Love Not Given Lightly

Left Richmond on Monday in a state of euphoric elation...the Saturday night gig went so well, a big crowd in a large old fashioned rock club (not a typical venue for surrealist films soundtrack contemplation admittedly) responded vocally, wildly to my performance, then the jam with the excellent Hotel X went off without a hitch, and quite thrilling it was for me to sail and wail over such tight horn-driven tropical hotdog grooves, very nice guys too particularly Tim Harding and Ron Curry...before the gig a cool bbq at Prof. Mike Jones lovely abode with a multitude of film profs from the surrounding hinterlands assembled under one roof with various other friends of the James River Film Festival including James Parrish, one seriocomical moment occurred when one of the DVD prints I was scheduled to play to was found missing at the 11th hour, in a case of mistaken assumptions, but a last minute raid on a the local university film library produced the desired copy of Rene Clair's "En'Tracte" on DVD and my many many man-hours of preparation of my designated solo guitar score proved to have been worth it in the end (but what me worry, I was ready to improvise to whatever they had to throw on the screen)...

Animation genius Ray Harryhausen, Gary, experimental filmmaker Martha Colburn, and Ray's wife Diana Livingstone are feted at the James River Film Festival, Richmond Virginia, 3/26/06

photo by Trent Nicholas | Click to enlarge (hosted by flickr)

the next day I accompanied the legendary animation magician Ray Harryhausen and his lovely Scottish wife on a tour of the Edgar Allen Poe museum appropriately enough, got to quiz him to my heart's content over lunch afterwards on arcana like the legendary lost spider pit sequence in Kong (he'd never seen it himself, as apparently Merian C. Cooper burned the only extant print of it after the disastrous test preview horrified/nauseated the audience back in '32), he did however see Peter Jackson's re-creation which I linked into for you dear readers a blog back or so which is available as an extra on the recent Kong re-issue DVD, Ray opined that "Having seen this, I know why Cooper would have cut this sequence out" (namely, for being so shudderingly frightening, and also as it indeed was a gratuitous digression that slowed down the main narrative thrust of the picture, which we agreed does not contain an ounce of fat, unlike the current version where it takes over an hour to get to the heart of the matter ie first sighting of Kong)...

that morning Ray introduced a screening of perhaps his best film (his favorite anyway) and in these days of momento mori as fashion statement proliferation (isn't the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs album called "Show Your Bones"?) the closing skeleton warrior attack sequence from "Jason and the Argonauts" was as breathtaking a tableau as I recalled it over the sea-mists of 40 some odd (very odd) years indeed (and don't forget my first solo album was entitled "Skeleton at the Feast")...anyway to be honored as a special guest alongside Ray Harryhausen and the young NYC based animator Martha Colburn was a rush, and to then be privy up close and personal to Ray's intimate recollections of a lifetime spent making cinemagic that has thrilled and will continue to thrill millions around the world made this trip a wonderful and memorable venture into the former capital (of the CSA), a city where the Boss apparently first gained his biggest fanbase outside Asbury Park in the years leading up to his CBS contract, in fact my hosts remembered quite a few shows with Bruce and his then band Child (later Steelmill,) which they recall as sounding like a cross between Creedence Clearwater and the Yardbirds (must dig up those early tapes from Uncle Bob...)

Had lunch today with my friend Willem Dafoe and his lovely wife the Italian director and actress Giada Colagrande and her friend the editor Natalie Cristiani. Willem and Giada have just moved into an elegant apartment in an old brownstone on Perry Street just down the block from me (a street haunted lately by Sex in the City theme tours, oy vey...yeah the Magnolia Bakery is right around the block on Bleecker Street, and Sarah Jessica Parker resides on Perry St. as well along with her husband Matthew Broderick, whom I remember meeting in Santa Monica years ago when I was working on "Ice Cream for Crow", right before Matthew's first film "War Games" came out, my friend and fellow Yalie the producer Larry Lasker brought him by the house I was staying in...Matthew was a Beefheart fan, too). Anyway--Willem looks great, handsome, vital and vibrant, and is off to London shortly to do a new picture with Paul Schrader; he's just moved into another new house as well, in Giada's native city of Rome. She was really charming and vivacious and we compared notes on Palermo, which is one of my favorite cities (a visit to the catacombs there comes highly recommended, a sepulcher where you can stare into "the cold face of death" as a dear friend puts it--the walls festooned with dried husks of the once-living hanging off hooks in the very raiments they died in, myriad moth men and women, including the painter Velasquez repose there in various heroic and not-so heroic contorted postures...some of the women very Barbara Steele-like in appearance, La Maschera del Demonio my favorite horror film--in fact, Diamanda Galas was all ready to mount an instore performance there as soon as I set the scene for her).

