page 8
Wednesday, October 8, 1980
daily nebraskan
the blue
The soul of
Artist-musician Larry Boehmer b the owner of the Zoo
Bar at 136 N. 14th St The Zoo is one of the longest-lived
ban in town, and Boehmer talks about it in this interview.
MZ: Describe the Zoo to me.
LB: 20 by 90 feet. Hardwood floors. Hard walls-covered
with faded old posters dating from about 73 to the
present. Small, funky stage, a very good sound system
-in other words a Honky Tonk. We've got an old juke
box as well as taped music-but Pd always want a juke.
It's essential.
s can be found in Zoo Bar
mm
MZ: What's on the juke?
LB: The juke box is full of blues ... no commercial stuff
-no Top 40, although a lot of the songs on there were
Top 100 at one time. Most of them are dated from the
'50s or early '60s. Soul . . .Wilson Pickett. Things that
I feel are good.
(Earlier in the conversation Boehmer had mentioned
that in the early days when he was still a graduate student
and the Zoo had just switched management and names
with a bar called the Bourbon, that business wasn't very
good. Boehmer talked to the owner and said "If you let
me put a row of songs (10 songs) in the juke, 111 bring all
my friends in ..." As it was, he was able to add more and
more songs to the juke before he owned the bar.)
MZ: The juke box has been a bit of a calling card for the
Zoo.
LB: Yeah. Yeah. I think so. Most bars that have juke
boxes allow the juke box owner to select the songs.
They try and channel the music for the bar country
for a country bar etc, but basically they pick new
songs. Well, I could never stand that, we did that in the
early days to a degree. The juke box man would slip in
some new records and we'd be rockin' real good, then
all of a sudden, John Denver would come on. I'd start
screaming and run for the telephone and call the guy
and say "Get down here right away, this has got to
go." After about six calls he'd realize we weren't going
to put up with that stuff. It's actually to their advant
age now to let me do it because I buy the records.
They save money. People donate records from time to
time.
MZ: How about the cartoons on the wall?
LB: They just pop up. There was a time a few years ago
when an awful lot of our customers were working at
llinkle and Joyce Hardware, and most of them were
musicians. That whole Bozo thing (on the wall) started
at llinkle and Joyce Hardware. They had tremendous
cartoons down mere. Just everywhere. These guys were
stock boys and things like that a crazy bunch of guys,
and they came into the Zoo. They're the Bozo artists.
A number of them are still around.
Charlie Johnson is one-Doug Rosencrantz is anoth
er. Some of them are quite good.
MZ: I've spent many a night staring at the walls.
LB: Ever see "Shithouse Mouse?" I don't know if there is
a current Shithouse Mouse or not. That's a Rosen
crantz Bozo there. (Points to a giant spray-painted
Bozo on his office wall.) It's one of those 3 ajn. Bozos.
MZ: There seems to be a great sense of community here at
the Zoo. What's the common link?
LB: I don't know what the common link is really. We
have well-educated bartenders. So are our patrons in
One way or another. Liberals, most of them. College
and working class. There is a Unk with the music, but
not totally. I've been to people's houses for parties,
and you might not find any blues in their album collec
tions. I don't know what the link is. We seem to have a
lot of writers, musicians-visual artists. The commun
ity changes constantly although we have some people
who have been here for years. There is a sense of com
munity. We've found that out when there has been
trouble. The patrons engulf the trouble maker and toss
them out of the bar, rather than stand back and watch
in awe or push the trouble even further. There are a lot
of people around ready to help out. We don't want
that sort of atmosphere, and neither do they.
MZ: You feature different types of live music-country,
reggae, and also have worked yourself well into the
Chicago circuit.
LB: Yes we really have. We have been running blues often
enough and for along enough time that's true . . . You
know clubs like this come and go. This place is an odd
one in that we've been around for seven years, and in
the scope of music bars in the country, that is a long
time. They tend to told. It's a risky business. It's fair
ly easy to lose a lot of money in a very short time. So
by staying in the game long enough we've gotten press
in national publications like Living Blues. We've had
notes in Blues Unlimited- that's the other major blues
magazine out of London. We have a lot of ambassadors
like Luther Allison and Eddie Clearwater -all the guys
' that come in here to play and really enjoy the place.
