July 27, 2006

[Originally published in the 2005 Expo newspaper]

[Read about other guerrilla art interventions in the Expo DIY Library.]

A mutant lovechild of traditional peripatetic music and ecstatic turmoil, the Extra Action Marching Band is a generously proportioned, smartly attired group of performers, including a hypnotic drum corps, a wicked-ass brass section and a provocatively uplifting flag squadron.

Instead of marching, we tend to leap, ooze, shuffle, loiter or crawl around. The overall performance spectacle gets people excited, laughing and dancing. Our repertoire, both originals and adaptations, includes such genres as bastard hybrids of whacked-out, frenetic Eastern European Gypsy numbers, big-band heavy metal waltzes and Afro-Latin industrial free-jazz slo-jams.

We've played every conceivable venue in the San Francisco Bay Area, and across the U.S. and Europe on various tours, in both elegant establishments of great renown and ignominious dives.

You've undoubtedly seen and heard us in countless guerrilla incarnations: giant robot battles, art galleries and museums, presidential campaigns and political uprisings, demolition derbies, liquor stores, public transit stations, libraries, public and private bathrooms, crank calls and impromptu street invasions.

A favorite, and also the shortest, guerrilla performance of ours was the invasion of the Tonga Room at the Fairmont Hotel.

We got halfway through one song, interrupting the Casio-like rhythms of the floating jazz-fuzak combo, before the bouncer managed to cut off "Black Chicken" by vigorously waving his arms and violently shaking his head.

"This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen," he inveighed, outraged.

We received this as praise and left satisfied, unwilling to be arrested for marching through an enjoyably artificial paradise blessed with ersatz tropical weather but ruined by the unsustainable expense of umbrella drinks.

We performed at the very large anti-war protest at the start of the second invasion of Iraq. As we broke off from the main march, we were followed by a phalanx of fifty police in full riot gear.

We were headed to the well-loved leather daddy bar, the Hole in the Wall. When they realized where we were going, they turned back in a slow and awkward manner, departing to impose martial law on some other musical entertainer.

Audience reactions encompass the following: amusement, bemusement, indignant disgust, studied offense at the self-objectification of the flag team, envy, groping, aggression, dancing, yelling.

Sometimes performances go ecstatically well. Other times it all goes pear-shaped, and I use this to reassure myself that we are taking risks by playing in unfamiliar situations.

Check out www.extra-action.com for details.