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Bingo Gazingo

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 24.130.11.107 (talk) at 01:04, 30 March 2008 ("Staten Island Experiment"??? "rabid lhasa apso"?? "THC levels of the audience"?? An artistic joke, but a joke.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Bingo Gazingo is the stage name of an elderly poet and former postal worker from New York City.

Early life

Mr. Gazingo was born Rupert Calvin Coolidge McGillicuddy on February 36, 1924 in Okemah, Oklahoma. At one day of age he moved, by covered wagon, eastward with his family to Flushing, Queens. As a child he dispayed an aptitude for composing improvisatory poetry, usually in a humorous vein. His first composition was entitled Dust Bowl Bowl-a-Rama (1935) and showed early on his aptitude for irreverent humor and not-so-subtle innuendo.

Postal Service and Rise to Fame

In 1945, after serving 4 years in the army as a member of the top secret Manhattan Project's not-so-secret sister project the Staten Island Experiment, McGillicuddy became a member of the United States Postal Service and served as a postman for forty-seven years, six months, and two and a half days. After a forced retirement due to a vicious encounter with a rabid lhasa apso while on his penultimate postal route, McGillicuddy started performing his poetry live under the stage name Bingo Gazingo, a moniker taken from the name of a one-legged toothless organ grinder in an old German film starring Peter Lorre. Gazingo immediately achieved borough-wide acclaim with his offbeat renditions of self-penned spoken word and poetry.

Style

While performing live, Gazingo recites in a quivery, somewhat hyper-caffeinated voice. The background music to his frequently frantic, poetic incantations is usually nothing more than a cassette tape inserted into a cheap cigar-box tape recorder and miked. Often the effect of Gazingo's offbeat style is accentuated by the blood alcohol content and THC levels of the audience.

Recorded Music

In 1996, Gazingo's Everything's O.K. at the O.K. Corral (a dreamy reminiscence of the cowboy movie serials by an old nurse-attended man) was featured on a 1996 CD produced by the famed Greenwich Village coffeehouse Fast Folk Cafe.

The following year, his eponymous debut album on the now legendary WFMU label hit the stores. Noted for its hilarious rhyme schemes and crude language, with titles like "Up Your Jurassic Park" and "I Love You So Fucking Much I Can't Shit", the album nearly made it to top 40 status in many unofficial polls and several tracks were frequently played on local radio stations, most notably WFMU.

Recent Work

Bingo was accompanied and interpreted by My Robot Friend performing his "World's Greatest Hacker" at the Outsider Music Festival at Time Cafe (downstairs from Fez) in New York City and, according to what My Robot Friend said there, also at appearances in Europe.

Bibliography

Discography

This discography documents the recordings Bingo Gazingo has performed on throughout his musical career.

With The 8th Grade

  • Are You A Lover b/w Juice The Juice - Holy Plastic Vinyl 7" Produced by The Atomic Elf (1994)

Filmography

External links