Just saw a Spitzer for Governor commercial air during The Daily Show, its background music an obvious cop/homage to/pastiche of The Velvet Underground's "Venus in Furs": C# minor viola drone fermata'ed at the end, punctuated with Spectorish kettle drum stings ala Mo Tucker's sideways bass drum...I kid you not, kiddies,

and so to bed

xxLove

Gary

"Death Be Damned...Life!"

I'm writing this from a computer terminal in the library of the Virginia Fine Arts Museum in Richmond. I'm down here to play my solo guitar scores live to several piquant French surrealist short films from the 1920's (and one exquisite Russian film, Starewicz's "The Cameraman's Revenge" from 1912...well, he moved to Paris shortly after making this film in Moscow, and lived out the rest of his days there, so he's nominally French I suppose).

It's been a hectic week since my last posting, to put it mildly...my father-in-law passed away hours after after writing that blog, and the funeral was last Sunday. I wrote a eulogy for Henry which the rabbi read in the cold bright winter light to the many mourners assembled at the cemetery in Bushey, and then helped shovel earth onto the sarcophagus. I sat with Caroline and her mother in her house for a couple days in a numb flattened-affect kind of stupor taking condolence calls, which were numerous (Henry Sinclair had many friends, as decent and as kind a man as he was). I came back from London a couple days ago, just in time to throw myself into intensive rehearsal mode in preparation for the show I'm playing here at the James River Film Festival tomorrow night (I haven't worked with these surrealist films since playing with them at the Mass MOCA 4 years...and while there is a good deal of improvisation in the program, there are many many specific cues I had to relearn).

But every cloud etc.--I used my last day in London to work in the studio on a new collaboration with The Grid (Dave Ball from Soft Cell's project with Richard Norris). Meanwhile I missed my gig with Jozef Van Wissem last Saturday in NYC (couldn't be helped obviously), he tells me that many fans showed up, which was nice to hear, but left when they heard that I wasn't performing, which made me feel really bad as Jos is such a good player solo.

Ray Harryhausen is down here in Richmond as another special guest of the festival, the genius stop motion-reanimator/magician of fantasy film classics of my youth such as "The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad", and he's come with "Jason and the Argonauts", which I remember seeing on my 11th birthday, a still from which (Poseidon prying apart the Clashing Rocks) I used on the cover of the program notes for the second season (1971) of my "Things That Go Bump in the Night" horror film series which I ran with Bill Mosely up at Yale.(Remember showing this very same program to Peter Hammill at the Friars Club in Aylesbury in the summer of '73, when he was playing there solo). I met Ray Harryhausen up at the Walter Reade Theater in NYC last year where he was being feted by the Film Society of Center, and stood patiently in a long line of fans and well-wishers (including my pal and fellow horror-film buff Vernon Reid) before meeting the great man (as I've written before, Ray's type of stop-motion hand-crafted animation is true wizardry...CGI has no soul, to me)--and it's really nice that I'm going to have a chance to meet him again and hang with him (I wonder if he's ever seen the Starewicz film I'm playing to tomorrow night--a fantastic jape, an absurdist tale of insect lust, adultery and betrayal that uses the actual dried husks of grasshoppers and beetles as the articulated models. In 1912 yet).

