Backwoods Blog .163

ELECTRIC BONFIRE

Backwoods Blog;

in the woods and on the road…

Big Nazo taking over the stage at Eclipse ‘24

When looking for a band to play the Saturday night show during Eclipse ’24, we knew that there really is no genre for cosmic eclipse music. As it turned out, someone said, “I know this band down in Lincolnville that I think could pull that off.” Electric Bonfire is a self-described psychedelic funk jazz jam band that’s been in sonic circulation for thirty years. If anyone could do cosmic eclipse music, they were the band! Some titles from their playlist include Tractor Beam, Galaxy Drifter, The Space Above Our Head, Greetings from the Rubbah Room and Galaxy Funk. The average song-length can sometimes clock in at over 10 minutes. We even created some planetary stage art to hang overhead, secured a modest light show and purchased two dozen colored pool noodles for audience members to wave during the concert (light sabers were also encouraged).

Big Nazo, a performance group from Providence, Rhode Island featuring alien creatures was listed to make a special guest appearance during the concert. Their website describes Big Nazo Lab “as an international touring troupe and creature-making studio that employs a variety of mask and wearable sculpture techniques to create mobile spectacles and audience interactive alien creature theatre.” Erminio Pinque is the founder and artistic designer of Big Nazo and in charge of leading the alien contingent to Houlton. Their space ship landed in the downtown Market Square on Friday and they disembarked to entertain the crowds and evoke curiosity during their four day stay. Bertrand Laurence (an alumni of Big Nazo) agreed to coordinate the aliens’ guest appearance with Electric Bonfire. According to our plan, as the intermission was winding down Bertrand would go on stage with Electric Bonfire and they’d slowly ease into an extended cosmic jam as Big Nazo meandered through the concert space doing their thing. Well, that never happened. Just as intermission begins, Big Nazo makes their move. The misbehaving aliens sneak in the back of the concert hall and take over. They have created a mini-space opera featuring Bertrand as the one human who can play the “eclipse guitar” (a special guitar shaped like Aroostook County that is being raffled off for charity during the eclipse) and before we know it they are on stage. You can see footage of the unplanned bonus performance in the YouTube video below. As it turned out, there was no intermission after all and we had a lot of tiramisu to sell the next day. We’re still joking about how Big Nazo wrecked the show and that it’s a complete waste of time trying to control alien performance troupes.

The eclipse episodes continue,

Dave

May 8, 2024