A long, lazy YouTube trawl yielded some clips from Jeff Bagato‘s 1999 film The Blab, which features Baltimore performer-poet-writer Mary Knott, who, among other things, is part of The Dirt. Bagato, who runs the monthly Electric Possible show and is a fixture in D.C.’s experimental music scene, plays tonight as part of the group Spaceships Panic Orbit at the Sonic Circuits Festival. Here’s what Bagato had to say via e-mail about filming Knott:

I basically aimed the camera at Mary and let her talk. I can’t claim to have done much as a filmmaker, as there were no edits or camera angles or anything. The blurb was “One Woman, One Camera, No Cuts.” I can’t even claim the idea was original; an artist named Tentatively a Convenience had the idea of filming Mary for an indefinite period, but he
never did it. I thought that was a great way to document the experience of hanging out with Mary. She talks about meeting Perry Farrell, and her fandom for Marilyn Manson, hanging out with Gwar, and all kinds of stuff. The clips on YouTube are pretty funny, but some guy in Philly put them up there after he bought a copy of the tape from me. Since then, Mary has put a whole bunch of stuff up—you can search for her name or Geeky Dorks or the Dirt. I always figured Mary was destined to be a YouTube star, so maybe her time has come.

Video 1
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkvBApJ5M6E]

Video 2
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fF2GgHur_n0]

Video 3
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxoeoinsM6Q]