Gettin' Hungry

Checked out my sax-man Jason Candler's other aggregation The Hungry March Band last night at CBGB's Gallery (well he's also in Earth People, a whole other ball 'o con-fusion), and lemme tell you, they were gooooood! Most fun I've had with my clothes on in, well, I ain't sayin' 'zactly, but fun fun FUN with a capital (read High) PH count, the 25 or so boyz 'n grrrrrls spilled over the tiny stage with a gaggle of cheer-leadin' baton twirlers and assorted camp followers writhing most lasciviously afore and above 'em (one Hungry gal spread-legg'ed and dangling her tootsies over the crowd in the flying Sea Bee's rafters even), prancin' and a dancin' to the razzmatazz oompah these katzenjamming kidders wuz laying down! It was some sorta pot-luck party whereby ten bucks at the door gotcha a paper plate full of all the veggie chili, cous cous, chocolate chip cookies, delicious pink polka dotted cake and outa the box Nabisco wheat thins you could eat (my kind of smorgasboard!), then the Hungry's played their pulse accelerating big brass band derangements of, well, sort of Balkanized and Vulcanized klez, hysterical Bulgarian party music a la Ivo Paposov, even a Pigbag cover thrown into the mix, and they actually got my jaded self up on my feet grooving, I even climbed a chair so's to get the full monty 'o moves being served up deliciously hot onstage (really cute band in other words, lotsa feminine pulchritudinous display in full and not so full marching band regalia, and lotsa hot-lipped blowing on various reeds and brass implements by the boho boys in the band and much tribal thumping and strutting)--best big band dithyrambic throwdown since McCullough Sons of Thunder played a couple years ago at this underground watershed at the cusp of the Brooklyn Bridge (exactly) wherein the likes of David Byrne even locked hands in a group snake dance and joined the festivities to shake 'em on down... legendary NYC mover and shaker Steve Paul was there too, of Steve Paul's Scene fame (late 60's club apex of rock civilization for a minute, when Hendrix and Morrison would come by to jam with Larry Coryell), manager/enabler, record mogul and visionary motor-mouth (Morrison's favorite speak-artist) who's got a new website you should check at www.pixlife.com...

Then they had an open mic portion of the program and the wonderful Taylor Mead, playing hooky across the street from his regular Friday night Bowery Poetry Club residency, and still blazing trails many many years after "Pull My Daisy" (he has a retrospective at the Whitney Biennial April 1st and 2nd, don't miss this if you're in town) shone forth with a scabrous poem about the Statue of Liberty and sex in the park, I was coaxed into performing (didn't take much, I was so energized by the aforementioned spectacle) and I played an instrumental version of "Fata Morgana" (fully mixed band version mp3 courtesy of the great Harold Burgon coming soon, keep checking my homepage) on Jason's strat to good effect, then checked out the human beat box/Lord Buckley-ish shenanigans of Zeroboy, a Downtown performance fixture/comedian who managed to do a scary impression of Dick Cheney duck-hunting in the midst of his topical toe-tapping reads on Iraq et al--somebody get him on Comedy Central immediately, no lie, check out his website at, uh, well look it up, gotta go out now to the movies to check out this Spielberg/Tony Kushner confab, more later soonest...

Love

xxGary