Saturday, 19. October 2013
The Dark Carnival: Tod Brownings early Silent Films
Royal, Baden
www.royalbaden.ch
Steve Buchanan (Guitar, Alto Saxophone, Live Electronics)
This first collaboration of director Tod Browning and actors Lon Chaney and Priscilla Dean set the tone for a number of crime films the trio would make at Universal. Versatile Dean is tough as nails as „The Gutter Rose“ and endearingly charming as the reformed Mary Stevens, waitress. Chaney is snaringly menacing as 'Stoop' Connors, street tough. The film is as entertaining as it is unpredictable.
American multi-instrumentalist and dancer Steve Buchanan has created a score for this film that makes virtuoso use of three instruments. By means of an alto saxophone, an electric guitar and his 2nd Line – an electrically amplified tap dance device he invented himself – Buchanan manages to live up acoustically to the film.
Steve Buchanan (Guitar, Alto Saxophone, Live Electronics), Los Dos (Voice, Guitar, Drums)
None other than Douglas Fairbanks plays the appropriately named polytoxicomaniac and ingenious detective Coke Ennyday in this short Sherlock Holmes parody, based on a scenario by Tod Browning. Dividing his days between eating, sleeping, drinking and drug-taking, he occasionally also puts a stop to a drug smuggling ring. Not, however, without testing the purity of the merchandise beforehand.
Los Dos (Voice, Guitar, Drums)
In Browning’s second collaboration with Chaney and Dean, Confucian wisdom confronts criminal shrewdness. In San Francisco’s Chinatown, gangsters are mutually ripping each other off. But Chinese wise man Chang Lo stands steadfast amidst the maelstrom of revenge and vendetta the protagonists are caught up in.
Los Dos Monos are singer and guitarist Han Sue Lee Tischhauser and drummer Andy Wettstein. Those remembering last year‘s performance to another Tod Browning classic, set in the world of the circus, will be curious to hear them stir up Chinatown‘s gangster world.