The guys who run this festival sure know how to make my feel welcome (I played with "The Golem" here a couple years ago), and sure enough, I had no longer stepped off the plane this morning when my old pals Trent Nicholas (he was Scorsese's assistant before Kent Jones--Trent and Kent!) and Stephen Wilson whisked me straight off to the local barbecue hot spot Buzz and Ned's for some pulled pork sandwiches, fries, onion rings and lemonade (did this same bbq pig-out once with Denny Walley and Janet come to think of it in Atlanta before rehearsing Magic Band music)...yum. Simple things like working on something I enjoy (ie music), hunting down regional delicacies on the road (read local fast food grease)and and and "you can guess the rest", as Bryan Ferry sang, MAKE ME REALLY REALLY REALLY GLAD TO (STILL) BE ALIVE...it was a running joke for years, I even mentioned this on the lead-in to the "Judgement at Midnight" track on my "Evangeline" album, but doing intensive soundtrack composing for producer Peter Bull at ABC News, it always seemed like I was accorded the most lurid, violent documentary thema to write to: the Exxon Valdex Alaskan oil spill, for instance, the sordid story of Ted Kacynzski (the Unabomber), a show on hand gun control in America, the Martin Luther King assassination, a looksee at the last 24 hours on Death Row for some poor bastard up at Angola State Penitentiary (former alma mater of Robert Pete Williams and Leadbelly)...yup, it seemed that whenever there was death in the air, some bright soul up at ABC would light up and say: "I wonder what Gary is doing!"

But I love (fails no birds) Life...

L'Chaim

xxGary

The Night Watch

Here now in London again--called away abruptly from NYC where I was preparing for my show with Jozef Van Wissem scheduled for this Saturday night at the Bowery Poetry Club--called away as my 94 year old father-in-law has taken a turn for the worse here.

I hate to miss shows, but I'm sure you understand--

Anyway, you can hear a good example of what Jos and I sound like playing live currently on John Schaefer's New Sounds tonight, 11pm EST at WNYC FM--see my website calendar for a link into the station's live internet feed (the show will be archived as well for awhile). We taped this on Tuesday afternoon, and were quite pleased with the results.

In any case I am totally knackered, coming off a plane I had boarded last night at JFK at the last minute quite early this morning at Heathrow, spending most of the day at the hospital up on Havistock Hill. And the situation there doesn't look good.

Haven't crashed yet, but am about too.

Don't know what else to say right now.

Love,

Gary

La Ronde and La Ronde

Little Steven is back this week on the "last" (yeah, right) Sopranos shoot de chute, essaying the role of the (made)man you love to hate after icing Adrianna (was it really just two years ago? ancient history in this whirl o' confusion), trading his trademark do-rag for Sylvio Dante's (nice signifier, Mistuh Chase) greasy, ill-fitting toupee and permanent scowl. But-- SVZ's no villain in the Here and Now, in fact, as his yeoman service backing the Boss (great Grammy turn reanimating Strummer and co.'s "London Calling" a couple years ago) and his tireless efforts to put Garage Rock back on the map/on the airwaves/and most importantly back- in-your-life (where it belongs) attest to...and you could do much worse than check out Sirius Radio's Channel 25, which is Little Steven's cd baby, 24/7 rockarockarockaround the clock of adrenalin boosting, ass-shaking Nuggets (Lenny Kaye codified and got this genre a'going in the early 70's with his pioneering Elektra double lp set--and in fact, Lenny coulda shoulda easily won my last quiz as I know that he knows that I know that he knows the filmic provenance of the "You get a contact high" line I cited a blog or 2 back; namely, Russ Meyer's classic "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" flick, this inane bit of dialogue--spoken by the fetching, Barbie Doll-esque Dolly Read herein portraying Kelly McNamara, lead singer of the faux grrrrrl group The Carrie Nations, Dolly girl Kelly an earlier, more innocent version of Elizabeth Berkley's "Showgirls" strumpet --'n all these mad characters and bits of bizness coming atcha straight from the fevered, mammary-gland obsessed brain of (onetime only) screenwriter, film crit Roger Ebert. Line's maybe not up there with Edy Williams' bon mot from the same pic: "Harris, you're a groovy boy...I'd like to strap you on sometime." Or John 'Zeeman Barzell' Lazar's exultant: "It's my happening...and it freaks me out!" But close.)

