The Eccentric Orchestra of LA

My old friend, the maverick director Tony Kaye, best known for American History X and a slew of fine music videos for Johnny Cash and the Red Hot Chili Peppers amongst others, is looking to bring the strange and unusual back into music by holding an open audition in Los Angeles for any musician this weekend. There are only two provisos for the musicians – they must be proficient with an instrument or with digital musical technology and they must be eccentric, or “excentric” as the press release puts it.

Tony feels “that the time has come for a band or orchestra of eccentric musicians to take the world by storm and make it a better place” and to achieve this, any participating musicians will be assessed for true eccentricity by psychiatrists and psychoanalysts as well as having their musical ability judged by more established musicians.

I wish him luck with the venture. Musicians are a wilful bunch, so corralling an group of true eccentrics into a fully functioning orchestra or band sounds like it could be as much work as herding cats whilst wearing nothing but a blindfold. But then, Tony’s life was never ordinary. He is one of the last great purveyors of oddness, spectacle and ‘out there’ out there. It seeps from his pores. Nobody but Tony would stage such an audition in these X Factored times.

Something so spectacularly different, in all senses, can only be good for music. I’m certain that this will be the beginning of a fascinating journey – one I’ll keep mentioning here as it progresses…