Absinthe Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

... unless it's pastis, which Jason Candler and I were sip sip sipping after our incandescent new Gods and Monsters record release thingy at Bob Holman's house of poesy and musik on the Bowery Saturday night...same anise flavour, pearly dewdrops drops in water, tincture of scrubs of wormwood distilled into les baises de la fee vert--an excellent aperitif, in other words, sharing similar medicinal/psychoactive qualities with absinthe (there's a Czech variant as well--me I was always partial to that supreme Czech libation known as Becherovka, once brought a bottle back from a tour of Prague to Amsterdam where I was artiste in residence in room 505 (get me on flight number) in the infamous Winston Hotel in the wending warren of Warmoestraat--best hotel room with a view, peering out over and into the Red Lights, back 'o wall, back of ye olde Bulldog, good window on the world onto the divine serio-comedy of buy/sell--ah yes the Winston, Dirty Three played there too that season, lot of Aussies hanging out in the nabe, and well anyway painter man Joep sat in my room there while I scoured my National steel working out music that became the theme known as "Judgement at Midnight" for a score I did for ABC News about a poor soul on death row in Angola State Prison in Lousiana ( Leadbelly and Robert Pete Williams also roomed there--but not together-- at one point) and in the process of a very long night Joep proceeded to polish off the entire bottle of Becher without so much as a howdayado...much hilarity upon his discovery that the stuff was brewed in the Jelinek Distillery in Karlovy Vary:-- "hey, we've got a Jelinek Clinic here in Amsterdam!" (for drying out alkies)...one wonders as always if the ones selling you the poison are the same ones curing you of the disease...

Sipping a draught of the milky misty waters after busting out an hour's worth of music (with special guest goddess Felice Rosser from the band Faith joining in on melismatic ululation viz. Abdullah Ibrahim's "Bra Joe from Kilimanjaro", and wailing our soulful newie "Shadow Man"), we were surrounded by myriad well-wishers including a way enthusiastic/ ebullient Jerry Roche from my new US indie label Mighty Quinn and his posse, Jerry the visionary and fan of and now enabler of my music going back to seeing me play in the old Knit in '89 with Gods and Monsters Mark I (Thank you Jerry--and Meg Griffin!)--plus there was a surprise pop-in from Rene Goiffon, the head of Harmonia Mundi who's got my beloved '30's Chinese pop album "The Edge of Heaven" back in circulation again, in the racks and in the shoppes (Yes! Thank you Rene)--in fact we did an impromptu blow through Chow Hsuan's "Please Allow Me to Look at You Again" in our set in honor of this--Rene was in town to catch some shows with Tuvan throat-singer Albert Kuvezin and his group Yat-Kha, who have a new album out called "Re-Covers" recuperating diverse fare by Joy Division, Kraftwerk, Led Zep--also a killer version of Beefheart's "Her Eyes are a Blue Million Miles")--also there was Downtown Music Gallery's Bruce Gallanter, patron saint of radical/beautiful music (ran into him again him last night at poet Steve Dalechinsky's 60th birthday do at Tonic where I played alongside Alan Licht, Loren Mazzacane Connors, Roy Campbell, Daniel Carter and other outriders of the storm)...

Caroline, Gary and Cineaste editor Richard Porton, hangin' at the The Bowery Poetry Club NYC

Caroline, Gary and homegirl Shaista Husain outside the
Bowery Poetry Club NYC

Downtown Music Gallery's Bruce Gallanter and Gary, NYC

Felice Rosser singing with Gods and Monsters at the Bowery Poetry Club

Gods and Monsters in the Gibson Showroom, NYC (l to r Jason Candler, Ernie Brooks, Gary, Billy Ficca)