This here Sirius Radio channel (don't have it in the home yet myself, relying on the kindness of Uncle Bob Strano who provides me with choice air checks) also boasts the fantastic Andrew Loog Oldham Program (a must-hear Monday to Friday 6 pm - 8 pm EST, Saturdays 11 am - 3 pm EST, rebroadcast Sundays 3 pm - 7 pm EST)--my old friend Andrew O, the legendary original Rolling Stones producer/manager/style councillor/cultural blaster and bombardier/forger of template for, uh, Here Comes Everybody in musique moderne (let us say, anyone who ever picked up an instrument/stepped behind a mic in the moment of making rock music of an even slightly rebellious nature post '64 owes a tremendous debt to Andrew), founder of Immediate Records (best British label ever, bar none--best logo too, check it) which issued superb albums by the Small Faces, the Nice (their first album with guitarist David O'List splitting all time's mind asunder would make my top 10), Duncan Browne (late lamented sensitivo post-Raphaelite who deserves a place of honour next to Nick Drake in the pantheon of English troubadors), etc. etc. etc....Andrew fuckin' Andrew...saw a magnificent photo of the Loog taken by either David Bailey or Gered Mankowitz in Melbourne recently in a massive show of British Pop Art from the 60's to the present...and in the wood it looked quite good, nestled next to Julian Opie's iconic painted "Popstar" portrait...

Out on the razzle again this week, first at Tonic checking my former bandmate Jonathan Kane's February, his muscular new art-blues pulsallama at Tonic, on a bill with minimalist guitarslinging Grand Daddy composer Rhys Chatham's boys on a Table of the Elements showcase night, packed sweaty club too...had a sweet reunion with big daddy Kane who held down the Gods and Monsters drum chair for about a dozen years and nicely nicely too, and also with Rhys, who was in from Paris where he ex-pated some years back, looking a bit like Exeter from "This Island Earth" now and still sporting his foot long seegars and great sense of humor, Rhys with whom I played alongside at an outdoor festival or two in Sicilia some years ago (Rhys was blowin' bugle then), for sure in Palermo, maybe also Capo D'Orlando, I recall someone getting married onstage with us while we played (maybe it was during our soundcheck? events a bit hazy), local couple for sure...but those were different times...both Jonathan and Rhys sounded really good a'brewing up a dense cloud of tuneful noise, with my guy Ernie Brooks doing his Wymanesque bass-strut and anchoring things in his usual precise Modern Lovers (and Gods and Monsters, for about 8 years now) stylee...also good to run into gimme-some-skins titan Anton Fier there, Anton whom I met post-Feelies right after the Beefheart boyzzz played a 4am Mudd Club show in 1980, 6am on the street outside the Mudd tagging along with Art D'Lugoff's daughter Janis in tow offering his drum services in the future, Golden Palomino Anton who was in the final incarnation of Gods and Monsters with Jeff Buckley, along with Tony Maimone on bass...

which segues right into the tale of my next port of call, namely the Bowery Poetry Club, where I raced over midway through Rhys' set (no offense Rhys, you're golden) to catch my old bandmates Jon Langford, Tony M and Steve Goulding in their great new Ship and Pilot project (Jon and Tony and Steve and I played as The Killer Shrews and left one landmark album still standing, available right now from Downtown Music Gallery here in NYC, email them at dmg@downtownmusicgallery.com, or call 212 473 0043 and tell Bruce I sent you)--meanwhile check out the "Don't Let the Bastards Wear You Down" free mp3 download up on my homepage at http://www.garylucas.com for a taste of shrewdom, taken from our '94 album, and also anthologized on my "Operators are Standing By" collection...Jon is one of the Great Men of British rock, with the Mekons still going strong since their late 70's "Never Been in a Riot" single kicked things off in a big way, a surly riposte to The Clash's "White Riot" (I recall Jon Pareles hanging out here at chez Lucas as we clocked the 'Kons great "Quality of Mercy" album in the late 70's)...and Tony has been in the bass pantheon ever since Ubu blasted outa Clevo with a big Hearthan...had a good reunion with the lads, and learned that Steve Goulding (ex-Graham Parker and many other notables) is now a fellow West Village denizen who's currently playing with everyone from the lovely Laura Cantrell to Garland Jeffreys (who was in the BPC house and looking good, alongside Bob Holman and Lucas Cooper from ROIR--the last time I saw Garland was at Bruce's "Light of Day" charity event at the Stone Pony a couple years ago where we both performed). Great guys all around, and good to see them continuing to blaze after so many years...

