Tav Falco

Gustavo Antonio "Tav" Falco (born May 25, 1945) is an American-born musical performer, performance artist, actor, filmmaker, and photographer. He has led the psychedelic rock-and-roll group Tav Falco's Panther Burns (named after a plantation in Mississippi) since 1979. He moved to Europe in the late 1990s. Since 2002, he has been touring with his Panther Burns group, which includes musicians from Paris and Rome.

This article is about Tav Falco. For the Austrian singer, see Falco (musician).
Tav Falco
Tav Falco in Lloseta, Majorca 2009 Photographer: Holger Lang
Born
Gustavo Antonio Falco

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Occupation
  • musician
  • performance artist
  • film maker
  • photographer
  • actor
Years active1973–present

Biography

Falco was born to an Italian-American family in Philadelphia.[1] Five years later they moved to Arkansas, where he grew up between Whelen Springs and Gurdon. He moved to Memphis, Tennessee in 1973. He started the nonprofit Televista "art-action" video group in Memphis to document local musicians and artists in the mid-1970s with fellow Arkansas poet/performance artist/videographer Randall Lyon. Falco and Lyon were both deeply influenced by the work of their mentor and friend, noted Memphis color photographer William Eggleston.

Impressed by a 1978 performance of Falco's at The Orpheum in Memphis that culminated in the chainsawing of a guitar, Alex Chilton teamed up with Falco. They developed the self-styled "art damage" band Tav Falco's Panther Burns. The group recorded a first album, entitled Behind The Magnolia Curtain, for Rough Trade Records at Ardent Studios in Memphis. Their previous 1980 session for the label at Phillips Recording was temporarily shelved (later re-released in 1992 on Marilyn Records as The Unreleased Sessions).

Falco devoted some of his musical career highlighting great traditional artists who had not gained media attention. He introduced their work to his audiences and to writers following his work by performing Panther Burns shows on billings with these artists, recording interpretations of their songs, and occasionally collaborating with some of them on projects for small record labels he has been associated with, such as Au Go Go and New Rose. Among these artists were blueswoman Jessie Mae Hemphill and rockabilly pioneer Charlie Feathers. Falco and Lux Interior of The Cramps worked on the photography and liner notes, respectively, for the 1982 Honky Tonk Man album by Feathers. Both younger vocalists had been influenced by Feathers' energetic, hiccup-styled vocals of the 1950s. Falco has invited such musicians as Cordell Jackson, R. L. Burnside, Mose Vinson, and Van Zula Hunt to perform at this Panther Burns concerts. Falco has released numerous Panther Burns albums on small international indie labels. He also has co-released some recordings by his band and other Memphis-area artists on his own Frenzi label.

Work in Films

Falco has appeared as an actor with small parts in the films Great Balls of Fire! (1989 – USA), The Big Post Office Robbery (1992 – Hungary), Highway 61 (1991 – Canada), Downtown 81 (2001 – USA), and Wayne County Rambling (2002 – USA). Long a student of the tango under Argentine masters, he appeared in Dans Le Rouge du Couchant (2003 – France) as a tango dancer, and choreographed his part in the film. He has appeared in several short films, most of which he produced, and in some cases served as the filmmaker. These have been shown in underground arts venues such as The Horse Hospital in London and Silencio in Paris.

In 2003, six of Falco's short films were accepted and archived into the permanent collection of the Cinémathèque Française in Paris. Among the titles archived are Masque Of Hôtel Orient (1996), Born Too Late (1993), Helene of Memphis (1991), Memphis Beat (1989), Shadetree Mechanic (1986), and 71 Salvage (1971). A selection of Falco's short films were shown in a retrospective at the Cinémathèque Française in 2006.

Falco's first feature film, Urania Descending, was announced in 2014.[2] The film was presented by Anthology Film Archives, New York; Roxie Theater, San Francisco; Oxford Film Festival, Mississippi; Austria Film Museum, Vienna; and by The American Cinemqtheque in the Steven Spielberg Cinema at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood.

The complete Urania Trilogy of intrigue films, as conceived and directed by Falco, is currently in post-production. A truncated version of Urania Descending Part I, along with newly filmed Parts II & II, comprises one feature-length movie.

As Author

Falco has collaborated with Erik Morse, an American underground author, rock writer and journalist, on a two volume encyclopedic history and psychogeography of the city of Memphis, Tennessee, entitled Mondo Memphis. Falco's book, Ghosts Behind The Sun/Mondo Memphis: Volume 1, is a study of Memphis, beginning well before the Civil War and moving forward to more recent autobiographical accounts set in that city.[3] Morse's Bluff City Underground/Mondo Memphis: Volume 2 roman noir follows a West Coast graduate student and his encounters with a Memphis secret society.[4] They were published by Creation Books; a paperback edition of Falco's volume was published in November 2011.[5]

In 2015, Falco's first book of photography, a collection of images of the gothic American South entitled Iconography of Chance: 99 Photographs of the Evanescent South, was published by Elsinore Press and distributed by University of Chicago Press.[6] The same year, he toured with Panther Burns and released another album recorded in Rome entitled Command Performance.[7]

As Solo Musician

Falco has released more than fourteen album recordings.[8] A live album, Live in London, was released on Stag-O-Lee in 2012.[9] In 2014, Falco compiled a double album of some of his favorite tracks from his music collection, Tav Falco's Wild & Exotic World of Musical Obscurities, released on Stag-o-Lee Records. The album set included a cover song by the Panther Burns and liner notes by Falco.[10]

Cabaret Of Daggers is the most recent studio album. Although presented as a solo album, it features musicians from the Panther Burns band amongst others. The record was recorded in Rome and Memphis in 2018, and released same year by ORG Music in Los Angeles.

Falco continues to tour across the USA and Europe.

Often Falco has claimed his main artistic purpose is "to stir up the dark waters of the unconscious."[11]

Notes
  1. Tav Falco biography on allmusic.com
  2. "Urania Descending (2014)". IMDB.com. IMDB.com, Inc. August 17, 2013. Retrieved July 29, 2014.
  3. Ghosts Behind the Sun: Splendor, Enigma & Death: Mondo Memphis: Volume 1. 2011. ISBN 978-1840681819.
  4. Bluff City Underground: A Roman Noir of the Deep South: Mondo Memphis, Volume 2. April 30, 2012. ISBN 978-1840681826.
  5. "MONDO MEMPHIS: TAV FALCO & ERIK MORSE". Creation Books. Archived from the original on March 15, 2012. Retrieved May 3, 2011.
  6. Bengal, Rebecca (December 20, 2015). "Picturing the American South: The Year's Best Photo Books Reveal a Vast Portrait". Vogue. Retrieved April 19, 2016.
  7. Mehr, Bob (October 8, 2015). "Mid-South ex-pat Tav Falco returns to scene of 1970s provocations with Lafayette's show". The Commercial Appeal. Memphis, TN. Retrieved April 19, 2016.
  8. "Tav Falco Panther Burns' Music – DISCOGRAPHY". limbos.org. Retrieved July 29, 2014.
  9. "Tav Falco & the Panther Burns – Live in London". Allmusic.com. Retrieved July 29, 2014.
  10. "Tav Falco's Wild & Exotic World of Musical Obscurities". TheWire.co.uk. The Wire. November 2014. p. 83. Retrieved December 25, 2014.
  11. Turner, Jeremy (December 2003). "07: Interview With Tav Falco about Early Telematic Art at Televista in Memphis]". Outer Space: The Past, Present and Future of Telematic Art. Open Space Arts Society. Retrieved April 28, 2005.

References
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