This Clown is on Fire

2013_clown_fire

In case you missed it: this past Thursday a towering clown with a “golden voice” stormed YouTube with a cover of “Royals” by 16 year old singer Lorde, ringing up 1.5 million hits in only 3 days and propelling the mysterious artist known only as “Puddles the Clown” into the spotlight.

As the rest of the world scrambles to pierce the mystery of the colossal crooning harlequin we here in Atlanta already know the fool’s not-so-secret secret identity: his name is “Big” Mike Geier, a staple of Atlanta’s live music scene for more than a decade.

With all the recent hullabaloo over Puddles we’ve all become a bit afraid back here in Atlanta that things may never be the same for our chummy little Thursday night gatherings down in the basement of the downtown Hilton. We fear that we may never again rock to Mike’s annual Elvis Royale or ring in Christmas with his Kingsized Holiday Jubilee.

Never again may we see performances like “My Heart Will Go Metallica”

Or “The Great Hipster Massacre”

Or “Sweet Mike Brown”

And you know what? It’s about damned time.

Big Mike has served his time in purgatory pouring out his talent on drunken conventioneers and aging hipsters. He and the guys in Kingsized have classed up more wedding receptions than they can remember and added zest to flea markets and industry parties. People in Atlanta feel like they own a piece of Mike and they do, but it’s time to let the dude soar.

Mike is Atlanta’s be-testicled version of Adele and he deserves a big stage and big songs to match his big voice and if we happen to lose him forever to the clown-obsessed European jet set we’ll at least be able to fall back on my collection of shaky home movies of Mike and the guys in the group Tongo Hiti (RL Martin, Kevin Leahy, Kris Dale, Sam Owens, and Tim DeLaney) from the good old days, back when they performed any number of crazy pop songs and mash-ups.

Here’s my entire playlist, with a couple of videos by others included, beginning with a video of me dancing to the music:

Good luck Mike, you deserve it. You clown.

I’ll look around to see if I have any other videos I haven’t uploaded in a few weeks.

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