User:Timathom/Wonderful Guise

The Wonderful Guise was an American-German music and performance group active in the Kreuzberg squatter scene of West Berlin during the mid-1980s.

History
Their performances, once described by the Bavarian Broadcasting Company as "loud, chaotic and stinking," consisted of extravagant costumes, jazzy-bluesy music, improvisation, and set designs featuring cow heads and various found items. The group played at such well known Kreuzberg establishments as Blockshock and S.O.36. They also toured several cities, including Munich and Amsterdam. One noteworthy concert occurred on the final evening of a squat about to be cleared by the police. Feathers were thrown onto the audience, and a cow's head was fried in a large vat. A subsequent article in the Berliner Morgenpost newspaper misreported the event under the headline "Horse Skeleton Found in Squatted House."

Over the course of the decade, many members of the group left Berlin, eventually leading it to disband. Several of them went on to garner notoriety in music and performance art, including Stew (Negro Problem), musician Art Terry, and well-known illustrator and cartoonist Tony Millionaire. Marek Claaßen created the artist ranking system and ArtFacts.Net.

The musical Passing Strange, written and performed by Stew and made into a film by Spike Lee, is partially based on the experiences of the Wonderful Guise in Amsterdam and Berlin.