SINCE
THEN, Dee Dee has filled every female role required
by the comedy sketches, a list of infamous women
that includes Tammy Baker, Catwoman, Wade Boggs'
girl friend whose name we can't now recall, Marcia
Clark from the O.J. trial, Shelley Fabares, Lulu, and most consistently and effectively, Connie
Francis. Dee Dee does "Where
the Boys Are" like there is no
tomorrow, no yesterday -- a timeless ode to Spring
Break. And we are bringing it back again this
season.
The
years have mounted with alarming speed, but the
comedy material remains fresh from TV land, as
our writers are 30 plus year veteran T.V. sitcom
producers - Gary Murphy is currently an Executive Producer on The Exes, a role he also held on Malcolm in the Middle, and Night Court, and before that a longtime writer for Johnny Carson. Our piano player/stage director, Larry
Strawther, left the Glass Packs for Laverne & Shirley and Happy Days 25 years ago, partnered with Gary to exec produce Night Court for five seasons, and later created and produced the show Most Extreme Elimination Challenge (MXC) -- think the ABC show Wipeout before they borrowed it without Japanese people. Larry and Gary know what's funny, where to
stand, where to edit, and so on, and the rest
of us defer to their judgment. Add to that comedian-
actor, personal friend and former sidekick of
David Letterman, Bob Sarlatte, and you've got
a pretty well qualified comedy tag team.
Perhaps
the most versatile guy in the group is a girl
and her name isn't Dee Dee. It's Jeannine -- Jeannine
O'Neal . Jeannine won the Bend, Oregon Patty Duke
Look alike Contest in 1978, but is really more
like the quiet studious Cathy Duke, until she
opens her mouth to sing. She joined us in 1988;
a mere baby that arrived only 13 years ago. Jeannine
is the most qualified utility girl there is; her
main instruments are tenor and bari sax, guitar,
bass and drums and she sings like an alley cat.
While she is a professional studio musician and
arranger, she only sings one song with the Glass
Packs and its not a Sunshine and Lolliop Lesley
Gore tune, it's a mean, friggin' Bob Seeger song
- "Betty Lou". She does dirty old man's
work with a smile.
Meanwhile, the supporting cast of veteran hambones
are fearless, hungry lab rats, willing to go anywhere
in any disguise for the cheese and each remains
responsible for that portion of the show that
he or she is dedicated to carry. Eighteen year
later, thirty years all together, Butch Whacks
& the Glass Packs continues as a live act
that is dangerously close to improv in light of
the time constraints imposed by our day jobs,
the distance still separates us and the amount
of new material that is added each year (usually
a third of the two hour show is new each year).
This year, for example, we are doing a sketch
on Bob Dylan's motorcycle accident (perhaps you
read about it) where the rootless troubadour wanders
away from the hospital and is found touring with
the Pharaohs in place of Sam the Sham - featuring
the dead on Dylan singing style by drummer Mike
Moore dressed as the Mr. Highway 61 Revisited
himself singing and blowing the harp to a two
minute medley of Lil' Red Riding hood/Wooly Bully
- just long enough to make the joke before the
sound of the song kills you.
Last year we reprised our County Show from the
70's act, this time featuring that Lonesome Cowpoke
Conway Twit who reminds us that "Cowpoke"
is just an expression (see
video clip --- "Country Show"
) before kicking up dust into "Six Days on
the Road". Conway is followed by a cotton
candy coiffed Dee Dee Crocket as Tammy Whynot?
, who brings the roof down with a mournful "Stand
By your Man", and Bob Sarlatte as jailbird
Hank Bunion (Johnny Cash on steroids) who is greeted
by the slam of prison door after recalling he
just got back from the Big House and can no longer
own a puppet in the State of Tennessee.
Yeah, we're a laugh riot. Last year we did the
Lettermen without pants. Don't ask us why this
is funny. Our writers guaranteed it would be and
it was. We sang the "Goin' Out of My Head/You're
Just to Good to Be True" letterman perfect
(Mike Moore, Jeannine O'Neal and Butch) as the
real Lettermen, while the three slick -haired,
sweater clad men without pants at center stage
pantomime our singing - complete with canned applause
loaded into our keyboard player's (Tom Thomasello)
sound effect disc.
The
middle third of the show consist of material that
is 2-4 year old and the last third is what remains
of the bearded chestnuts that chased into our
present careers in 1976. That middle third consists
this year of the "Glass Pack Time Machine"
- an excuse to go anywhere we want in music history
without the need for a current anniversary reference.
This year we are going back to the Summer of Love
only because when we did in 1997 it was of the
funniest things we had ever done, and Dee Dee
simply sing the fur off of "White Rabbit".
Bob Sarlatte as the Woodstock emcee, "Too
Much" Johnson, is worth the price of admission
- He can't find his van, he can't find his clip
board because his left arm is completely numb,
he eats the Airplane out of house and home - as
he walks on to "Warm San Francisco Nights,"
complete with mandolin "sway with me people".
Still kicking around is a very mangy "Three
Dog Night" who stomp on to the stage to the
musical accompaniment of "One (is the Loneliest
Number)" and then do their best to bumble
through "Joy To the World", but can't
remember any of the words except "and she
always had some mighty fine wine".
These
ventures off the straight and narrow path of 50's
and 60's music were made possible by the 1987
addition of Tom Thomassello, a 21-year veteran
professional arranger, who takes the black and
white versions of these songs and puts them properly
in Technicolor. When we need strings, he's got
them. Need an accordion? He's there with Lady
of Spain. Pedal steel? Comin' right up, pardner.
Did someone ask for sound effects? Tom has an
entire library of joke effects that are integral
to the Glass Packs show ranging from the "Ike
Turner punch ("Tshht)", the James Brown
"Yeow. Yeow. Yeow. Yeow" (Live from
South Carolina a State prison), and snorting cattledrive
steers to greet Conway Twit. Tom arranges the
difficult songs, back up the Lucky Strike Singers
(See
video page), writes chord charts for
the blind musicians to read, and directs this
band of fools into previously uncharted waters,
notwithstanding our lack of formal music training.
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