Grease and The Dairy Cone

Riding inside an ice cream cone. It’s all in a day’s work really. Taylor Hicks rides almost daily inside a glittery, approximately nine foot tall dairy confection to emerge singing and harmonica playing, city to city to the tune of “Beauty School Drop Out”.

It seems that Mr. Hicks is also fully embracing the inner cheese behind the entire “Grease” premise now that he’s hit The Cheese State of Wisconsin. He’s decided to pay tribute to all the cheesy goodness therein by adding a lovely Cheesehead crown to his sparkly Nudie suit ensemble. I think it’s actually working, your thoughts dear readers? I say keep it, why not?

What initially began as a Summer stint on Broadway in the reality show driven latest spin off of “Grease” (The One That You Want…) has developed into a long term proposition for Mr. Hicks. He’s been traveling with the national touring company of the originally Broadway production now for months and it seems contracts have been penned to have him continue with this production into 2010. Then what? Perhaps yet another contract to continue riding that ice cream into infinity and beyond.

Taylor Hicks, as written in another one of my rambling blog posts, has a presence on Twitter and so does his featured sidekick in his Dairy adventures. The sidekick is retaining an air of mystery regarding whom they might actually be; goes by the name, Dairy Cone. Claiming to be possibly a male version of a dairy treat behind their Snow Miser’s image, they’re proving to be entertaining to some of the current Taylor Hicks fans on the social networking site. For anyone yet not introduced to Dairy Cone, click that link and give ’em a big “howdy”. We hope they’ll stick around a while sharing their creamy observations of The Big Boss Man.

The Dairy Cone characterization reminds me of certain fishy characters that swam the boards when Mr. Hicks was on Idol. Anyone remember the “Goldfish Patrol” threads at the Official idolonfox.com boards? The fish, Ray and Lamont, provided “spoilers” for “Daddy’s” fans – to jog anyone’s memory or fill in for anyone not familiar just a quickie reminder from mj’sbigblog.

Speculation of who was actually running the Ray and Lamont storylines throughout the show’s run brought some mystery but to hand it to the guy’s behind the fish, it was effective interest-catching advertising for Mr. Hicks. Ray and Lamont even had their own accessories lines popping up with merchandise, still on-line. That lends me pause, perhaps Dairy Cone need consider the same thing eventually? A line of magnets, pins, t-shirts, visors. Well, it might be a tad early for that yet.

Now of course, as Dairy Cone refers to him, The Boss Man, has had some musical gigs promoting his relatively (taken in the context of time) recently released CD, “The Distance”. He’s done intimate venues such as Roxy’s in LA and that coffee shop bar in San Francisco. He’ll be heading back to California to do a July 4th gig for KFROG’s Red, White & Cruise Concert and Fireworks Extravaganza in Fontana. Now since I have to support Darling Man and his show here in Dallas, same day, no fly out to Fontana for me.

Well, perhaps we’ve someone new to add to the Taylor Hicks’ cast of characters populating the man’s career. Speaking of characters, let me serve up some Ice Cream for Crows.

Captain Beefheart