| HORT ELVISON
Hort comes from a long line of show business people. The son of Bruno and Clara Elvistein, a Viennese mime team who fell upon hard times when without warning Bruno became convinced he was Billie Holliday, young Hort spent his adolescence touring Europe in an early incarnation of "Up With People". But the road was a harsh mistress and things were never easy for Hort and his compadres. Too poor to afford a whole hotel room, they had to take shifts sleeping upright in a closet,  sublet
from a Lithuanian
poultry merchant named Donny. Things began to look up when Hort shortened his last name to Elvison and moved to Los Angeles. By day he worked breeding oscelots and at night he played in a group called the Sleeping Walkers, an existential polka band fronted by a set of identical, narcoleptic triplets named Walker. They achieved a measure of success until the lead singer met with a fatal accident after falling asleep on a Slip'n'Slide. The band folded. Despondent, Hort practiced his drums alone in his room for years, reading pamphlets like "Horticulture and the 17th Century Church" and consuming vast quantities of "Moon Pie" marshmallow sandwiches.And then fate intervened. Hort knew it was an omen when he opened the South El Monte Weekly Shopper and read "Atmospheric, Neo-Motown, post- Zydeco, pre-CBS psychedelic country surf, blues band with it's own van seeks sensitive, intellectual drummer with Master's degree in biochemical engineering. No flakes." Of course it was what would soon become the infamous "Swirling Eddies". Singer Camarillo Eddy remembers Hort's fateful audition: "I new instantly that we'd found our drummer when Hort came right up to me and hit me in the face, without saying a word. And when I noticed tapioca pudding seeping out of his coat pockets, well, that was it." |
Hort's intimidating presence and striking physical resemblance to Peter
the Great (before his surgery) have made him an irreplaceable part of the
Eddies' saga.
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