At the Hollywood Theatre, the Organ Grinders silent film series takes you to Africa with Lon Chaney and Lionel Barrymore as your guides.
The Subterranean Howl storms the stage preaching with frequencies not meant for the instruments from which they emanate. The sermon: Tod Browning’s WEST OF ZANZIBAR, a 1928 tale of magic and revenge. The Subterranean Howl, taking their name from Kerouac’s “The Subterraneans” and Ginsberg’s “Howl”, indulges the listeners’ ears with dynamics ranging from the howl of a deranged street preacher to the murmur of a subterranean river.
If there’s one thing The Subterranean Howl has mastered, it’s dynamics. As one writer eloquently puts it, “Like the beat writers from which their name borrows, The Subterranean Howl leave style as an afterthought and spontaneously create music that is both catchy and surprisingly fresh.” It is precisely this amalgamation of sweet and tender melodies and dance inspiring grooves juxtaposed with earth-threatening sonic explosions that give the band their unique, a-pop-alyptic sound.
In a special one-time performance, the Hollywood Theatre is transformed back to its vaudeville days of bowler hat bedecked musicians and big screen spectacles.
ORGAN GRINDERS – From under the screen, the sounds of modern groups are paired with movies from a different era, updating the genre of Silent Film accompaniment to the sounds around us today. Organ Grinders revisits the original vision of the Hollywood Theatre, built in 1926 with an orchestra pit and a hydraulically ascending theatre organ.
WEST OF ZANZIBAR – Flint, a Limehouse magician, loses the use of his legs as the result of a fight with Crane, an ivory trader who has taken an interest in Flint’s wife. Several months later, Mrs. Flint dies, leaving behind a daughter, Maizie, whom the magician believes to be Crane’s child rather than his own. Flint takes the child and goes to Africa.
