Hot Talent Buffet: The 2nd Helping

Chris really wants you to get in front of a crowd. He wants you to have a microphone. He wants to see what will happen... Awkward is good. Confrontational is better. Shy is fine. Loudness is encouraged. Weirder the better...

This is Hot Talent Buffet: The 2nd Helping. 





Chris Butterfield (pictured^) heads Tool & Die Inc and sings with all his limbs and lymph nodes with Pink Lightning. He co-organizer Salvador Caramagno to put on a talent-show/vaudeville-improv variety night last August called Hot Talent Buffet. The competition was to see who was the biggest ham in the room... A trophy would be awarded to the most animated of performers...

This weekend at the UFO Factory, it's all about you and your own freak flag. Plenty of concert flyers encourage you to wave this freak flag with reckless abandon, but Hot Talent Buffet is going to put that overused motto where its mouth is... Act on impulse. Use what you got. Embrace your inner burlesque, your screwball spirit animal, the sweet/strange stooge inside us all...

You somehow tricked me into hosting open-mic nights. I didn't realize it at the time, how insistent and encouraging you were for me to get up and read my writing in front of people...
Butterfield: Encouraging folks to take the stage is like pushing a fully clothed person into a pool. I love to watch em splash and I only push those who can swim -- mostly. You have a laugh either way. Hey, you shouldn’t stand so close to an impresario and a pool. Live performance is so damn disarming and exciting and terrifying. It’s a transcendental experience that requires release as much as it does control. Half my childhood was lived in my Grandfather’s home, and he loved early cinema comedy. That planted a seed. Back in the days of tooth powder and edgy drinks like floats, vaudeville was the predominant form of entertainment for good reason. There’s a mystery that is only illuminated by spotlight. Humility can be endearing and hysterical. The audience is with you.

How'd it go last year?

Butterfield: Truthfully, last year’s show, which was our first show, was a beautiful disaster. Some logistical and staging stuff went awry on the organizational end. It was mine and co-organizer Salvador Caramagno’s first attempt at putting on a show of its kind. It turns out there are a lot of moving parts with twenty unique acts. It’s a trial by fire kind of show. Precariousness is the main character. But don’t get me wrong, we had some fine acts carry the night. I get goosebumps when I think of the Gene Simmons look-a-like not cooperating with our host for his on-stage interview. Couldn’t write that -- and we didn’t! Ahja Majifa gave a dazzling performance of blindfolded piano virtuosity. There was mystery bag freestyle with Passalacqua, cannibal burlesque from Kitty Hawkk, a real life Soda Rat singing a tender rendition of Little Green Apples, Sam Carmello’s TOP HAM-winning performance as an over-sexualized intergalactic lounge star, and so much more....


Where's the motivation come from? What draws you to performance art, like this... ? Butterfield: My friend and oft-collaborator, Ryan Standfest, runs a publication house called Rotland Press that is entirely devoted to dark humor and all things absurd and titillating. Raunchy stuff! We’ve collaborated several times in slapstick and ritualistic stage plays under the banner of Cabaret Black Eye. It was an important catalyst for Hot Talent Buffet. His influence is partly to blame...

But I’ve been fascinated with performance art since I can remember, and music just happened to be an entry point. I like a confrontational experience -- not necessarily aggressive in nature, but something that grabs at the collar and forces reexamination. I’m interested in the unconventional and pursuing absurdity as a means of investigation.


What's up this year? It says it's hosted by someone named 'Freshness...'? Butterfield: Twenty acts again, but a bigger trophy...with a new tofu option in addition to Ham, for champion Top Ham. The evening will be professionally filmed by Hound Lab Films. Freshness is wearing a brand new Jnco bowling shirt. I’m wearing a tie. Johnnie Penn is spinning choice cuts throughout the show in addition to a feel good dance party immediately following. It’s a diverse mix of people/performers celebrating the individuality of their own creative spirit. And, yes, Freshness is the mystery host of Hot Talent Buffet... I met Freshness at Macomb Mall in 2002. He was being thrown out of Spencer’s Gifts in a boisterous display. He talked my ear off as I passed by and tried to sell me a half-filled sleeve of Little Caesars crazy bread for $6. We became fast friends. Beyond that tidbit, I’m not at liberty to divulge anything more. You’ll have to see for yourselves. Freshness is waiting to shock you....

Come for the buffet...stay for the talent. Exterminate your self-consciousness...