Tav Falco is one of American underground art’s more fabled figures, a tirelessly self-mythologizing, self-styled modern folk hero mainly known for his music with and without his band the Panther Burns but also active in the mediums of literature, dance, photography, and movies. It’s the latter discipline that will bring him to the Orpheum Theatre on November 2 for a screening of his new art film The Urania Trilogy.
“The avatar of Urania, muse of the heavens, descends to Earth in the guise of a disaffected American girl, Gina Lee,” explains Falco’s synopsis. “She buys a one-way ticket to merry/sinister Vienna, where she slips into dalliances at the notorious Hotel Orient. Embroiled in an intrigue to uncover buried Nazi plunder, her liaison with Graf Karl-Heinz von Riegl unravels in a denouement at Klimt Villa, climaxing on the grand canal of Venice.”
Born Gustavo Antonio Falco and raised in Arkansas, Falco in 1973 moved Memphis, Tennessee, where he began as a performance artist and documentarian, making films about local blues musicians. In 1979 he and former Box Tops/Big Star frontman Alex Chilton cofounded the Panther Burns, a cult outfit whose shambolic take on rockabilly and other roots styles strongly influenced the psychobilly, contemporary garage rock, and blues punk acts that followed. In addition to making albums under his own name and releasing records by others on his Frenzi label, Falco has published two books, one of them a photography anthology. After some time in New York, Falco emigrated to Paris and then to Vienna, where he discovered and began teaching tango dancing. He has live in Bangkok since 2022, and continues to tour as a musician.
Tav Falco’s The Urania Trilogy will screen at the Orpheum Theatre in Saugerties on November 2 at 7pm. Admission is free.
