"Lucy, you have some 'splainin' to do..."
I'm going to give Tibor the benefit of the doubt and describe this as a extremely "loving tribute" but if I'd known that tribute acts made it into international circus festivals I'd have grabbed some pie plates and gone years ago.
4 comments:
Holy cow! You weren't exaggerating! It's so "note for note, beat for beat" that I wonder if Joe Jackson Jr trained him or sold him the act. After all, he was trained by his father, who he inherited the act from. If not....can you do that?!?
You might want to post footage of Joe Jackson Jr's version for comparison. Wow! And I do mean Wow!
The only thing that is missing is the joy and excitement that joe seemed to have, that's one of the things I liked the most the way he got excited about simple things like the horn and laughed about it.
Tweedy
Exactly!
Joe learned the routine by watching his father do it millions and millions of times. By the time he himself took over the routine it was like slipping into a second skin.
I don't think that the actual material of the routine was as important as Joe Jr's ability to make it all seem spontaneous and delightful.
Taking the routine would be one thing, but taking the routine, the costume, the makeup and the music means that you are locked into doing the material ONLY as Joe Jr did it, not as yourself.
Tibor has painted himself into a corner here and, as hard as he's worked on this, can only be a pale shadow of the original.
I'd like to see him perform the same bicycle bit with different music and a different character and see where he himself is capable of taking it.
I worked with Joe Jackson Jr for two summer seasons at Gaslight Village in Lake George NY. This may be a loving tribute, but the character, soul, heart of the clown are missing. On its own, this gentleman's rendition may have been funny. But as an immitation of Joe, well, I found it disturbing. I probably am too close to the real thing. Joe was something of a genius really. - Bill V.
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