Zayde Buti

Once again, democracy has struck here at TWBITW. Our readers have spoken, and they deemed the most recent entrant on our Submit and Vote page to be weird by the widest margin we’ve ever seen. In fact, if your votes are anything to go by, Zayde Buti might be the weirdest thing we’ve ever blogged about. Either that, or he spent way too much time voting for himself over and over again. (We really should close that loophole. We keep meaning to.)

Including Zayde on The Weird List is a bit of a cheat—not because he’s a solo artist (although some of our more pedantic readers take issue with every solo act we’ve ever listed), but because he’s really more of a performance artist than a musical act. And calling a performance artist weird is a little like observing that kittens are cute. Weird is what performance artists do—and as you can probably tell from the above photo, Zayde certainly comes through on that count.

But music is definitely a major part of Zayde’s act. He’s even got an album out: It’s called I’m Lovin’ It and yes, that’s a McDonald’s reference. You see, Zayde seems to be endlessly fascinated with the advertising slogans and iconography of fast food—that’s actually a Wendy’s wig he’s wearing in his publicity photo. In Boston, where he’s based, he has a one-man show called “Hungry,” and he’s also been known to do guerrilla theatre performances where he dresses up like a Dunkin’ Donuts employee and does song and dance routines for unsuspecting DD customers. It’s all very subversive…or at the very least, it confuses the hell out of the actual employees in pretty entertaining ways.

I’m Lovin’ It is streaming in full on Soundcloud, and it’s worth checking out. If Weird Al Yankovic got together with those guys who do the “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell” song and made an entire album inspired by Naomi Klein’s No Logo…well, actually, that would probably be a train-wreck, but I’m Lovin’ It has its moments. Still, for the full Zayde Buti experience, you really have to watch one of his videos. They’re all pretty bizarre, but this one called “Hot ‘n Juicy” really takes the cake. Or burger. Or something.

Links:

• Zayde Buti official site
• Zayde Buti on MySpace
• Zayde Buti’s YouTube channel