Punk music and performance art were fellow travelers in the late 1970s and early 1980s in Los Angeles; among the most prominent of the artists who integrated the poetics of each genre was Johanna Went, whose extraordinary performance at Beyond Baroque I was lucky enough to catch back then. The most recent example of the intermingling of punk and performance art has been taking place at a bar in Long Beach, California called Vine. The proprietor of a record store, “Dizzy on Vinyl,” less than a mile away from that bar, has been leading a band of musicians called PLASTIC HORSESHOES in a raucous celebration every Tuesday night in January, starting at 9 p.m. and ending promptly at 10. Tonight, January 31, is the final performance.
I caught last Tuesday’s show, which included several costume changes by Dizzy in the course of “unhitching his trailer” and unpacking his suitcase: “This is not mine. This is not mine.” This show was not the first time I had seen Dizzy perform, as he had presented a version of it in the small side-room of his record store late last year; but the bar’s full length was made use of during the course of the show, with Dizzy twirling his suitcase in a perpetual wind-up motion like a clock recording, absorbing, and discharging simultaneously perfect time of all 24 hours. No doubt, on several continents on this planet, a couple thousand other musicians were equally embedded in their grooves that night; but for those fortunate enough to be in the presence of a relentless artist in Long Beach last Tuesday, there was no other place they’d want to be.
Vine 2142 E. Fourth LB 90814
Dizzy on Vinyl 3004 E. 7th 90804
About Bill Mohr