Illustration has nothing much to do with content.  Just wanted your attention.  Another hundred bucks, more VIP access.  Almost as good as money. – JDW

THIS WEEK MAGAZINE. 3/23/93

My car never tires and neither do I

When I need to go, it always fires.

Sometimes I think it could steer itself,

When I’m going through those gears, for my mental health.

***

What do Jimi Hendrix, Willie Nelson, Paul Simon, Woody Guthrie and Portland’s own ED & THE BOATS have in common?

They all perform on the soundtrack of the smash art flick WILD WHEELS, coming soon to a theater near you. Namely, the Northwest Film & Video Center’s Berg Swann Auditorium, 1219 S.W. Park Avenue, for two showings on Friday and Saturday, April 2 & 3.

April Fool’s, the day before the Portland premiere, many local, aesthetically unorthodox autos will form a “Beater Car Parade” through the Northwest Pearl District.

They really will. You can trust me.

Ed & The Boats will perform the film’s feature song, Me & My Car, at each showing of WILD WHEELS. They promise not to hit the brakes. A concourse of local art cars is part of the fun.

You are going to love The Boats. The Boats are pioneers of the “Eastside Sound,” tightly harmonized rock-folk, with words you can understand, and a beat you can’t sit down to.

The movie is something special, too. FIVE STARS! DON’T WAIT FOR THE BOOK!!! THREE THUMBS UP!!

“One of the most joyous movie experiences I’ve had in some time,” said the San Francisco Chronicle. “The audience ate it up.”

Get hungry.

***

When it’s waxed down and tuned up tight,

And I let it wind out, we could be in flight

The wind rushing by, the windows wide open

This car is my ship and the road is my ocean.

***

WILD WHEELS was turned down by all four of the world’s leading film festivals, Cannes, Berlin, Sundance and Telluride. “They said it lacked social depth,” director Harrod Blank relates.

Luckily, NWFVC has more sense.

The sixty-four minute documentary unfolds with Blank’s own wildly decorated ’65 VW Beetle art car which he titled “Oh, My God!” After the normal response offered by most first-time viewers.

Driving a piece of art is against the law in the hearts of many uniformed officers. Festooned with spinning daisies, Barbie dolls, a rooftop television, U.S.A. flags, plastic plants and animals, a portrait of Bob Marley, the thirty-year-old Blank has been cited for five dozen traffic violations.

Press the Chicken Button on the driver’s door and loudspeakers near the TV broadcast some serious barnyard cackling.

Why not a duck?

“Mine was a pretty isolated childhood,” explains Blank, who will introduce his film and visit with paid ticket holders and potential investors. “I would come home from school and just sit alone for hours in the chicken coop.”

***

I get a strange feeling of being uplifted

Disoriented like someone too gifted.

Grab on to the stick and think as I shift

This ain’t just a ride, it’s something religious.

***

WILD WHEELS chronicles the thirty-year-old Blank’s transcontinental search for Americans sharing his unusual romance with an automobile. A bell curve exists on the artistic highway with the bottom being the people who buy vanity plates or put a I BRAKE FOR POETS sticker on the back bumper. The 37 cartists and 46 vehicles appearing in WILD WHEELS are the ones at the very top of the bell.

The Lord told Bob Daniels to decorate his ’73 Chevy with dozens of faucets. Water is the word, Bob heard. “You gotta be clean to come to God.” he says.

Dalton “Button King” Stevens explains how he started sewing buttons on a pair of his pants – “for no reason at all” – because the insomnia was keeping him awake and he didn’t want to turn on the TV and disturb the missus. Next thing his guitar was covered, pretty soon the family Toyota was buttoned up.

Imagine Carmen Miranda’s hat, the size of a mini-van. Jackie Harris covered her station wagon with plastic fruit to make a statement.

“I’m an artist,” says the bleached blonde in a mini-skirt and halter top. “Not a woman artist. Not a man artist. An artist.”

Gene Pool sprays his car, hubcaps, too, with an adhesive, upon which he sows grass seed. A couple of weeks of careful watering and Gene Pool’s Pontiac is covered with a lush carpet, looks like the fairway rough at Columbia-Edgewater.

The Ultimate Taxi is your basic yellow Checker Cab on the outside. The interior is a nightclub on wheels. Behind the wheel and on the keyboards, simultaneously, Jon Barnes performs a mean rendition of Me and Julio Down By The Schoolyard. Strobe lights bounce off the mirrored disco ball, while smoke effects pour from the floor.

***

I’m so fast and you’re so slow

Only my car knows what speed to go

When I put my foot down it accelerates

And it never calls to break a date.

***

Blank & The Boats. There’s a quirky synergy in the air. “The Boats had the right song at the right time,” says Lisa Lepine, The Divine Miss Ed, who gives every impression of being one of the top publicists in Puddletown, regardless of industry, private or public sector.

It’s true.

Maybe it’s the band she’s promoting, these four Boats.

The critics RAVED about The Boats debut CD, Live The Dream. “Willfully weird, yet pleasingly popish… sophisticated, but accessible… dizzying… Beatlesque… will captivate even the shortest attention span… Remember the name, these guys are good.”

So, why aren’t these guys famous?, you ask.

They are famous, you just haven’t heard of them yet.

“Rock and Roll is stupid,” declares lead vocalist Dennis Kenny, “unless you’re famous.” Proof.

The Boats only recently returned from their world tour of the Northeast U.S., where they played twenty gigs in thirty-three days in thirteen different cities. The highlight of the tour was an appearance at the legendary rock temple CBGB in NYC.

“It was a fabulous show,” beams Lepine. “We even made $13.”

Famous first, rich later. All it takes is drive.

See you at the movies.

 

Me and my car we haven’t gone far

But one of these days we’ll go all the way

We’ll cover the ground that I need to cover

Me and my car, we don’t need any other.

– Ed & The Boats

Filmmaker Harrod Blank explores the wonderful, wacky world of art cars in this revealing look at some of the most amazing artworks on wheels and their quirky creators. Blank hits the road in his own art car (a zany VW Bug that cops can’t resist pulling over), heading out on a wild journey that leads to the Hippo Car, a motorcycle trying to pass as a cow (the Cow-asaki), the Grass Car, the Wrought Iron Bug and more than 40 other art cars.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTIB10eQnA0