Mucca Pazza makes joyful noise

Mark Messing (playing tuba) and his Mucca Pazza marching band.

April 06, 2012| Rick Kogan's Sidewalks

It is spring, I don't have to tell you, and one of the delights of this season, beyond the familiar fever or romance or pennant hopes, is noise, in all its variety and vitality.

There is the clatter of the"L," the crack of bats on balls, cars honking and jackhammers pounding. Birds.

Many people consider this city symphony mere bother, an intrusion, and have in increasing numbers tried to escape it, tuning it out by staying plugged into their iPods.

In missing this noise they are missing the sounds of life. They are also missing so much music.

It comes at us from anywhere and everywhere, drifting from open car windows, from city plazas and suburban malls, from youngsters banging drums on a sidewalk, from a bearded, sad-eyed saxophonist wailing away on a bridge.

The players vary in talent, of course, but so what? Don't like it? Keep walking.

All of which brings me to my favorite musical group of the moment, Mucca Pazza.

If ever there was a band that was made to be seen and heard as it walks down the middle of any city street, this is it. A gathering of 30-some musicians (and a cheerleader or three), Mucca Pazza means "crazy cow" in Italian and is labeled by its founder, Mark Messing, as "a circus-punk marching band." It is a joy to behold.

The band has been around for nearly a decade. It has released two albums, "A Little Marching Band" (2006) and "Plays Together Well" (2008); had a song featured on the Showtime series "Weeds"; performs at all manner of music festivals; wowed the crowd at "Chicago Live!" (which I host and which returns May 10 — have a peek at chicagolive.com); and appeared on "Late Night WithConan O'Brien." It has done any number of events, outdoors and in, with Redmoon Theater.

The group plays in many musical styles (gypsy, rock, big band, punk … and anything else that suits its talents and fancy) and with a variety of musical instruments — drums, tuba, trombone, violin, accordion. It is a group diverse in age and backgrounds.

Band members wear uniforms, a wonderfully rag-tag array of outfits picked up at thrift stores.

They get together to rehearse every Sunday, and most of the band members have "real" jobs to pay the bills. Messing most recently composed the original music for the delightful Chicago Children's Theatre production of "The Houdini Box."

To see the band is to witness a wild and wonderful spectacle, and one in which the participants seem to be having immense fun. It is almost impossible not to smile in Mucca Pazza's presence.

"The earliest marching bands served the purpose of marching along with armies," Messing says. "trying to scare the armies on the other side of the hill. Now we just scare little children."

He is joking. There is nothing frightening about this gang.

The band's upcoming schedule can be viewed at mucca-pazza.org. There are plans to have it perform in a month or so at a rededication of the Division Street bridge, in honor of what would have been writerStuds Terkel's 100th birthday.