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Hoarding the hokum >> The Molestics strip trad jazz down to the funny bone by RUPERT BOTTENBERG
"We've practically got it all to ourselves," boasts lead squawker/trumpet-tooter Mike Soret. "The Squirrel Nut Zippers have some, but they, too, are a little too serious. We sit around and someone plays some Wes Montgomery, and I go, 'But where's the jokes?'" The dictionary defines "hokum" as "nonsense, bunk and low comedy." Soret's a bit more specific about the term, and seems to take his foolishness quite seriously. "There was a time, a wave of jazz between ragtime and swing, which was the hokum period. The 'hot' jazz, like Louis Armstrong, Fletcher Henderson and this guy Clarence Williams." Toss in a little calypso, polka and cha cha, and there you go. "That kind of music, and the feeling to it, is a lot of what hokum is. That and any kind of knockoff jazz, trying to bring a lighthearted spirit back into it. Without the straw hats and checkered jackets." Soret's quest for for both laffs and authenticity makes sense, when you consider that his background lies neither in the traditional schooling of the jazz fascist nor the teenage skate/ska wasteland whence cometh so many of the current crop of bogus new jack swing pimps. Soret has ties to the lunatic fringe of the theatre scene... in fact, some of you may remember him from Montreal's own O.K. Theatre Troupe. Therein lie some hoary yarns. "Too many typically Montrealish things happened. This cokehead wanted to kill a guy in our company, my partner wanted to kill me, too many 13-case rehearsals..." Soret got outta Dodge a couple of years back, electing B.C. as the place to be. This weekend he returns with a grab bag of gaudy gags. Squeezing laffs out of such sordid topics as bestiality, alcoholism and people from France, the Molestics explore "the outer reaches of comedy." "If you pull your punches," Soret explains, "it won't go over. You have to be downright cruel." At Le Swimming on Saturday, April 3, 10pm, $5
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Some folks have all the luck. Some get all the breaks. Vancouver's old-time jazz hucksters the Molestics may not have horseshoes up their asses, and in their book a cameo on the Highlander TV series constitutes a "break," but they have cornered the hokum market.