Click to enlarge

back to the Gods and Monsters party of special things to do: also present and accounted for were my homies Cineaste film epicurean Richard Porton (who did a great interview with my buddy Willem Dafoe in the latest issue, check it out), Pakistani pistol Shaista Husain and her boyfriend Gus who operates a comics--sorry, graphic novel-- empire (don't forget that Milo Manara portfolio and those original Harvey Kurtzman EC Mads under my chanukah bush this year, Gus)...and 2 beautiful Carolines--my lovely wife of course...and also Carolina Atlasovitch, a radiant Argie ex-pat whose family originally hailed from Jedwabne--a landswoman, in other words-- whom I met at a screening of Slawomir Grunberg's "The Legacy of Jedwabne" documentary recently at Makor (a film I scored)--also in attendance was mover/shaker/lovolutioner WKCR DJ Charlie Blass... the legendary Steve Paul (Jim Morrison's favorite rapper)...and also a fellow Yalie I hadn't seen in about 30 years whose name sadly escapes me who played a mean guitar back then (and now a stock broker--tangled up in Old Blues..."wonder what they're doing with their lives", indeed)...plus the usual gang of true believers and fans fantastique, I love you madly...

so yes, it was a particularly fine night for us, after a summer group playing hiatus we really really kicked ass and then some...Jerry Harrison couldn't make it unfortunately--off sailing in Greece with Carol-- I do love his keyboards especially on the new songs we're recording for our next album, which he's producing-- Jerry will be with us for the CMJ Festival midnight gig we're doing at the BPC on Saturday Nov. 4th, to be recorded for a live album and DVD by Mighty Quinn... and hopefully we'll press-gang him into playing our just confirmed show on Saturday night October 28th at a gigantic new club space opening that weekend in Williamsburg on the site of the old Domino Sugar refinery complex, the new club called, appropriately enough, Brooklyn Sugar--we're playing on a bill titled "Rituals" with the fabulous Sun Ra Arkestra (led now by the great Marshall Allen)--and I'm going to open the evening with "Monsters from the Id", solo guitar improvs to a splendid and divers gallimaufry of horror, fantasy, and erotica clips culled from my poisonal collection...

btw, good to see that they've really enhanced the Bowery Poetry Club too with a new concessionaire in place, fine delicious and healthy snacks now being served daily, fresh fruit, veggies, sushi, sliced coconuts, iced Chai--good on ya Bob! Now just add Elvis' favorite deep fried peanut butter bacon and banana sandwiches to the bill' o fare and I'll be a happy boy (just kidding)...

Off in a few hours to Amsterdammmmmm for a week of Dutch shows with ace lutist Jozef Van Wissem--some tv and radio tapings too-- and an afternoon lecturing and giving a master class at the Amsterdam Music Conservatorum ...then back home for a day next week, then off again to open Pop Montreal with "The Golem" ...

"The Dark/The Light/ The Dark/ THE DAY"--Don Van Vliet

"It's a Bittersweet Symphony, that's Life"--The Verve

How doth the little busy bee
Improve each shining hour,
And gather honey all the day
From every opening flower!
~Isaac Watts, "Divine Songs"

xxLove

Gary

ps If you're in NYC, run don't walk and try to catch the great Absinthe show at the Spiegel Tent down at the South Street Seaport before it closes! Cool venue--played one of these mirror-star Spiegel Tents --hey, it's a franchise-- solo at the Amiens Festival a few years ago when my Label Bleu/Indigo album "The Edge of Heaven" first came out--and this particular bag of mixed circus/burlesque/cabaret nutters from Europe, UK, US and who knows where else (Xanadu? Yucatan? Zembla?) is just what the doctor etc...

Come All Within

Hey, I just signed (inked, in Variety-speak) with Mighty Quinn Records here for release of my new Gods and Monsters album "Coming Clean" in the US, Canada and Japan! Deal was a longtime coming, and lucky for me I have a big friend and fan in Jerry Roche (and also Meg Griffin, programming visionary of Sirius Satellite Radio who steered me to Jerry)--Jerry is the guy behind the label, a music lover, jazz reissue honcho at Mosaic, and industry vet who's been a fan of my work for years, has seen me play live numerous times, and is way way gung ho on my band, my little avant-punk supergroup known as Gods and Monsters--and that's the kind of enthusiasm you need these days!!

