Capucinema

The answers are coming in fast and furious for my last contest (What 60's European comedic actress died tragically falling from an 8 story window in Lausanne?)--and the winner is Boscosmuffle from parts unknown, followed by Chris Findlay from Edinburgh who writes that he saw The Magic Band there last year (cool!), followed by Doreen Austria (could this be the same Doreen Austria who was Artie Delmar's playmate on the old Channel 68 Uncle Floyd Show circa 1978??), followed by Croushnaff from Paris who got only some of the answer correctly (Capucine's full name was Germaine Lefebvre not Rene Lefebvre)--Henry Meyer from Lausanne weighed in with the name of the Lausanne drag-queen Colcinelle which is in a similar ball park but still not quite there...oh well. If Mr. or Ms. Snuffle fails to send me her address soon the prize shall go to Chris Findlay, a pristine reissue of my Improve the Shining Hour 20 year career retrospective featuring collaborations with Beefheart, Nick Cave, David Johansen, Mary Margaret O'Hara and many others. Meanwhile check out this entry about the glorious dark jewel that was Capucine at http://www.swinginchicks.com/capucine.htm

Played a nice duo show last night at a new joint called the Rockwood Music Hall, a very well appointed little room with brilliant acoustics off Allen Street with people who float in to listen, not to drink or chatter. The acoustics were pristine, and even schvitzing and dripping in the hot stage lights I managed to rally from this flu bug that still has its little hooks in my chest and deliver a focused set with an assist from Michael Schoen...we did a couple numbers from the Buckley/Lucas songbook and then a new song, "Jedwabne", named after the town where my family on my mother's side were wiped out enmasse in 1941 in Poland. There is a very good book by Professor Jan Gross called "Neighbors" about this incident and I urge you to check it out, it makes chilling, informative reading (and caused a scandal in Poland upon publication). I was invited back to Jedwabne in 2000 along with other surviving family members from around the world to take part in a commemorative ceremony coupled with an official Polish apologia, and this song derives from that experience.

Off to see Isabelle Huppert's latest kinkathon "Deux" up at the Lincoln Center Cinema. Since "The Piano Teacher" (a very faithful cinematic rendition of Nobel Literature Prize Winner Elfriede Jelinek's book) Isabelle Huppert has really made a career of playing edgy transgressive she-devils ("Ma Mere", based on Georges Bataille's book of the same name, is another case in point, saw this last week and thought it one of the best films I've seen since Gegen die Wand). But really, the French wrote the book on this type of feminine archetype, didn't they?

xxGary

Pussycat Pussycat...

Forgive the cunctatory gap between my last musing and this'un, no excuses offered except the intervention of a flu bug which short-circuited my will to write, now that it's burned out of my system after singeing my bronchial tubes I am more inclined to wax poetical and what could be more appropriate a subject then the recently observed now sadly departed Valentine's Day? (Every day should be V-Day). Gods and Monsters made obeisance last Friday night in the form of a lovely show upstairs at the Pussycat Lounge, the lower Manhattan den of propinquity that downstairs still (!) functions as a topless a-go-go joint after the long neo-puritanical reign of Rudy G. failed to dim its lights or extinguish its subterranean subversive essence (dunno how you feel about this, but in a world where violent maiming and killing is daily tv fodder...nay, celebrated, certified entertainment, rated G...a little bit of Rated X, as in the Miles Davis tune of the same name, is okay by me, we're all consenting adults here... okay, anyone under the age of 18, stop reading this immediately! RAUS!)

And the occasion was a benefit for God's Love We Deliver, the charity set up to deliver meals to AIDS Victims, organized and hosted by punk-rock femme superstar Black Flamingo, she of the 7 inch spike heels. Hosted by Wolfman Jack's fraternal twin brother Mr. Frank Wood, the night was one of the strangest and most enjoyable trawls for this here reporter/participant through a cavalcade of underground New York bohemian rock-life, I particularly enjoyed the lilting pipes of Allison Gordy (one of Johnny Thunders final singing accomplices) and her whirling dervish of a violin player. We played hard and fast at the witching hour and despite the shambolic shape of the PA there (the upstairs room resembled more or less a Bavarian hunting lodge a day or two or three after the hunt and la grande bouffe) we connected solidly with the glassy-eyed children of the night who came out in sub-frigid weather to support such a worthy cause. Ernie and Billy played with their customary fire and Jason was a madman on sax, Ami spread her supercharged sensuous Eastern vibe and Michael made the young girls weep for joy...the boys in the band (hah hah) checked out the downstairs room on the way out just long enough for a whiff of commercial sexuality (Danger: Topless Girls, Dancing!) to permeate their virgin nostrils but not long enough to be dunned for an outrageously overpriced exotic cocktail...

