Blowfly for president

Who’s ready for some old-time rap music? I thought I was until Clarence Reid (the man behind Blowfly’s Mexican-wrestler mask) “misread” my Chico State Basketball shirt as saying “I hate rappers” and flipped me the bird with an abnormally long middle finger.

And that was not the last bird by a long shot.

The show Sunday night at Nick’s Night Club was reminiscent of what I imagine some of the first punk/rap shows may have looked like in some basement in Manhattan circa 1983, only with less overt drug use and only slightly fewer mullets. (None more beautifully flaunted than that of Handsome Gorgeous, but I digress.)

Gorgeous Armada marched onto the stage to an old-fashioned hand praise that provided the meter for a mashup of “I’m Too Sexy” and “Rhythm Nation.” What?! As special guests they brought out a few members of Chico’s original party band, Brutilicus Maximus, for the Blowfly-approved “Truck Stop Butt Fuck.”

The Show Is The Rainbow gave us his take on what a punk/rap show should look like. Picture Jurassic 5’s Cut Chemist mixed with Hollywood Squares staple Bruce Vilanch … half naked and on top of the bar. All this was sandwiched in with local rap crew Dr. Becky Sagers, Ph.D., and old-school punk band ANTiSEEN, which has played with the onstage-defecating GG Allin.

The man who is Blowfly has an infectious … um … energy about him that is complemented by an in-your-face, fuck-off aura that at first is a bit unsettling. I mean, a 69-year-old black dude, dressed up in a Mexican-wrestler-superhero suit, playing inordinately loud and sexually explicit punk-rock parodies of old rock-'n'-roll and R&B classics, could be viewed as elder self-abuse.

But once you see the original dirty rapper and hear some of the most God-awful things coming out of his mouth, you get it. This is about loosening the reins that our red, white and blue, “Ameri-Christian” society places on us through fear, oppression and division. This is about coming (or cumming) together and having fun.

His cover of Sam & Dave’s “Soul Man” helped reiterate this point, stating that women don’t want Batman, Superman or Spiderman; they want, as Blowfly sang it, a “Hole Man.” People danced with armfuls of records waiting to be signed. His band—which included former Fishbone bassist Norwood, Uncle Tom on drums dressed in his Uncle Sam suit, and Greg Bell on guitar— was accompanied by plenty of screams and wah-wahs and dick-holding.

The one thing I can say with any certainty is that Blowfly might have the longest fingers known to man.