Gleem Bloatheart at CIRCLE A | March 9, 2018
Gleem Bloatheart has nothin' for sale, and he's got nothin' to lose.
M. Baggz March 16, 2018
Cramming nineteen a capella country songs into a twenty-seven-minute set on Friday night one week ago at Circle A in Milwaukee, Gleem Bloatheart tosses a flimsy veil over his bitterness toward the country music industry and all of the country artists out there who, he points out, "have a full band, that have an accompaniment of a recording studio, have a complement of song writers, and lemme just say—lemme be frank—talent." Despite Bloatheart's want of a band, he presses squalidly on, filling in the instrumental parts between lyrics with astonishingly realistic vocal replications: "Dunnn-ch-da-dunnn-ch-da-dunnn-ch-da-dunnn" to simulate a bobbing bass line plus backbeat, "burrr-nur-nee-new-new" to mimic a twangy guitar solo.
Enjoy a sampling of Gleem Bloatheart's stylings. ↓
Performing shoeless in a cowboy hat, vacillating between an all-purpose Southern drawl and what sounds more like an impression of Barack Obama, Mr. Bloatheart delivers a show provincially intended for Northern ears only. "Faulkner, I know Faulkner's from the South. I realize that there's a lotta intelligent people from the South. Got the Space Program there, whole thing," he backpedals after praising the intelligence of his Northern audience. This ambivalence toward the American South only enhances the mystique of Gleem Bloatheart, who is Wiseau-ishly evasive regarding his own origins: Is he from that "indeterminate Southern state that [he is] from" or does he "live all over" or is he "from America, Wisconsin"?
What we do gather about Mr. Bloatheart is a collection of facts which amount to a portrait of the mythical country outlaw. He has been in and out of prison (in Waupun, WI, strangely). "I got Johnny Law on my tail." He is under-employed and no stranger to hard luck, rapidly moving through jobs from which he is inevitably fired, sometimes three in a week. "Whatever happened to loyalty?" he sings. At some point he married a whife, and later she gave him gonorrhea. He has a daughter, presumably the product of an anonymous conjugal union at a truck stop:
Raisin' my child in a thru-way rest stop, gettin' my kicks for half off the typical price [mouth instrumental interlude] Somethin's not right. [mouth instrumental interlude] Bendin' the rules on personal hygiene, makin' my way to Tucson where I've gotta truck. Feelin' quite nice. [mouth drum fill] 'Cause I'm a bald, rude drifter.
Following a mic check including all of the mouth instruments in the band as well as backup vocals (also done by Gleem), the set opens with "Ginger Brandy" and proceeds rapid-fire through seventeen additional titles including "Halfway House" ("halfway house, all the way touchin'"), "Country Song"—which sounds strangely similar in every single way to a song by the same name from Milwaukee band FUDGY—"Instrumental," "Huffin'," "Brett" (about Gleem's cousin), and, a few songs later, "Brent" (about his other cousin). Songs range in length from 13 seconds to an 80-second cover of The Carpenters' 7-plus-minute version of Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft.
For that one, guest artist "Dr. Timothy Stephanie" joins Bloatheart on the stage. When prompted to play a piano solo, Dr. Timothy Stephanie, taking a cue from Gleem, simulates the piano with his voice rather than playing the keyboard that is set up for Bagsong and ready to play directly in front of him ("The piano was right there! Ugh, what an IDIOT!" he self-chides after accidentally plunking a few keys on his way offstage).
Listen to Gleem. ↓
Alongside all of the intentionally slapdash caricaturizing, the performance's mockery of Capitalism and the thoughtless pursuit of its cultural trappings is implicitly audible:
[mouth drum intro] Hot tubs. I been tempted. Cheerleaders. I been tempted. Male cheerleaders. I been tempted. Different kinda hot tub. I been tempted. Cool cars, oooooh, I been tempted. Fatty foods, oh! I been tempted. [mouth guitar solo]
It is also audible explicitly, if briefly and dismissively, in Gleem's remarks between songs:
"I hope everyone's tippin' the wait staff tonight. And uh, tippin', uh, Paul [the door person]... uh.. and... uh... tippin' each other Capitalism's a vampire so I hope y'all can appreciate the fact that we're all in a race to the bottom and that we need to exchange as many dollars between each other as possible.. uhh... That's just a side thing. It's also the reason I got fired from the candy factory."
The casually costumed strange man named Gleem Bloatheart, who vows to (possibly) never return to the stage to once again engage the audience in enabling his fantasy of having recorded and released three albums, is not endorsed by ANYONE. This is a fact he humbly proclaims, lamenting his pursuant lack of income. But maybe Mr. Bloatheart's luck is all about to change with his first endorsement: My name is Mo Baggz, and I endorse Gleem Bloatheart