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