Travis DJ PTSD @ Elastic Arts, 8/15/2017

November 30, 2017
by host

Hard to think of a more remarkable member of the Chicago scene than Travis. There’s a good chance he’ll go down as rock and roll’s last great frontman if the historians manage to drag their asses to an ONO show (they tour pretty regularly, btw). Audiences are consistently floored as this super fit dude in his 70s hollers “I dream of sodomy!” or does that classic number about the Tuskegee syphilis experiments.

DJ PTSD is Travis’s solo performance project and it really is something else. Much of his performance is original work about the violence — structural but nonetheless very real, very physical violence — he’s been privy to as a black, queer American living since the (original) Jim Crow era. He has been known, though, to perform some Julius Eastman from time to time. For some context on the moniker, Travis is a former Navy man and a ‘Nam vet. Shortly after the war, he was tapped by P Michael Grego to front ONO, and the rest is a history that we should really tell here sometime.

This video was shot by Erica Mei Gamble at a show organized by Julia Dratel.

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