Quiz Time: What glamorous European comedic actress of the 60's (one of this writer's favorites) died tragically in 1990 by jumping from an 8-story hotel room window in Lausanne? The first respondent who correctly identifies her wins a copy of my recently reissued "Improve the Shining Hour" album on Evolver/Rykodisc...

"Death be damned...Life!" (Don Van Vliet)


xxGary

Head On Tomorrow

I saw the most amazing film last night, "Head-On" (originally Gegen die Wand, or Against the Wall), at the Angelika here, it's been receiving (deservedly) much praise in the papers, its glimpses into the Turkish/German nexus mesmerize, ultra-vivid vignettes of erotic and violent cultural desperation/dislocation played-out over a German-oriented punk and new wave soundtrack ( I mean you even get a snatch of music from The Abwarts thrown in there, wonder if my old friend Magita Haberland is on the track, she once played a mean violin with them). It is probably the best movie I've seen since Wes Anderson's "The Life Acquatic", which boasts stellar performances from Bill Murray and my buddy Willem Dafoe..."Head-On"'s lead actors are truly a revelation, titanic forces of nature, displaced Turkish rude boy Birol Unel has the same mad staring eyes as Kinksi at his kraziest, with a touch of Bruno S., and Sibel Kikelli impresses as a sweet whirlwind of capricious libidinal energies. Director Fatih Akin is new to me but deserves a much closer look, the last time I got the same excited buzz from a director was encountering Lars Von Trier's "The Element of Crime". "Head-On" is edge-of-the-seat engaging, explosive, haunting,...I will definitely see it again.

And another winner in my last blogger sweepstakes...NY Lifer of Livingston New Jersey correctly identified Tiny Tim's song "The Other Side" (written by Bill Dorsey, thanks to Richard Barone for this tidbit) as containing the lyric "The Ice-Caps are Melting...", a song from Mr. Tim's 1968 Reprise album "God Bless Tiny Tim". He receives a copy of the new Fast 'N' Bulbous album , which is picking up brilliant reviews right and left (see my website for the latest 4 star review in Mojo Magazine).

Gods and Monsters had a lovely gig at the Bowery Poetry Club on Friday night, stripped down to the core power trio of myself and Ernie and Billy plus guest visitations from Amica and Michael Schoen, who is making evolutionary leaps into unknown vocal territory. We debuted a bunch of new songs that revved up the crowd nicely, including a cover of "She is Free", a song I wrote with Jeff Buckley in 1992 which is on the "Songs to No One" compilation (Evolver/Rykodisc). We just got booked to play at South by Southwest in Austin Texas on Saturday March 19th, moving this feast forward and making new friends deep in the heart of you know where...


xxGary

Whistle Down the Wind

Greetings all denizens of the consubstantial etherways, NYC is awash in jubilant sunshine, the icecaps are melting (quick: whose lyric is this, from which song, what artist, whose album? First correct answer receives a copy of the new Fast 'N' Bulbous CD), the frozen earth beneath the dirty ice crust peeps through once again, and the city is reborn in refracted shafts of light. The steel and glass citadels shimmer in the warmth of curved air, as Groundhog Day-like we pray for incipient signs of Spring...

and it is my happy duty to report that last night I attended a most magnificent concert of new music by Sir Harrison Birtwistle at the refurbished Zankel Hall (an adjunct of Carnegie Hall, replacing the long lamented Carnegie Hall Cinema whose trompe l'oeil lobby once transported you to the patisseries and boulangeries of Montmartre). My friend Richard the writer invited me to check out a composer whose name I must shamefacedly admit was known to me but his music not...now after sampling his wares (in line I suppose with the gastronomic theme of the former lobby tableau) I feel compelled to go on a Birtwistle buying spree at Amazon, such was the power and mystery of his music, which combined the airiest cerebral wit with occasional mordant, kick-in-the-teeth visceral shocks to the system. The performance, sparked by avant-diva Susan Narucki and an efficient team of young New Music demolition experts, was tough and precise, and Birtwistle's laconic description of his compositional method as resembling "dry-walling" was belied by the the riot of tonal effects and colors each of his mainly aleatory pieces displayed in abundance. I haven't really enjoyed a new music concert as much as this one in a long, long time. Kudos to the programmers at Zankel Hall for booking such a marvelous program into their acoustically pure space (much as I miss the old theater, where I fondly remember catching many French and German cinematic masterpieces in the 70's and 80's, this new concert hall is a more than worthy successor).

By the way, the Fast 'N' Bulbous CD is out now in the world and is (hopefully) available at better record stores near you. Here's
a link to a review that's just come in hot off the wire:

http://www.junkmedia.org/?i=1375

I'm working on some cool new songs with Michael Schoen later this afternoon in preparation for my upcoming Gods and Monsters gig at the Bowery Poetry Club this Friday, where Michael is my special guest; he's really been growing as a singer in the few months I've spent working with him.

Keep on growing, everybody...

xxGary