Maybe I spend too much time around here, but I couldn’t help seeing Beck’s weekend performances on Saturday Night Live through a Walker lens. The song, “Clap Hands,” has a Stomp-esque percussion bit in which spiky-haired musicians at an elegant diner table keep the beat with utensils… not so different from the performance spiky-haired Joe Chvala of Minneapolis did here last year.
Then there’s the marionettes, a set of rock-band puppets jamming in rhythm with their human likenesses… not unlike last January’s Walker performance of Don’t Trust Anyone Over 30 by Dan Graham, Tony Oursler, Japanther, and Being John Malkovich puppeteer Philip Huber. (The multimedia performance, which went on to the Whitney Biennial, was a trippy puppet rock-opera about the rise and fall of fictitious ’60s rock star, Neil Sky, based on the film Wild in the Streets.)
Is it just me? Watch the performance and see what you think:
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