Music Style One Man Band From Another Planet

Musical Influences Spike Jones, Tom Waits, Django Reinhardt, Screamin' Jay Hawkins

Similar Artists Tragic Roundabout, Oooh Sticky

Artist History Ever since I was a little kid I always loved to play music, but I always said I'd never become a professional musician. I felt that if I did it for money it would stop being fun (and we all know what godless sinners musicians are! Right?). It crept up so slowly that I didn't even notice it, till one day I said "oh !@#$&*?!! too late!" Here's how it all happened...I was born in Detroit but moved to Chicago at the age of 5. One of my strongest memories from childhood was when my grandmother took me to the 4-H jamboree thingy where there was a guy playing country music with one guitar in his hands, one under his feet and a concertina between his legs. When I was 13 I fell in love with the upright bass and took it up with my high school orchestra. I was never interested in learning to read music though. While the band played all those pieces that high school bands are so good at ruining, I was playing "Money" by Pink Floyd quietly in the background (usually in the same key as the others). Once, in the middle of a public recital, right at that moment where the music builds up to the dramatic climax, I slipped of the back of the risers with my(actually the school's) bass and gave some real punch to the music. After that they only trusted me with a fiberglass fiddle. Soon, I got myself a crappy electric bass and joined the only band that would have me. A heavy metal outfit called "the Mudslides"(sorry, no photo available). After high school, I attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where I studied Film/Animation and Sound Design. There I hooked up with some friends from Alabama, Vermont and Florida to form the Gerards. A sweet country rock sound brought us into many of the major venues of Chicago. The band was serious about playing and practicing. I was serious about not becoming a professional musician. Stormy seas were ahead...I wanted desperately to see the world, the Gerards wanted desperately a bass player. So, I left to travel Europe with a $10 banjo I found at the Maxwell St. market (for those of you who don't know it, it's the market in "the Blues Brothers" where John Lee Hooker is playing on the street. It has a long tradition of street performers, and was always a big inspiration to me. Mayor Richard Daley and the U of I have succeeded in moving and ruining it for everybody, and I hope that my fellow Chicagoans will think of this at election time!!!!). I had always played on the street in Chicago (much to the dismay of Chicago's men in blue), but more for the experience and the feeling than the money. I hate to say it, but my fellow countrymen are not famous for being the most generous patrons of the street arts. So, I left to do my little sight-seeing trip around Europe. Riding the night trains to see the cities and works that I had studied in school. I soon realized that I could extend my stay thanks to the money I was making on the street, in fact I realized that I was making just as much as I was at my job in Chicago(so, I didn't make that much in Chicago). Carnivale di Pavullo (MO), Italy '97 photo:Emanuela Ambrosino It was at this time that I realized. That I was playing full-time as a job, and didn't care much about going back to working in an office. So, I gave it everything I could, and so many times was paid back in applause and good hospitality. People would ask me all the time what is it that drives one to play on the street? The answer is as long as this website (No, sorry. It's longer!). But my response was invariable. There is no "high" like creating a feeling, an audience and applause out of nothing in a space that you choose yourself, and where without you would only be city hustle and bustle. After taking let's say an "artistic break" from the Greasy Pigs, I hooked up with a fantastic (I want to say punk, but lets just say "wild/high energy") klezmer band from Brighton, England called the "Tragic Roundabout". They were young, and with one of the greatest street spirits I had ever met, but they lived the life a bit to rough for me. After a short stint of traveling with them, the violinist(Fiona Barrow) and I left to form a violin and tea-box bass duet called "Fiasco di Casino". I just found their website here. From there, began a long period of jamming here and there with others, but mostly perfecting the idea of the one-man band. I began doing one-man tea-box bass shows with just bass and voice. After going to Turkey and studying the local folk music, I was inspired to build the stranierophono. With this invention, I began working at a lot of festivals, and doing more solo concerts. I also appeared on national television several times, including an episode of "Solletico", the most popular children's TV show in Italy. The Stranierophono is still one of my favorite instruments, but it was too undependable to count on for every day busking. So, I set out to perfect the traditional drum-kit on the back idea with the bordellophono.The Bordellophono proved a huge success, and also much more durable than the fragile Stranierophono. The new instrument being very mobile, allowed me to develop a style of moving constantly instead of making shows in one place. I found this invention better than the actual instrument, because it meant an end to problems with the police and local merchants.My last year in Italy proved to be rather interesting. I moved to Naples, and was immediately recruited by director Davide Iodice for a new production of Shakespeare's "the Tempest", translated into Neopolitan dialect. It was a very big production with production by "Libera-mente" of Napoli, and the "Center for Theatrical Research"(C.R.T.) of Milano. The actors ranged in ages from 22-75 and their experience from the classical Neopolitan "sceneggiata" to modern experimental. The show was a big success and took the 1999 UBU special prize, which is the Italian equivalent of a Tony award. The show is still running without me (all for the better if you ask me), and has dates all over the world. And now... I'm back in Chicago studying computer animation & making web pages, making cartoons for cable television,teaching animated cartooning and instrument building classes in the public schools, organizing festivals here in the city and doing the occasional gig solo and with Pros Arts Studio,(a nonprofit children's theater company). While I'm studying I thought it would be nice to help organize my brothers and sitters of the streets with my new skills.The Straniero has had many periods of change, and this is just one of them.