Same is true of Fred Barnes (Pete Townshend's godson) and Max Cross (Julia Fordham's nephew--whip-smart lads, both of them) who signed me to their Side Salad label in the UK last year where "Coming Clean" drops Oct. 4th through Universal...and Freddy Venant who has signed me for France to his Productions Speciales label, album due Nov. 2nd...and Jack Pisters in Amsterdam who's got us coming out on his Dawa Records label for the Benelux. And let us not forget Andrey Borisov, the mainman behind Exotica Music in Russia who put a version of my new album out a year ago in Russia under the name "Follow", where we followed up with some killer live shows in Moscow and Saint Petersburg courtesy of Sasha Cheparukhin last spring that brought Jerry Harrison and his brilliant keyboards into the mix and into our fold--Jerry is going to join us at the CMJ at the Bowery Poetry Club here Nov. 4th where we're taping a live album and DVD for Mighty Quinn, so come on out and support the Underground Generation...

Played the Golem last night at the Museum of Jewish Heritage for Michael Dorf's Oyhoo Festival, where a couple of cop cars with red lights ablaze sat in front of the building (quite near Ground Zero) all day and night to remind us that not all is peace, love, Donovan and flowers in the world at large...saw some great acts there like Afro-Semitic Experience, Hebrew acoustic hip-hopper Chana Rothman, and my old buddy composer/trumpeter/madman Paul Brody all the way from Berlin with his cool klez-jazz ensemble--Paul and I met at the Krakow Jewish Heritage Festival a few years ago where I was unleashing my "Golem" in a kino off the Krakow Old Town square, where in attendance at my performance was Princeton Professor Jan Gross, author of "Neighbors", about the 1941 Jedwabne massacre where all my remaining family on my mother's side (and all the remaining Jews in Jedwabne) were incinerated in a barn... by the way Jan has got an important new book out about Polish anti-semitism called "Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland After Auschwitz" which is a harrowing must-read and received a laudatory cover review in the Sunday NY Times Book Review Magazine a few weeks ago...

Last night my Golem performance brought out my good friend the Honorable Martin Palous, who was just made the Czech Republic's permanent ambassador to the UN, and his son Michal--Martin is definitely one of the Good Guys, a close friend of Vaclav Havel's and a brilliant, well-spoken intellectual and passionately engaged thinker and writer who has translated much of Hannah Arendt's work into Czech...I heard him lecture at the New School a couple years ago on Hannah Arendt and sat spellbound...he recently commissioned a concert of my guitar arrangement of Czech classical music at the Czech Embassy in DC where I performed works by Smetena, Dvorak, Janacek, and my buddies the Plastic People of the Universe (a classical avant-rock ensemble if I ever heard one!)...

On sale in the bookstore at the Museum of Jewish Heritage--and hopefully a bookstore near you-- is a new tome from my friend the writer Steven Lee Beeber called "The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB's--A Secret History of Jewish Punk" (Chicago Review Press) which even if you don't agree with his premise is a wildly entertaining read and chock full of great photos (and I'm just not saying that because he put a photo of me performing the Golem in it!--the shot was taken in Amsterdam by my buddy the great Dutch new music photographer Arjen Veldt...)--in fact Steve put some fantastic photos in there, including a shot of my buddy Danny Fields in his bar-mitzvah get-up! also a wonderful photo of The Modern Lovers with a baby-fat cute Jonathan Richman next to black leather-jacketed intellectual punks/ Harvard badasses Ernie Brooks and Jerry Harrison--who are now playing in MY band funnily enough, and with my Yale credentials added to their Harvard pedigrees we are the true Poison Ivy League :-)...there are also wonderful shots of Patti Smith and Lenny Kaye back at the beginning before the PSG was formed, and a great photo of my pal Lou Reed at the Downtown Seder from a couple years ago where we both performed...

