Like, So Mainstream

“I've been really sick.” Beecroft says. “I got an autoimmune disorder and it's basically eating up my body… What the problem is, in a nutshell, is that I can't use my hands very well, and I can't use my legs very well.” This leaves Beecroft's musical career on uncertain ground, but all's not lost, “It's very difficult for me to play an instrument. I can play for a couple of minutes and then my hands seize up. But then I thought, well, maybe I could do a show where I don't actually play anything.”

And so he thought to Melbourne Fringe, and to the stories that he can tell, and to what he admits has been “a pretty fucking mental life”. He devised a new show, Mainstream Freak, which will debut at Fringe Festival. Beecroft explains his approach; “People have been saying for a long time I should do a show where I talk, tell some stories, do some stuff… I [thought], well, what if you just treat it like the audience are a bunch of people who've come over to your house and you're going to play a few tunes and have a bit of a chat?” And he likes a chat. And he has raconteur skills. He even admits that people have come to his gigs, not for the songs, but for his banter in between.

Mainstream Freak will be his first show to incorporate more banter, more story-telling and less music. “I'm going to take a piano along and I think what I'm going to do is take a spinning wheel, and I'm going to write some subject headings on it and spin the fucking wheel and if it lands on 'Song' then I'll do a song. If it lands on '1997' then I'll talk about 1997.” And the title, Mainstream Freak? “I'll be totally honest, I just had to name the show something to fill out the paperwork. Somebody once called me that and it always stuck in my head. It was some hater in the street who said 'You're a fucking mainstream freak!' I felt immediately insulted, delighted and complimented all at once. It felt like a metaphor for my whole life.”

And the timing is right for Pinky Beecroft. “I've had a lot of really heavy shit happen in the last twelve years and I thought for my own sake I should try and piece some of it together and explore it, possibly with the help of… you know… people that I don't know,” he laughs. Not that the show will be some kind of group therapy session. Beecroft instead thinks of great American monologist, Spalding Gray, for inspiration. “The first time I saw [Spalding Gray's] Monster In A Box, I thought that's what I want to be. If I could one day do something like that I would die happy. That's exactly what I'm aiming for, and I figure I've got to start somewhere… If anybody thinks [Mainstream Freak is] funny, great, but I think these shows are less about being funny than kinda trying to find the common experience.”