The Luke Sells Out

Yup, played a sold-out Golem performance last night, second one in a row (after selling out the Bristol Watershed Media Centre in September), this one at the fantastique Rubin Museum of Art (see one of my earliest blogs). May have possibly been the best performance I've ever given of this work, which I literally have performed hundreds of times since debuting it in 1989.

And there sitting in the packed auditorium was Verna Gillis, the prime mover/enabler for the piece itself, as Verna originally hooked me up to receive a commission from the BAM Next Wave Festival in 1989, mandate being to create an interdisciplinary work with another art form... I chose to create a silent film score: voila, The Golem.

And as this was the opening night of the Rubin Museum's new exhibition "Holy Madness", something I know a teensy bit about (a wizard, a true staretz...) I felt in excellent company, nestled amongst the luminous tantric art a'shimmering off-the-wall...

And as I sampled the shu mai in the new candlelit K2 Lounge, the museum looked absolutely radiant by night...shame I had to work (just kidding)... the tantric spirits depicted in the luscious paintings adorning this exhibition seemed to come adrift from their framed moorings, flying down from the upper galleries to seek sanctuary in the basement auditorium as I was playing (felt extremely inspired in this atmosphere, and night of nights). Lots of friends showed up, including Brian Cullman, who had recommended the gig to Tim McHenry the Museum's artistic director. I'm still buzzing from the night's good vibes (although when I do sell out a show, I am very very sad to see people get turned away...).

Had a lovely encounter earlier this week with Miss Pamela Des Barres, venerated uber-groupie, celebrated author of "I'm With The Band", and still an eye-full towering inferno of fabulous anectdotal flotsam and jism viz. her droll account of her teenage (and beyond) exploits with Meeeeeeek (Beefheart's dismissive, cock-a-snoot pronunciation of the Jagger-ed one's forename), Jimmy the P, Waylon the J, hot Burritos' #1 and #2 Graham 'n Chris, etc, etc, you know the drilled...

anyway Pamela was being interviewed by my old friend Mark Petracca for his hot new webzine www.culturecatch.com, and so I tagged along for the ride, which included a free lunch (there is so such a thing!) at this great new joint The Cook Shop in Chelsea...seems sexual pioneer Pamela's best friend growing up was Victor Haydon, a/k/a The Mascara Snake from the "Trout Mask Replica" carnivale, actually Victor and I bonded on the set of "Doc at the Radar Station" (Sound Castle Studios in Glendale) way back in the 1980's, really really sharp acerbic guy (he described the interior contents of Jeff Tepper's parents' suburban house-in-the-Valley as looking like furnishings that might have come from "a plundered castle"). By then, Victor had totally morphed from the bearded Flaming Creature-esque Pasha depicted on the back of "Trout Mask" into a sleek, button-downed, clean shaven, very chipper chopped and channelled serious artist. Pamela says he is painting up a whirlwind on the left coast and I'd run a link here to his art but his site seems to be down for now--pity, as i've seen some of his paintings before. and they are incredible...

My friend Mark a/k/a Dusty Wright asked Pamela if she had ever been immortalized in song, and she mentioned that she always reckoned that "Miss Pamela" by some group or another might be about her, she couldn't remember who recorded this track exactly but yrs truly opined that it was in fact the mighty Orchestra Luna out of Boston who waxed this opus back around 1974 for their one and only Epic lp, now long out of print --a really great unsung group ( big, generally uncredited, influence on early Talking Heads), with 2 great sexual pioneering frontmen in Rick Kinscherf (later Rick Berlin) and the late lamented Peter Barrett --plus Randy Roos on guitar (one of the best I've ever heard, really--caught another great guitarist that summer, David Landau, Jon's bro, who was playing with the Chris Rhodes band, who also hailed from Beantown...in fact, saw both guys play at Preston's Airport Lounge out at the, well, airport, in Nantucket, summer of '74, when Danny Fields and Susan Blond showed up on an extended lig to prepare some press hustle or another to launch Orchestra Luna's imminent album release--and as I had an ongoing summer gig playing solo guitar at the Brotherhood of Thieves there, we three hung out quite a bit beach-wise, and otherwise)...the golden-voiced kewpie doll/ Meatloaf foil Karla DeVito was also in this, the ORIGINAL Luna. for a spell, along with Rick Kinscherf's sister Lisa...must find my vinyl copy of their album and run off that song for Pamela quick as sadly, it never did come out on CD (and probably never will--c'mon, Sony Legacy, do the right thing here).

Anyway I thoroughly enjoyed meeting Pamela, who still looks quite magnificent--and did you know she was one of the charter members of The GTO's? (Girls Together Outrageously-- original riot grrrrrls....listen to them sing "The Captain's Fat Theresa Shoes" about you know who on their Zappa-produced album artifact. Jeff Beck plays on it too. Jon Pareles and I used to groove to this song all the time when we were fresh men up at Yale). She's also a valuable American cultural historienne, and a damn good writer (Dylan said so), and--a torrid encounter between the sheets (of foolscap)!

Ms Des Barres' upcoming new ms. is entitled (but of course): "Let's Spend the Night Together"--

Bada Bada, Bop Bop, Ba Dah Dah!

(Love that Meeeeeeeek....)

xxGary