Must start preparing for upcoming gig with Dutch lute master Jozef Van Wissem, who's in town for a radio appearance and gig here with me next week...must finish writing out chord charts for Jerry Harrison for our upcoming Gods and Monsters shows in Moscow and Saint Petersburg (and NYC, April 7th)...must start preparing for French surrealist film soundtracks gig up in Vermont soon...

and must give a big shout-out to Tanya for continuing to keep my web site maintained so immaculately...THANK YOU!

xxLove

Gary

They Say Such Things and They Do Such Things

Here in Shanti Shanti Shanti Town, uh oh seven at ocean's eleven played a ring around the poesy party at the Bowery, the Bowery, the lay Bowery Poetry Club last Sunday night (yrs truly "topping from the bottom" as the very amusing John Waters put it at the Alliance Francaise Tuesday night screening of mother trucker Marguerite Duras' "Le Camion"--lights, camera, and no action!), partnering with my pal Bob Holman who was there with his lovely wife the artist Elizabeth Murray, dem rude boys got out probation and ran the voodoo down with my steeled guitar improv underpinning Bob's fire/water/and who knows what else- breathing vocables...

Wednesday I escorted my pal the artist Marilyn Lerner to the Whitney Biennal opening, the dear old Whitney masquerading as the late unlamented Studio 54 these days apparently as one was forced to endure (in sub-frigid temperatures) an endless queue that snaked round the block before one could gain purchase to the sacred vaults of Art deemed esteemed (imperious door guy proved a softie though)...once inside one could but goggle at the multi-tiered assemblages of this year's artbiz models-- wasn't really knocked out by too much of anything truth to tell although I liked Marilyn Minter's work, also the faux-updated movie trailer for "Gore Vidal's Caligula" 30 years on (which might yet spawn a resurgence of Vidalmania in these parts), hmmmm, also some erotic color slides that showed off the female model's sumptuous poitrine ala new Bond girl Eva Green (art with a capital T), ran into Neke Carson whose work should have been in this show if there was any justice (Neke's light sculptures are amazing), also downtown geetar guy Alan Licht with whom I played with at Tonic recently and also avant-gitfiddler Lee Ranaldo and his wife the artist Leah Singer who were both at the Giorno event described recently herein, mingled in the spider-pit/open-bar area downstairs where they refused to pour after 10pm (!), espied my friends the artists John Bowman and Ann Shostrom from afar as I was going up topside (dude ascending a staircase) right before me and Marilyn skated (her work--and their work--shoulda been represented there as well)...as should my sister Bonnie's work, a painterly example of which--"Girl With Big Shoes"-- adorns the cover of my "Operators are Standing By" compilation (the Drawing Center's George Negroponte--yup, that Negroponte--although he and his brother John are not joined at the head, if you know what I mean--George N. took a shine to Bonnie's work last year thanks to a friendly push from yrs truly, and put her paintings in some choice shows--where they sold!).

For the blood is the life, Mr. Renfield...

Also rehearsed my band on Wednesday at Big Mike's recently refurbished rehearsal space Complete Music Services in Chelsea (a joint I first encountered playing with Lou Reed at their Xmas Party in '92, but that's another tale), for a midnight show tonight at Mo Pitkin's, new club on Ave. A run by Two Boots/Howl Festival maven Phil Hartman... was filmed rehearsing there and was interviewed afterwards for a culturecatch.com podcast, hot new webzine, it's up there now at http://www.culturecatch.com/node/205 courtesy of my man Dusty Wright ...

and oh yes, submitted for yr approval (or not) check out the recreated lost spider-pit sequence from the original King Kong, which I obsessed about herein recently, at http://media.putfile.com/King-Kong-1933-Spider-Pit-Sequence...

my good friend Glenn Kenny of Premiere Magazine described this footage as "hardcore"--

and as Bill Moseley and I used to sign off our "Things That Go Bump in the Night" horror film series posters at Yale:

Don't say we didn't warn you!

xxLove

Gary