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From the mouth of Beardyman
There are about ninety-eight muscles in the face. Add a tongue, some lungs and the throat area and you’re well past 100 separate flexing pieces of flesh. Friday night at the Red Marquee, I saw all 100-plus collaborating in ways I’d never seen before, collectively creating some of the most staggering sounds.
Meet Beardyman.
Boy and his toys
Beatboxers are almost always associated with hip hop, but throughout his set, Beardyman (nee’ London’s Darren Foreman) proceeded to chew up and spit out a shocking number of musical genres – pop, rock, house, even 80’s hair metal. After a 10-minute mic session standing alone in front of the crowd, Foreman walked behind his table of toys: four Korg Kaoss Pads and other bits and bobs to manipulate what exits his lips. Wow.
Beardyman is much more than a beatboxer. He is a DJ, who just happens to sample only himself. And he is a brilliant vocal impersonator. Just a small sample of his set saw him cover Prince (”Kiss”), Queen (”We Will Rock You”), White Stripes (”7-Nation Army”), Blur (”Song 2″) and even Bon Jovi (”Living on a Prayer”). Each was a stunning impersonation, right down to the facial expressions and posturing.
There were also long, slow-building club numbers, which lost me at times, but my guess is that he’s tired of doing mere parlor tricks, turning said covers into thumping beatbox jams, and now want to build his own body of work. But for his last number, he had one last cover in store: “Teardrop” by Massive Attack. And to my surprise, the crowd didn’t seem to pick up on it. I mean, they were SCREAMING back the choruses of Bon Jovi and Blur, but when his pitch-perfect impersonation of Elizabeth Frazier’s vocal came on the crowd kept dancing. Hmm.
This was the second of three Fujirock performances for Foreman, the last being billed as a duel between his Japanese kindred spirit, Tucker. Highly, highly recommended.
