The filmmaker, writer, actor, monologist, visual artist and valiant paladin of bad taste John Waters (Baltimore, 1946) passed through the Center for Contemporary Culture of Barcelona (CCCB) invited by the Spring Pro to chat for an hour with the singer, activist and ‘celebrity’ Samantha Hudson. The conversation was supposed to revolve around the formation of musical tastebut very soon it became clear that the subject was a mere pretext to stage a crazy chat about the most varied subjects, from the quality of music played in gay bars to the limits of humor, to the bras Divine wore and the difference between “self-violation” and “extreme masturbation & rdquor ;.
Dressed in an impossible combination of camouflage jacket and red pants, the man who brought to the screen the filthiest version of the Trashmen’s ‘Surfin’ Bird’ ever seen delighted the fans who packed the CCCB’s Sala Teatre with some hilarious snippets from his musical autobiography: his childhood glued to the radio listening to black music (“in Baltimore everyone listened to black music; even the racists did it”); the epiphanic discovery of that “music of juvenile delinquents & rdquor; called rock and roll; his fondness for so-called ‘novelty songs’ or banal songs on current affairs (“it’s a shame the tradition of ‘novelty songs’ has been lost; why isn’t there a song that says ‘you’re my covid girl’ or something like that?”), and the advent of punk.
“The arrival of punk made me interested in contemporary music again,” said Waters, who for years has been the master of ceremonies at a punk rock festival called Mosswood Meltdown in Oakland. “The problem with punk is that the musicians have gotten older, they are almost my age.. They keep throwing themselves off the stage, but now they’re fat and the audience drops them. You can no longer tell if they are skinheads or just bald & rdquor ;, he recounted to the laughter of the audience.
Tribute to Little Richard
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Waters, whose characteristic mustache was born as a tribute to Little Richard (“when ‘Lucille’ was playing at home, the porcelain was shaking and my parents were really scared; I adored him for that & rdquor;), he acknowledged having a very varied musical taste that ranges from classical music and opera to hip-hop. “Actually, there is no genre that I do not like & rdquor ;, she pointed out, before assuring that guilty pleasures do not exist neither in music nor in art. “If you like something, why should you feel guilty? Because your friends don’t like it? Fuck them! & rdquor ;.
Samantha Hudson, who led the conversation with amused delirium and her “English from Magaluf”, asked the director of ‘Pink Flamingos’ what song would you like to be played at your funeral. After giving an answer (he chose two: ‘Happy Go Lucky Me’, by Paul Evans, which plays in his film ‘Pecker’, and ‘The Joker’, by Billy Myles), the filmmaker told a priceless anecdote about the German singer Nico (died 1988): “One day I asked him if he would sing at my funeral and he replied, very seriously: ‘I don’t know. When are you going to die?’& rdquor ;.