The writer and editor and website maven Brad Balfour also came down last night for my show, and he is one of NYC's great cultural men-on-the-scene who really knows his stuff re music film and books, has schmoozed with just about everybody and who introduced me awhile ago to my new friend the lovely Chun Yu, an ex-pat Ph.D from mainland China who wrote a free-verse book called "Little Green" for Simon and Schuster about growing up during the turmoil, madness and depredations of the Cultural Revolution which is quite affecting/ gripping--she's now hard at work on a graphic novel about Chairman Mao, check out her stuff here--and on amazon.com, well worth your time...

Have to dash now to prepare for a talk I'm giving at New York University this afternoon for Professor Leslie Lee's class on Dramatic Writing...

Topic?

"Words and Music"...

XXLove

Gary

ps There's a gathering tonight (Thursday Sept. 14th) from 6pm to 11pm at Sin Sin at 85 2nd Ave. here in NYC for friends and fans of the late great visionary DJ Adam Goldstone--read this article from this week's Village Voice here--as mentioned, Adam was a collaborator and a friend of mine--and I will miss him dearly...

A Sleepin' Bee (not!)/Everyone Into the Gene Pool

Labor Day today, and I actually got a whole 6-7 hours of sleep, for a change--and thankfully without the aid of Ambien, introduced to me by my friend the Emmy award-winning tv documentarian Peter Bull some years ago before I made the long march from NYC to Tokyo, as a miracle drug whose very name in French translated into "morning wellness" :-)--which I actually hate to take, but will do so over Lunesta, Trazodone, Valerian, Melatonin et al (melatonin is actually illegal in the UK! Okay I admit I've smuggled some bottles over for the benefit of my pal Beefheart biographer/music writer Mike Barnes, send out an all-points bulletin--btw, good liner notes on the new EMI Virgin Beefheart reissues, Mike), as although ambien does do the job unlike the aforementioned meds/herbs it always makes me feel groggy and irritable the next day (insomniac, I normally average 4-5 hours sleep a night max when off the road, usually waking around 4 or 5am with my mind ticking over fullstop and lucid...usually a sign to get up and start working...actually the best time for me, early morning before the crack of dawn--love the sensation of "the city that never sleeps" golden slumbering all around me while I burn the post-midnight lamp in silence supreme, the only sound disturbing my reveries/lucubrations the occasional hiss and clank of a passing truck or street sweeper far below my window...good time to compose, too)--

plus you never get a sensation of fully rested deep REM sleep with Ambien (never mind the danger of turning into a raging ravenous beastie), there's something about putting a drop of medicinal poison in your bloodstream at bedtime that never quite works in the long term ("sand in the carburetor", as Dr. Thomas "The Myth of Mental Illness" Szasz so helpfully put it to me years ago in Syracuse when I went to visit him at age 22 for some short-term therapeutic consultation concerning my then direction-in-life after breaking up with my 56 year old girlfriend Anna Maria Levine--"Life is like a svimming pool, my boy...you just haf to jump into ze pool" was his sage advice--for which I slapped him five--"Thanks alot, Doc!"--then beat it the hell out of his office...after which he sent me a bill for 350 bucks for this nugget 'o wisdom...)

Some sad news, another death in the extended family--the great NYC DJ Adam Goldstone died suddenly last week en route to play at the Burning Man Festival in California, an accident, slipping in the shower of a moving camper van I'm told...Adam was one of the most creative and sensitive musical souls I've ever worked with, he and his then partner Perry Brandston made up the Departure Lounge Crew along with my friend Cosmo (Colleen Murphy who runs the Bacardi jammies I've been playing recently), I used to improvise with them on ambien't guitar regularly well after midnight at a little hole in the wall on the south side of the 14th Street Meat Rack between 8th and 9th avenues in the mid-90's...Adam also used to write for myriad dance publications and tip sheets, also Time Out NY...what a waste, what a tragedy...you can read a nice eulogy to Adam here by his brother DJ Sake 1 here.

