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