Group Members Mark Di Giuseppe

Instruments Everything known and unknown to man and woman!

Albums A Difficult Crowd

Press Reviews From Sulliavan's Travels, Chicago Magazine September 2000 Low Fidelity You've got to like a guy who plays the bordellofono. Or at least I do, but that may be because I'm a sucker for any version of "Puttin' On the Ritz" that includes gunshots and frog sounds. Which is why my favorite new performer is Mark Di Giuseppe, 36, inventor and owner of the only extant bordellofono. Plays under the name of the Straniero (the Foreigner), a tag he used in Naples where he played music for money in the streets and where he invented it-and eventually performed in a travelling production of The Tempest. Italy has a long tradition of street musicians, and it's where the Straniero headed after growing up in the Chicago suburbs, attending the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, spending a few years of playing with groups like the Gerards, and dodging cops who, while they may serve and protect, weren't terribly interested in listening to street music. "I went to Europe with a $10 banjo, and was playing to earn some money when I noticed that I was making an actual living. So I stayed for ten years," he says. And he's come back home, with the bordellofono he created in homage to Italian one-man bands. And, no, it's not just a bass drum strapped onto his back and an accordion. This is not "a couple of instruments slapped together," he says. "It's 30 instruments slapped together." He is too modest. It's the one-man band crossed with the microchip, a combination of tuba and trombone, any number of drums and cymbals, and a homemade synthesizer that he controls in the palm of his right hand while he's playing an equally homemade electric guitar. No wonder he christened it the bordellofono: Bordello in Italian doesn't mean just a house of prostitution-it's also slang for chaos. When he plays it, the instrument actually looks like the result of a Lyon & Healy/Harley Davidson collaboration. With flashing lights for effect. Di Giuseppe says the ensemble makes about 300 sounds, not the least of which are those generated by that synthesizer he built-a Spike Jones-inspired collection of boings, crashes, frog ribbits, mad laughter, echoes, police whistles, explosions, and the occasional aaoogah-aaoogah that he records from television cartoons and children's electronic toys. Yeah, I know, but trust me here. I heard him first on the street at 24th and Oakley during a street fair. He was playing "I Put a Spell On You" and had people following him down the road, a Pied Piper with a mad 30-piece orchestra strapped to his back. I caught him again at the Hot House-a second floor retro jazz club/art gallery/not-for-profit saloon at Wabash and Balbo-where he has performed every last Wednesday of the month (but, will do so no more) as part of an equally crazed show called the Backyard Variety Show. Just go see it (no, don't) it's Ed Sullivan on controlled substances. And they make a generous martini. The Straniero opens the show on the Stranierofono-a slightly more refined instrument of Di Giuseppe's that's like "a bass clarinet made from PVC tubing and Super Glue." He closes the show with the aforementioned bordellofono, performing "Puttin' On the Ritz"; a unique rendition of "C'est Si Bon" played for the first time anywhere, with screeching tires and gunfire; and my personal favorite, T.Rex's "Bang-a-Gong (Get It On)," with added explosions that had the waiting staff dancing semi-lewdly in the aisles. You want the full story, with sound and pictures, of how an untrained upright bass player from the northwest suburbs played heavy metal, country rock, and klezmer music-and then found happiness on the streets of Naples, his Web site is http://nav.to/grandbagwat. He'll be happy to sell you a CD; makes them himself. Of course. -Terry Sullivan Chicago Magazine,September 2000

Location Chicago, IL - USA

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