Two excellent causes worthy of your support: my friend Jim Goodin, an amazing acoustic guitarist whose daughter Callie is stricken with diabetes hipped me to an upcoming Walk to Cure Diabetes taking part all over the country in the next couple months sponsored by the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation--please visit their website here--or check Callie's personal fundraising page here to make a pledge...

And my old friend Howie Klein once again reminds us that midterm elections are upon us here and now is the time for all good menscheviks to come to the aid of the parrrrrrrrrrty-- and throw the (Bush League) rascals out--please check into his Blue America PAC here and give generously as it is sooooo time for a change...Howie recently commissioned a song called "Have You Had Enough" as sung by Rickie Lee Jones and a few guys from the Squirrel Nut Zippers which you can hear here and on progressive radio stations everywhere--and also see a cool video of here, which is now up on YouTube, and which you can also spread virally--also if interested please check out Howie's account of how this song came to be made on his Down with Tyranny blog here...this is one of the worthiest causes that I know and support and I urge all my American friends to do so too...'nuff said!

More comings and goings around town: wish I could muster up some more enthusiasm for Dylan's latest album (G-d only knows I thought his last one, released on 9/11 unfortunately, was his best since "Oh Mercy"), maybe it'll take a few more listens, anyway there was a symposium at the KGB bar here last week with classical critic Alex Ross and editor David Remnick from The New Yorker; the New School's Robert Polito (author of the quite worthy of your time Jim Thompson biography "Savage Art"); Robert Levinson also of the New School who teaches a course called "Discussing Dylan"; and also Mary Lee Cortez of the band Mary Lee's Corvette, who did a whole covers album of "Blood on the Tracks" couple years agi...kibbitzers included famed Dylan garbologist A.J. Weberman who did a year in the slammer in a what-goes-around-comes-around kinda karmic comeuppance when the cops went through HIS garbage and found details of his marijuana dealing; Larry "Ratso" Sloman who wrote the "On the Road with Bob" book re the Rolling Thunder medicine show; and my pal "hypnotist collector"/keeper of the sacred scrolls of Thoth I mean Bob, Mitch Blank, who showed a quick-on-the-eye video of "Series of Dreams" and played the 1931 Bing Crosby side with Eddy Lang on guitar, "When the Blue of the Night Meets the Gold of the Day" which he swears Dylan borrowed the intro from for "When the Deal Goes Down" on Bob's new "Modern Times" album--best line of the night was when Mitch, pressed to comment on his reaction to the new album, opined that he thought it was "one of the nine best Dylan albums out of his last eighteen"...

Also present was former Polygram/Koch Jazz exec Donald Elfman who I hadn't seen in years, who unreservedly loves Bob's new album and failed to see what all the yammering was about, and me, who was (only slightly) embarrassed when my new cell phone with its rather loud ringtone of Jeff Buckley singing the chorus of "Grace" (the 1994 anthem I co-wrote with Jeff) went off right about the time when somebody brought up Dylan condemning all modern recordings post 1972 in his cover story interview in the new Rolling Stone :-)...

Personally I think Bob is the greatest male Caucasian artist this fair land has produced to date ('s funny too how Bob name checks Alicia Keys on cut one of his new disque--the Keys to the Kingdom!...see my blog of 9/5/05)--and in fact to further add to all things Dylanological I just happened to notice a possible new Dylan/Ginsberg concordance in this week's New Yorker; namely, line 15 of Dylan's old buddy/mentor Allen Ginsberg's 1951 poem "Paterson"--"...crying by a diner in the western sun"--and line 4, stanza 1, of Dylan's "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" wherein he sings "crying like a fire in the sun"...Oh mercy, indeed!

This just in: legendary tenor saxophonist Dewey Redman has passed away, what a bummer...check out Ben Ratliff's obit in the NY Times here
(Don Van Vliet, a/k/a Captain Beefheart, once remarked to me that "he never really dug Ornette-- Redman was the cat"... this backtracking after effusively singing the praises of Ornette and his Columbia lp "Science Fiction"--which featured Dewey Redman--on his "Spotlight Kid" tour, circa '72...this change of heart most likely occurred post- Ornette labeling Don a "chickenshit white hunter" after Don proved nervous about journeying up to Harlem to visit him...Don repaid the compliment thusly: "Hey man, you can say that--but I know a bar in Texas...and I, uh, won't even go in there...but YOU can go in there...")

