82 SHOWBIZ

The Toronto Sun n Friday, december 14, 2012

Lemon mixes it all in Bucket

Music

nazareth

errol

If there was a way to bottle the unbridled energy of Lemon Bucket Orkestras music and gigs, youd have to slap a sticker on the contents with the warning, Flammable Material! The self-described guerilla folk party band has been making fans across North America and Europe with Eastern European wedding and funeral music filtered through Celtic, jazz and punk, Mark Marczyk, who leads the 14-strong army, tells me. Well make you dance and sing to music that reminds you of home, well make you dance and sing to music youve never heard before, and never imagined youd like, he says with such conviction that you want to snatch up a ticket to their show at the Great Hall tomorrow. We try to tap into the energies of Eastern European folk music, energies that reach way back, that have shaped many generations and have undergone many transformations. Those energies, when re-imagined in an urban multicultural context in Toronto, are explosive. If youve heard their CD, Lume Lume, or watched em tear the roof off a venue, you know thats not hype. Considering that klezmer, Balkan and Gypsy music are the key components of their sound, I was curious how LBO was received during their recent European tour.

LEmON BuckET OrkESTra

The shows were even crazier than here in Toronto! Marczyk says. There, the majority of any given audience has an understanding and experience of the music we play. And when they hear that music expressed with such dynamic energy in such a different context, theyre surprised, to say the least. While LBOs shows and music epitomize the spirit of punk, rest assured the band members have great reverence for the roots of

their high-octane mix. All of the tunes on Lume, Lume are traditional and were sourced during Marczyks travels in the Ukraine. I played in a Ukrainian folk band called Ludy Dobri for a number of years, he says. We busked a lot, traveled to villages to learn old songs, played weddings, and went to festivals to meet other musicians and hear music from other regions of Ukraine and Eastern Europe. I met a lot of differ-

ent musicians and learned a variety of songs from different places. When I came back to Toronto, I started to teach other people these songs, songs that we could all play together if we ever found each other in the same country, city, festival, party or street corner. Marczyk says his travels and playing the music led to a deeper interest in the music of Eastern Europe. I was enthralled by multi-generational family bands,

by the alternating celebration and despair that emanated from so many cultures through their folk music, by the challenge of making that real for people who had forgotten it, for people who had never been exposed to it, he says. As the Lemon Bucket Orkestra grew, that interest started to be shaped by the band as well. By all accounts, LBOs show on Saturday promises to be legendary. Picture traditional Ukrain-

ian Christmas caroling replete with plaster masks, embroidered shirts, and sleigh bells but with Balkan brass rhythms, punk-rock in-yourface-ness and mardi gras parade insanity, Marczyk says. And a 75- minute insanely wild set from your favourite guerrilla folk party band tacked on for good measure. NOTE: Lemon Bucket Orkestra play The Great Hall Saturday. 8 p.m. $15. 1087 Queen St. W.

Thrones star in bust-up

Game of Thrones star Emilia Clarke had a disastrous end to her vacation in Vietnam when a prostitute punched her during a bar bust-up. The british actress was nearing the end of a year-long break abroad when she and her friends became caught up in a brawl, and ended up facing a line of call girls looking for a fight. but clarke, who plays dragon queen daenerys Targaryen in the hit series, admits she was nothing like her brave character. She tells talk show host Jimmy Kimmel, We were walking out of this bar and there was this line of prostitutes waiting for us. One of them tried to hit me. They were there to fight us, and i ran away. One did punch me. all i could say was, ive got my drama school audition in two weeks! That was the only thing i could say. (my character) dany would have probably showed a bit more feist. WENN

Gillian picks up Lecter file

Gillian Anderson is set to return to U.S. TV for the first time in 10 years after landing a role in the new small screen adaptation of Thomas Harris Hannibal Lecter books. mads mikkelsen will take on the role of the serial killing cannibal in a TV drama prequel to Harris Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs, and anderson will appear alongside the danish actor as Lecters psychiatrist, dr bedelia du maurier. andersons move back to the U.S. small screen comes a decade after The X-Files ended in 2002. She subsequently relocated to england to work in the british TV industry. Lecter has previously been portrayed by brian cox, Gaspard Ulliel and Sir anthony Hopkins, who won an Oscar for his creepy role opposite Jodie Foster in 1991 movie The Silence of the Lambs. He reprised the role in two more films. WENN