AdamTheWoo stops by Kick Bright Shop and films a video.

January 21, 2016 / jkickbright / Leave a comment

YouTube superstar AdamTheWoo is visiting Orlando this week and stopped by Kick Bright Shop and Buttons and filmed his Daily Woo video at Artegon Marketplace. Adam is a longtime friend of mine. We met back in The Hot Six days, the early 2000s, when our bands had practice spaces next to each other and played shows together. A few years ago we filmed a filming locations video together for the Orlando-made movie D.A.R.Y.L., one of my favorite movies growing up.

Adam is having a meet up this Saturday January 23rd at 3pm at Fun Spot on International Drive. He’ll have some special buttons to hand out to everyone who attends. Guess where he’s getting them made? See ya there!

Florida Music Legend Blowfly/Clarence Reid Dies.

January 17, 2016January 17, 2016 / jkickbright / Leave a comment

blowfly1
Photo from 2006. Wills Pub – Orlando, FL. Photo by Jeffrey Howard.

I’m sad to report that Florida music legend Clarence Reid, also known as Blowfly, has passed away. It was announced last week from the official Facebook page he had gone into hospice care due to terminal liver cancer and passed away today, four days later.

My introduction to Blowfly and his music was finding just the cover of Blowfly’s Party at a thrift store in Orlando sometime around 1999/2000 with those infamous photos of him dressed as a superhero surrounded by naked women. It took years to actually track down a real copy and hear just what the hoopla was about with songs titles such as “Nobodys Butt But Yours”.

When the documentary of his life The Weird World of Blowfly premiered in 2011 Blowfly came back to Orlando and I was lucky enough to attend it along with a Q&A session after the film ended.

Some photos of when he performed at Wills Pub in Orlando in 2006 are in the Kick Bright Archive.

Blowfly will release his last album “77 Rusty Trombones” in February 2016.

2016 Edition of Kick Bright

January 12, 2016January 14, 2016 / jkickbright / Leave a comment

It’s 2016 and in June Kick Bright will turn twenty years old. That’s a long time! It’s always been fun sharing my life and interests with anyone who would listen or pay attention. I’ve met many people and made many life-long friends through this zine. It’s neat.

I’ve been doing a lot of things with my life for the past couple of years that made Kick Bright not such a priority. It never went away but took on different forms.

The band, Hot Hands, took off in a big way in October 2013 when Kristin and I packed up our worldly possessions into a storage unit and embarked on an ambitious tour of the United States. It lasted six months and thousands and thousands of miles and many nights sleeping in our van. We ended up with a fun YouTube channel of videos we made traveling. We spent the following year recovering from the financial fallout that such a venture would befall in a small town in North Carolina literally in the middle of nowhere.

We made the decision to move back to Orlando, Florida in June 2015 to open a “vintage” shop. Get this- it’s called Kick Bright Shop & Buttons. We opened two months later in August. It’s a natural extension of the zine: vintage clothes, records, buttons, artwork and collectibles. I have a lot of ideas for the shop so I may as well do them!

I had some crazy idea to release a compendium book of everything I’ve done. I don’t think that is going to happen. A lot of material has been lost to the digital age of failing hard drives, stolen computers, lost domain names and a heaping pile of zip drives. What do you do with those?? I managed to get a lot of writing off the Internet way back machines. It will be a huge undertaking! For now, I will look ahead here because there is always something new to share. This is my way of making the world a better place.

***,

Jeffrey Howard