angry mob of villagers chased a small group of traveling circus clowns into a theater in the outskirts of Madrid and burned the clowns alive for allegedly performing "witchcraft."
These clowns had, through performing intense, otherworldly music while practicing the ancient art of circular laughing, achieved a meditative trance state from which they had managed to levitate themselves upside down in the air and to cause several puppets and dolls to dance about in a circle without the touch of human hand or string.
A couple of villagers who were out past curfew enjoying the evening breeze stumbled upon this strange act on the edge of a municipal park, and reacted in terror by screaming and running through the streets, spreading fear and inciting a mob to action.
For years after the burning, no one would build on the scorched patch of earth where the theater had stood, and at midnight during every Equinox and Solstice, some of the more perceptive and honest villagers reported hearing strange music emanating from underneath the ground in the vicinity.
A century later, a 13-story office building stood where the old theater had burned, and only a few old-timers even remembered the legend of the enchanted clowns and the burnt theater.
A handful of the advertising executives, market analysts and financial consultants working in the building began, in May of 1988, to dream about clowns nearly every night. After a few months, they noticed gradual, at first subtle, changes in their physique whenever the Moon was full.
Their noses would often become inflamed, red and bulbous, and would honk when squeezed firmly. Their faces took on a pasty, white appearance and some of the executives even noticed the formation of polygons and lines upon their cheeks, lips, and around their eyes. A couple of them lost most of the hair on top of their heads, and grew exaggerated tufts of hair on the sides of their heads in turn.
These changes would seem alarming to most people, but these folks were unfazed, since they had been dreaming for months about clowns and their ordinary reality-structure was already crumbling under the pressure. They also had a great deal more fun when the Moon was full, and they started wishing for the temporary transformations to become more permanent.
In 1999, the executives moved to the United States after they were ostracized from the business community, and they moved to the desert and started a puppet theater.
From the basement of the old puppet theater, these amazing reborn clowns eventually gained full memory and recognition of their previously incarnated selves, and set to their sacred task of illuminating the public at large and showing people their own dark sides through bizarre antics, transcendental music, and ancient practices such as circular laughing. Thus, Clown Band was born.
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