He started on drums before moving to guitar and eventually more esoteric instruments, such as theremin. In his 26-year tenure, he's played recurrent Independence Day, Halloween and Christmas shows at The Cave with Chapel Hill's consciously goofy Evil Wiener and then with Billy Sugarfix's Carousel. He's played in a dozen area acts McCormick and a new lineup of collaborators will even play their first and only show at the couple's farewell gig. Spitzer arrived 10 years later as a UNC music major and worked in various bands including The Physics of Meaning, The Gates of Beauty and Eyes to Space. Most recently, Spitzer has been the mastermind of Felix Obelix, an intriguing weird-pop outfit just as likely to write meticulously constructed, classical-inspired tunes as an album's worth of cell phone ringtones. Her contribution to the farewell show is a live soundtrack to an early 20th century stop-motion short by Polish-Russian animator Ladislas Starevich.Ī testament to their long cumulative history, two rooms in the small Carrboro house they will soon vacate are jam-packed with instruments.
"I think it's starting to sink in that we're leaving this area for a bit," Spitzer says. "The music community's been very good to both of us for a really long time." And it's continuing to be, as friends will be taking care of many of the couple's belongings during their year or more overseas. The hardest part, McCormick says, will be leaving their cat, Elka. "I think she knows we're leaving," he says. Today the blue-gray cat lounges in a sunny window as the house is gradually boxed up. Elka recognizes her environment is changing, Spitzer says, so she knows something's upeven if she doesn't completely understand she'll be living with Spitzer's parents soon.Īlong the back wall of the room where Elka takes in the sun, drum major hats rest on shelves. McCormick has 17, and these are staying with local friends, too. The inherent pageantry of marching bands led to this unlikely collection, and even older and stranger pageantry now draws McCormick overseas. He's fascinated by surviving pagan rituals in which regular people don elaborate, furry outfits and transform into beasts (for a primer on these ancient European traditions, see Charles Fréger's Wilder Mann: The Image of the Savage). "If you look at the marching band hats and look at some of those costumes, there's a pretty direct connection," McCormick says. It's the mystery, too, of these pagan holdovers that fascinate him.
A friend recently told him about a French character, Le Pre Fouettard. Tradition has it that the character accompanied St. Nicholas on his rounds and would punish naughty children.
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