Ivan Christo and Trevor Chase were headed to a themed party—a post- apocalyptic themed party, of course. So they invented two characters, vigilantes Ace Fondo and Lex Blazer, “a couple of badass guys” who “fought in every war, flexing their biceps while smoking cigars.”
Now years later, “Ace & Lex: American Heroes, Elite Commandos” anchor Christo and Chase’s pandemic pet project, “Empire of Excellence,” a livestreamed music and variety show available on Facebook Live and Twitch, and archived on YouTube. The show’s first season ran from October to November last year, and it’s currently in its second season, with eight episodes running biweekly through July 3.
So, just what is “Empire of Excellence”? It’s often said good writers don’t know what’s going to happen in their books until they get there. Christo and Chase are kind of like that, only they ain’t writing books, and where they’re going probably isn’t in this dimension.
“The whole show has a connecting theme, but it is all kind of absurdity,” Christo says. “All the art and the music is about embracing the over-the-top nature of 1980s action.”
Take the duo’s plug for season two. The golden boy is missing, they say. To find him, they’ll have to do business with a nomadic bartering fortune teller—not to mention their unwitting real-life musical and poetry guests—and navigate an intertwined television, cosmic, and real world, all while battling the Gwar-like musical villain Crab Action and some force known as the Big Bad.
Christo and Chase’s goal is to create a fun, semi-coherent space to celebrate live music and art in the post-pandemic world: “A platform for everyone to come together and entertain,” Christo says. But musicians, poets, and others joining the fun—the Reverend Bill Howard of the Judy Chops is a regular guest, for example—do so at their own peril.
“There is an element of Japanese game show challenges that the guests will not expect,” Chase says. “We do throw our guests into the narrative without telling them.”
And where do all their head-in-the-clouds ideas come from? While Christo and Chase, also running buddies, pound the pavement.
“A lot of it formulates naturally on runs,” Chase says. “We’ll be on a run and have all these dumb ideas. Then I will be editing some of the show together and see some stupid special effects on YouTube.”
Christo and Chase are part of a trend—over the past year, scores of creatives have joined the stream team. From March 2020 to April 2021, Twitch reported a massive bump, going from 5.1 million to 7.2 million active channels. Twitch’s livestream viewership has also exploded, with 79 percent growth year-over-year since March 2020. And while a good portion of the traffic comes from online gaming, Twitch reported music and performance arts category viewers increased from an average of 92,000 last February to 574,000 last March.
It’s hard to say where “Empire of Excellence’’ fits in with the overall streaming trend, but it has been drawing several hundred more viewers with each installment, and pulls about 500 comments per show.
Christo had a following prior to the livestream experiment as Jaguardini, an electro–nic synth pop project he describes as “low-fi beats” with “a lot of shredding and yelling into the microphone.” Chase has played in and out of bands over the years, and been a supporter of the local music scene, selling merchandise and serving as an ad hoc hype man.
As for their day jobs, both Christo and Chase are educators, and their hope going forward is simply that “Empire of Excellence” continues to sustain itself as a new outlet to their multimedia side hustles.
“Ten years ago, when [Christo] was getting started, he used a similar format,” Chase says. “It was an inclusive cooperative. He was the bedrock, and other people came and went.”
It’s been no easy feat sustaining “Empire of Excellence” thus far—Christo and Chase have put considerable time and money into their studio green screen and audio and video equipment—but the two friends expect to continue it, releasing episodes seasonally in four to eight show blocks. To stay afloat, they collect donations during their episodic streams, and recently landed a grant from the Arts Council of the Valley in Harrisonburg.
When musicians start touring again, Christo hopes he’ll be able to draw acts from Charlottesville or Harrisonburg to the studio for interviews and antics—the whole process is intended as a way to promote independent music.
“There are a lot of shows that have variety acts, and there are interview shows,” Christo says. “But I haven’t seen anything quite like this.”