FAQ
FAQ
Well, what more do you need? Didn't you look at the various pages I labored hard to create?
How old is this Dutch guy?
No one really knows for sure. All I can tell you is that when asked this question several years back, he would always give an answer calculated to make him appear younger than the questioner. Now, he's trying to make himself look older than everyone else - that "Dorian Gray of Sacramento" thing.
Why don't the lights blink at the top of this page?
I figured you might be getting tired of them by now. I don't really want to end up in the Netscape Hall of Shame, you know.
That's a toughie. If you really want to know you should buy the CD, eh? In the beginning, Dutch and Gizmo Avery wrote some very interesting and complex tunes, full of tempo and key changes. They were designed with theatrics in mind. Sweet Dreams, Icicle World, Around the Block, Infant Dalmations, the Tango Medley and Dr. Rhubarb are good examples of these. As new members joined, they would bring their own influences with them, and the show started taking on more of that big band swing sound. Royal Crown Revue played on the same bill as Falconi when they stopped in Sacto, and inspired several members to write jumpers for Falconi. Louis Prima also became a big influence as the band started shifting from theatrics to music you can swing by. This was back in the early Nineties. The band eventually settled into it present mode of being a collage of different sounds and styles. You will get Dutch's tribute to Klezmer one minute, a hot jumper the next, followed by a sultry ballad, some kind of gimmick, some ska, Gizmo Avery doing his thing, and so on.
Dutch has his roots in Vaudeville. A Dutch Falconi show is like a variety show really.
What kinds of theatrics and gimmicks are involved?
Other gimmicks have included Dutch as a snake charm healer (is that what it's called?). Or once he opened a show at the Cattle Club by having the audience carry him in dead, resting in an open faced coffin. The band dragged the coffin from outside, through the bar, up to the stage, while the girls were dressed in black with veils, crying there eyes out while the band marched in playing a mournful dirge. When the coffin was set down, though, and the band members had taken their place, they started with Mambo Mia - a bouncy Latin tune, which wakes Dutch from the dead. Another show was set in Hell, with appropriate costumes and gimmicks.
There have been others. I haven't even mentioned Gene Avery's tunes, but you get the picture.
What was the "Penis Guillotine"?
This is the famous gimmick that made Falconi notorious. It requires it's own page to fully describe.
Sacramento suffers because it is routinely compared to San Francisco, which is 90 miles to the west. SF is known hereabouts simply as "the City", which makes us, I guess "Not a City."
But Sacto has it's good qualities. First off, it's not so insanely crowded or expensive like San Francisco. We are more relaxed here. Rent is cheap. As Dutch once said, "This is a good town to get work done." It's right in between the Big City and the small town. You've got some of the culture and sophistication of the former, but with the relaxed state of the latter. And if you need more, SF, Reno, Tahoe, skiing or the Pacific Ocean are all two hour drives away.
We've got Suburbs and Power Malls and Ghettos and Skyscrapers, etc.
We've also have a decent arts community going. While we may not ever be the next "Seattle", there are some extremely talented people who live here. They do the groundwork here. Hone their skills, build their chops, and then move on to bigger and better. Tom Hanks was a Sacramentan. Tesla grew up here (though we try to live that down).
As for the downtown area, I imagine every city has it's legends and soap operas concerning it's local musicians and artists and clubs and club owners and managers, etc. Sacramento is no different. Someday, I plan to either write a book or create a website devoted to the tales of this city. It would be a good tale, full of sex, drugs, scandal, ambitions, defeats. You know, the usual.
Really, just what is this Dutch Falconi thing?
What kind of music does Dutch Falconi play?
Dutch and the singers would sometimes go through 5 or 6 costume changes in one show. They'd have on Dalmation masks for Infant Dalmations, Mad Scientist stuff for Dr. Rhubarb, Threepenny Opera gimmicks for the Tango Medley, etc. A crowd favorite is Rocket Bra Revenge, which has the girls in tight, black, leather bondage getups with whips and chains, with extras in similar getups scurrying about the stage getting attacked by the girls. It was very Cormanesque. The band will always follow some kind of theme. Suit and Tie one night, drag the other, sometimes Dutch will tell the band to come as Pirates for one show, Cowboys the next. When they did a show in a bowling alley, long ago, Dutch had bowling shirts made for the band (which are quite the collectors item now). These bowling shirts became yet another costume.
It says Dutch Falconi is from Sacramento. Isn't that a cowtown?
It's interesting that Sacramento, which is the capitol of California - one of the largest economic powers in the world - is viewed as a town full of hicks. Thirty years ago, that may have been true. Now, Sacramento has grown up into Averageville, USA. We offer that perfect blend of young and old, poor and rich, wired and tired, that has all the big corporations coming to us to test new products. (We had Zima long before everyone else. Woo!)
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