The Buffalo Muskrat Show

Because of the unrelenting demand of the predominant majority of my reader (all one of you), I thought I would, explain the River of Rags video I posted the other day. But first, an interlude. Friends, it’s time for The Buffalo Muskrat Show!

Here’s the explanation: Many moons ago I lived on the arty East Side of Milwaukee. I worked at the arty Oriental Theater, where I mostly swept floors, but also had stints in the box office and behind the concession stand. It was a reasonable gig for vague, incongruent people like me, as it wasn’t very demanding and kept me running with some interesting, semi-arty people. I was not one of the arty people myself, and mostly I kept to the very outermost fringes of the world of the truly artistic, but I knew people who knew people, some of whom actually knew people themselves.

Across the street from the Oriental Theater was a vintage clothing shop, run by a Mr. Jerry Fortier, called Sweet Doomed Angel. It was the place where arty people shopped for their duds. Me, being not arty, got my clothes from Sears. Or somewhere. I dressed to blend into the background, and mostly still do. I did not know Mr. Fortier, and still don’t, but I knew people who did.

Mr. Fortier was an Arty Person. He had a local band called the Trance And Dance band (and I, being slow on the uptake, required YEARS to realize the name was a pun). He also made art films, among them, The Buffalo Muskrat Show, which I saw ONCE back in the 1980s, and the song stuck with me ever since. Loved it. But until the advent of YouTube, chances of a repeat viewing of such an obscure piece of cinema were nil.

River of Rags was Mr. Fortier’s opus - a feature length documentary on the used clothing trade, which is allegedly more fascinating than you might think. I have not seen this movie. I heard it was a good effort, especially considering that it was made back in the day when gathering the resources to create such a thing was no easy matter. But back to the point: the clip I posted from the other day sparked a bit of nostalgia for me, because back in the 1980s, I was pretty much daily on the scene where these pictures were shot. In the clip I posted, you’re seeing a truck driving west on Milwaukee’s North Avenue turning the corner south onto Farwell Avenue, which is where the Oriental Theater is. The truck pulls up to the front of Sweet Doomed Angel, directly across the street from the Oriental, and the unloading that you see taking place is, I presume, part of the River of Rags bidniz that is the theme of the film. Then you have the clips of the Violent Femmes playing a show at the Oriental, which they did several times over the course of the eons. And no, I was not at this particular show either.

However, I was at the famous Femmes show, the one where they were discovered by Chrissie Hynde as they were busking outside the theater the afternoon before The Pretenders played our venue. The Femmes would play right outside our door often in those days, sometimes while I was sitting in the box office waiting to sell tickets, and often I was the only one who could hear them. It was quite a din, and the acoustics in the theater lobby were terrible.

I did not really know the kids in the band, but I had sort of a nodding acquaintance with Brian Richie, the bass player — we’d pass each other on the street now and then. The story goes that they were playing on the street, Chrissie sees them, and boom, they’re on the bill for that show’s line-up. And the next thing you know, they’re signed to a record deal.

What never gets mentioned in the telling of this tale — and I can speak with authority here because I was there – is that the boys (and remember, I love these guys) the boys were booed off the stage. They got a very bad response from the crowd, which had just seen a harder-edge punkish opening act (the Blasters, if I recall correctly, but I could be wrong), and following that with the Femmes and their brand of weenie acoustic scruff did not go over well. At all. I ran into Gordon Gano after the show and remember saying some words of encouragement to him, assuming that he was feeling badly about how things went during the performance. I doubt he’d remember that 20-second incident, though, as I’m guessing his mind was on much bigger things just then. The moral of the story being, I guess, that your one big lucky break can be quite nasty at the moment it’s actually happening.

So there you go. Some mysteries solved. Others raised, perhaps. And the closest I’ve ever been to genuine Rock & Roll History.

Also, I probably hold the record for being the person who has cleaned up after The Rocky Horror Picture Show more than anybody else ever. I’m not kidding. 

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