Koonda Holaa and the Beetchees
with Overhead
Barbarella, Orlando
May 7, 1999
by Marcus Leith
I kept hearing about Orlando's growing experimental music scene from one of my renegade free jazz friends, and I'll have to say I was a bit skeptical about the idea at first, until I finally got the opportunity to check out two of the scene's key performance groups: the mysterious Overhead and the already legendary Koonda Holaa and the Beetchees.
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photo by Marcus Leith |
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Koonda Holaa |
After Overhead's excellent, lulling/grating warm-up, the two-man Koonda Holaa and the Beetchees took the stage.Their performance started off with a long, introductory piece that helped the newcomers get a little taste of the whole Koonda Holaa mythology, and bring the old fans back home into the surreal groove.After spouting out a farcical introduction heavily laced with delay effects, Kamilsky, the group's front man, proclaimed with mock-pomposity, "I am Jesus Cock. I am the King of Pop," over a sonic backdrop of shimmering electronics. His voice came across strong and charismatic, flavored by a wonderful Czech accent. After he repeated this proclamation several times, the frantic drumming of his co-conspirator Randy Scarbeary kicked in, as well as a barrage of demonic-sounding, modulated, vocal samples. After the music began to take on a more song-like structure, Kamilsky chanted his group's hilarious theme mantra that pokes fun at the superficial people of the world while showing his love for wordplay: "Lying out on beetches [beaches], listening to Beetchees [Bee Gees], hanging out with beetches [bitches]."
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photo by Marcus Leith |
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Koonda Holaa |
Much of Kamilsky's music is an imaginative combination of punk, industrial, trip-hop, and minor key, eastern European dirges.Many of his songs feature a strong, theatrical bent. Kamilsky delivered some of his more satirical lyrics with a mock-imperialistic tone. Some of his songs seemed to be humorous attacks on the extremes of both the communist system he once lived under in Czechoslovakia and the capitalist system of his new home country.Kamilsky came across like a much-needed jester for our age -- a persona that suggests a combination of Charlie Chaplin's characters in Modern Times and The Great Dictator and a psychotic Mork from Ork.Kamilsky also dressed the part of the jester very well, in his orange L.A. County prisoner's uniform with his hair tied up in a big, absurd-looking tuft. While Koonda Holaa and the Beetchees would be a great group to see anywhere in the world, I am convinced that are the group to see in Orlando.Hopefully, Kamilsky's imaginative genius will continue to inspire other groups and breathe fresh air into a local music scene that often appears very dull on the surface.
