Today's Topics:
a different kind of reverend?
postings from Satan
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Date: Wed, 23 Aug 89 21:11:50 -0400
From: Henry Mensch <henry@garp.mit.edu>
Message-Id: <8908240111.AA17794@GARP.MIT.EDU>
Subject: a different kind of reverend?
Reply-To: henry@garp.mit.edu
pinched from the new york times ...
ATLANTA -- "Bless this restaurant," says the Rev. Billy C.
Wirtz, having consumed a salad, half a chicken, a bowl of banana
pudding and several glasses of iced tea at the Cheshire Motor Inn's
Colonnade Restaurant during the vesper hour Sunday evening.
"Having food this good this close to my room makes up for not
having a swimming pool here."
It also helps that the staff cordially welcomes and serves the
6- foot-4-inch Wirtz, whose long reddish-blond hair, goatee,
tattoos and jeans suggest he is something other than a reverent
reverend.
A cult leader, perhaps?
Unfortunately, yes, admits Wirtz, 35, who is neither reverent
nor reverend. His House of Polyester Worship and Horizontal
Throbbing Teenage Desire Interfaith Apocalyptic Worldwide Love
Gospel Tabernacle is unchartered and, what's worse, his "Deep
Fried and Sanctified" album of satirical songs is uncharted.
But this is a time of transition for Wirtz, who will seek
converts to his gospel- and rhythm-and-blues-influenced music and
Brother Dave Gardner-style humor Tuesday night at the Point
nightspot in Little Five Points. At the moment, neither he nor his
flock is certain whether his movement belongs in music or comedy
clubs.
"There's nobody doing what I'm doing in the music field and
nobody doing what I'm doing in the comedy clubs," says Wirtz. "I
just hope I don't get too sore from straddling the fence."
Ideally, he'd like to find a following large enough to justify
playing small halls and theaters exclusively instead of mixing
one-nighters in music clubs, where the structure of his show can
vary, with weeklong stands in comedy clubs, where audiences and
club managers expect rapid-fire laughs. First, however, he must
expand what is basically an East Coast cult following.
Wirtz hoped that a breakout might happen after the release in
May of "Deep Fried and Sanctified," his first album for Hightone
Records of Oakland, Calif. But sales have tapered off at about
10,000 copies, despite favorable reviews in People, Playboy,
Musician and Easyriders magazines and several major daily
newspapers.
Interesting comparisons are easily drawn. Wirtz has been
described as a mutant hybrid of Randy Newman, Sam Kinison and Meade
Lux Lewis and as a Dixiefied answer to "Weird" Al Yankovic who is
living in a hillbilly Twilight Zone.
All of the above are correct. A high-energy, piano-pounding
performer like the boogie-woogie innovating Lewis, Wirtz asks the
musical question, "Will There Be a Shopping Mall in Heaven?" He
falls in love with a midget wrestler in "Teenie Weenie Meanie"
and worries about little old widows driving Lincoln Continentals to
Florida in "Grandma's at the Wheel" in a manner reminiscent of
the biting humor of the late Gardner.
His songs are played by disc jockeys reaching for laughs during
morning drive time, but they don't fit into the regular playlists
of any commercial stations. "MTV and (TBS SuperStation's)
`Nightracks' have used my video of `Teenie Weenie Meanie,' " Wirtz
says. "But I get buried somewhere down the line behind the latest
major releases."
But the Springfield, Va., native, who operates out of Raleigh,
N.C., hopes to go national with some major-city club dates this
fall and winter and the LP he plans to release early next year.
"All indications point toward a national swing soon," he says,
"but I've got to get some radio support. Still, you've got to
remember I come from playing for $25 a night in heavy-duty
hillbilly clubs and bars and years of riding up and down the road
in unheated, un-air-conditioned vans, and I've only been involved
in comedy clubs for the last two or three years."
A voracious reader, Wirtz grapples with long-established
stereotypes and topical subjects. "Some of my characterizations
may be redneck-ish," he says, "and my political views do have a
leftist slant to them.
"But I think of myself as a musical humorist. It's like Brother
Dave Gardner meeting Mark Russell if both of them had experienced
the psychedelic 1960s in their youth, as opposed to the periods
they grew up in."
Wirtz, who attended the University of Georgia in 1974 before
receiving a bachelor's degree from James Madison University in
1979, developed his musical style listening to traditional gospel
groups and blues. After playing with several country and rock bands
while in college, he spent time on the road with bluesman Sunnyland
Slim in 1979 and '80, a period he considers pivotal in the
development of his ministerial persona.
"I really couldn't play piano good enough for Sunnyland to
teach me anything about music," Wirtz says, "but he told me that
if I'd learn a few songs and learn how to entertain people, I'd
always find work.
"I started out then as a solo act, and the satirical approach
and the Rev. Billy C. Wirtz came into being in 1982. I've never had
a month of not playing since then."
He's getting some respect from crowds now, he believes, and
thinks he's verging on a career breakthrough. "But, in this
business," he adds, "the entire reality is hurry up and wait for
success."
For use by clients of the New York Times News Service
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Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1989 9:35:58 EDT
From: Jonathan Trudel <trudel@caip.rutgers.edu>
Subject: postings from Satan
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.619968958.trudel@caip.rutgers.edu>
> See ya in my admissions office.
> satan @ uwovax.bitnet
It figures he'd be on Bitnet.
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End of SubGenius Digest
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