The rock music group Blue Man Group is currently conducting a tour titled How to Be a Megastar Tour 2.0. During a show on this tour the band leads the audience through a “workshop” on how to become a megastar and create “the perfect rock concert experience.” Part of the process is explaining what they call the rock concert traditions, including rock concert movement #37 which is the headbanger hand gesture they refer to as the “Floppie the banjo clown hand puppet.”
Floppie the banjo clown, they tell us, “is one of the great unsung heroes of rock history.”
Floppie the Banjo Clown was used as a "hired gun" by rock musicians who wanted to beef up their sound on tour. He played with virtually every important rock band that ever toured.
Apparently Floppie was a very sad looking clown who played the banjo with all these rock stars. The reason no one ever heard of him was that he would get excited during his solo and end up “flopping” over backwards and injuring himself, and thus not completing the tour. Even so he seems to have had quite an influence on all the major rock bands. And it seems most rock fans are familiar with the the hand puppet signal.
This is, of course, all a joke, but it’s actually kind of funny and the video footage of this guy in a clown suit flopping over backward while playing the banjo is just great.
Read all about Floppie here, if you’re so inclined.