It's not just a standard jive line. The crowd is warm,
the place is funky, and they come in and have a really
good time. They wear Zoo Bar T-shirts in France and
all over Europe when they tour there. So the word
spreads. We get all kinds of interesting mail from all
over. I've sent T-shirts to Brussels, London, to South
America-all over Europe. This is an internationally
known club-known to a very small little niche-the
blues world. All the blues nuts around the world know
about the Zoo Bar, even if they've never been here.
MZ: Any chance of the Zoo Bar expanding or moving?
LB: I don't have anything going right now. It might
happen. Might happen within the year.
MZ: Do you worry about keeping the same atmosphere?
LB: Definitely. That's probably the main reason I haven't
moved.
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Photo by Mitch Hrdlicka
Larry Boehmer, owner of the Zoo Bar.
Oscar winning film "Best Boy' is a labor of love
By Jennifer Bauman
When ProducerDirector Ira Wohl
accepted an Academy Award last spring for
Best Boy (Best Feature Documentary), he
seemed to stand apart from the rest of the
award ceremony histrionics. Word's words
and attitude made one envision a care
fully and lovingly made film. Best Boy
verifies that assumption.
,o
FGUE30
Wohl records three years in the lives of
his cousin, PtiiHy Wohl, and Philly's
parents, Pearl and Max. Philly is 52 when
the film begins. He has been mentally re
tarded since birth andt except for a couple
of years in an institution when he was
about 12, he has always lived with his
parents.
Concerned about how Philly would deal
with the loss of his parents, Ira suggested
that the family begin to work on breaking
Philly's complete dependence on Max and
Pead. Best Boy follows the Word's pro
gress in achieving this goal.
Ira Wohl is the producer of a children's
television program The Big Blue Marble,
and he used facilities and equipment from
that program for this project. Additional
funding came from National Endowment
for the Arts and New York State Council
for the Arts grants. But, above all, Best
Boy was a labor of love.
Wohl moved a small crew into his
cousin's home, filming them throughout
their daily activities. Max, Pearl, and Philly
accept Wohl and his camera as part of the
family, so most of the sense of embarrass
ment potential to the situation is removed.
Best Boy has none of the feeling of
voyeurism that similar efforts such as the
PBS series, An American Family, display.
Philly and his family don't seem to feel
a need to play up to the camera. Philly is
clearly fascinated by the film equipment,
and there is interaction between Ira behind
the camera and the others in front of it.
But most of the time, the camera is gentle
and relatively inobtrusive.
The overall effect is reminiscent of
Albert and David Maysles's 1975 docu
mentary, Grey Gardens. The rapport be
tween director and subjects is quite
obvious in the final product; the Wohls
accept the filmmaking activities into their
lives with grace.
Watching Best Boy, we are given a
chance to learn a great deal about the
Wohl family. Pearl and Max are in their
seventies, much worn for having cared for
children nonstop since early adulthood.
Philly has always been Pearl's "baby" and
her "best boy" and, in many ways, she is as
dependent upon him as he is upon her.
Max is reluctant to be demonstrative in
his feelings for Peari and Philly, but he is
preoccupied with his own failing health.
Philly's social skills are less seriously
impaired than his intellectual ability. He
can count to ten only with help when Best
Boy begins, and even after attending school
for some time, he confuses dimes and
nickels.
But Philly is able to be spontaneous and
playful in a way that most adults feel they
cannot be. He is affectionate, likes to hold
people's hands and sing with them. Dupli
cating the sounds phonetically and the
tunes naturally, he sings "As Time Goes
By" and "The Anniversary Waltz'?. After
seeing Fiddler on the Roof at the Winter
Garden Theater, Philly meets Zero Mostel
backstage, and they sing ulf I Were a Rich
Man" together.
Philly is frank about his feelings. He dis
plays impatience and sadness as openly as
happiness. When he is snowed4n at home
one day and cannot go to school, he paces
and jumps restlessly at the window
During the course of Best Boy, Philly
makes progress toward attaining a modest
degree of self-sufficiency. He goes on his
first outing with Ira to the Bronx Zoo. He
begins to attend a day school, and goes to
summer camp in the Catskills. It's impos
sible not to share Philly's pride when he
goes out by himself for the first time to
buy an ice cream sandwich.
By the time we see Philly deal success
fully with Max's death, and when he moves
away from home to a house with a group
of disabled people, we know he has grown
and that he will survive.
Best Boy is currently showing at the
Plaza Four Theaters.
