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  #1  
Old 08-01-2014, 01:29 PM
michelej1 michelej1 is offline
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Default Rick Vito: King Paris

The Morning Call [click to see King Paris in costume] August 1, 2014

http://www.mcall.com/entertainment/m...,6926103.story


By Daryl Nerl, Special to The Morning Call
11:37 p.m. EDT, July 31, 2014



As the festival's home of world music, Musikfest's Volksplatz venue has been a place to experience a smorgasbord of international sounds including African rhythms, Celtic harmonies and Siberian surf punk.

On Saturday night, the sound of the subcontinent with a twist of rock 'n' roll will be on display when King Paris and His Hypnotic Guitar takes the stage.

King Paris' website promises that the "musical mysteries of the universe will unfold" at his show, where he combines influences as diverse as Ravi Shankar and Johnny Cash, Amjad Ali Khan and Screaming Jay Hawkins, Mohan Bhatt and Elmore James.

Add to the stage a few props, a flamboyant, colorful wardrobe that hints at Eastern mysticism and a pair of sexy belly dancers and you have a unique visual as well as sonic spectacle.

But for knowledgeable fans of classic rock and local music historians, the man under the turban will be familiar.

Rick Vito is best known as the man who joined Fleetwood Mac to replace Lindsey Buckingham on guitar in 1987. Vito's resume also includes work with other rock legends, including Bonnie Raitt, John Mayall, Jackson Browne and Bob Seger.

He's got a local history as well. The Darby, Delaware County native graduates from Kutztown University. He got his start with The Wright Brothers Blues Band, opening for Muddy Waters at the Kutztown University Blues Festival in 1969 and playing gigs at local establishments such as Illick's Mill in Bethlehem.

The musical styling of King Paris is a wide departure from what Vito is known for. His slide guitar fills and solo in part define the Bob Seger 1986 hit "Like a Rock." That is one reason why Vito created an alter ego when he decided to begin experimenting publicly with Eastern music in 2009.

"Rather than just, all of a sudden, confuse people with going into a completely different bag, somehow this thing evolved to develop a character and have a completely different set of music to go along with that," Vito says in a phone interview from his home near Nashville.

"It's really fun because neither one steps on each other's toes. Somehow I've been able to keep this thing separate and yet people know that it's me and it's sort of an in-house kind of joke secret."

The visual imagery of a King Paris stage show is by Vito's own design pure Hollywood kitsch.

"I love the old movie characters from the late '20s and '30s, the Douglas Fairbanks 'Thief of Bagdad' and Bela Lugosi as 'Chandu the Magician' all that real corny, kind of eerie period in film," Vito says.

"I think it sort of happened around Halloween. We were just goofing off and had some stuff around. And the wife contributed a little here and there and before we knew it we had this guy. And I said, 'Gee he would really go with this music, these couple of songs that I've written.'"

Vito began to develop his interest in East Indian music until 2007. He traces it back to a night on the Jersey shore during a visit to his mother when he went to hear a klezmer band.

"I'd never heard it," he says. "I was just blown away by that whole sound. I realized that you could improvise over this and you change the scale slightly and it's got a relation to blues.

"At almost the same time, I was given music by an Indian classical slide guitar player named Mohan Bhatt. I come to find out that he is not the only one playing guitar on his lap, kind of like a dobro, but with the Indian scales and the Indian classical music. It was basically like sitar music, like Ravi Shankar, only played on the lap with a slide."

The man who had played blues-based slide guitar for decades was fascinated and before long, he had learned Indian and Arabic musical scales and how to incorporate them into his own playing. Then he started to write songs.

"We did a party to try it out and hired some dancers, and they worked up routines to the music and the people just went crazy for it," Vito says. "And I was having such a blast, I said, 'Well I've got to keep this going. This is so much fun.'"

Vito says he is now playing gigs as King Paris on a "fairly regular basis," though not nearly as often as he would like.

"Ultimately, I would love to build a show bigger and bigger and be able to play bigger and bigger places, like Musikfest," Vito says. "It's a real honor to be able to play there."
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  #2  
Old 08-01-2014, 10:06 PM
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chiliD chiliD is offline
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When I saw King Paris earlier this year, I was blown away! LOVED the show.
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Old 08-10-2014, 06:00 AM
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seeker007nmss seeker007nmss is offline
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There are a number of you tube clips.
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