Highly recommended: Kiki and Herb: Alive on Broadway, at the Helen Hayes Theater on 44th street--best moment was Kiki (Justin Bond) segueing into a rendition of Public Enemy's "Don't Believe the Hype" rendered as a glitzy cabaret showtune while Herb (Kenny Mellman) madly pounded the piano behind her/him...not unakin to the episode of Martin Mull's late lamented 70's tv campfest "Fernwood 2Night", wherein Frank DeVol as bandleader Happy Kyne delivered a sterling version of KC and the Sunshine Band's " (Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty" ...

Kiki and Herb, yes!-- tongue firmly in both cheeks in the great tradition of musico-showbiz campsters Kaye Ballard, Elaine Stritch, loser loungers Bill Murray performing his immortal greasy "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" tune on SNL, Fred Willard (Fernwood's Jerry Hubbard) pining for the sounds of "Three Jacks and a Jill" in "Spinal Tap", the compleat Mrs. Miller, Ethel Merman just being herself, avant-gardster Cathy Berberian singing "Ticket to Ride", Susie Quatro belting "Can the Can" (just kidding)...

speaking of campfests, in the NY Times' recent obit for the great Glenn Ford some dismissive words were parsed concerning his role in the film "Gilda", best remembered, in the late Times film critic Bosley Crowther's opinion, for Rita Hayworth's "Put the Blame on Mame" star turn, eclipsing Glenn's "thankless role" in said pauvre film--WHATTTTT??? And so was dissed one of the greatest cinema campfests of all time (principally due of course to the hilarious, epicene antics of George McCready with his coded/queer manipulation of Ford, and phallic sword-cane fetish/subterfuge--"Meet my little friend, Johnny!"), as "Gilda" gets slung on the slag heap of (the) Time(s)...come ON, Pinch!

Heads Up: WKCR DJ Charlie Blass, who is no doubt up there at Columbia pumping Dewey Redman over the ether as I write this, suggested I reprint 2 recent favorable notices from this week's Village Voice and last week's Sunday Times (UK), concerning my live performance and new album "Coming Clean", respectively--but as I'm a sleepin' bee today (not!), I will refer you to my homepage at http://garylucas.com, where both notices are "up there", courtesy of web-mistress Tanya (btw, check out fantastic recent Columbia Legacy reissue of the great Harold Arlen/Truman Capote's "House of Flowers" Broadway cast album, featuring a rare Harold Arlen dictaphone memo to Truman wherein Arlen delivers cast notes and sings the exqusite show tune "A Sleepin' Bee" in a smoky, down home, blue-eyed soul kind of a voice you'll be amazed to know Harold had in him)...

xxLove

Gary

ps pace my reaction to Dylan's newie, I really really wanted to like Brian De Palma's new film of James Ellroy's "The Black Dahlia" (which I caught at a screening this week with Caroline and Cineaste editor Richard Porton) alot more than I did--and again, maybe I'll appreciate it more with subsequent viewings...certainly it has some classic De Palma action set-pieces in it, quotes his own films and a zillion others, and was beautiful to look at (thanks to set designer Dante Ferretti, cinemtographer Vilmos Zsigmond, and the erotic heat generated by Scarlett Johansson, Mia Kirshner, and Hilary Swank)--but the film suffers from a delirious, semi-coherent, hard-to-follow script by Josh Friedman (Bruce Jay F. would have been better here probably) that left various sophisticated new yawk movie reviewers/goers grasping to puzzle it all out when the lights came up (my pal Jim Hoberman made a sensible quick exit before one could importune him to help explicate it)...film was enjoyable still on the whole: there's some weird John Wayne Gacy (and possible Red Skelton) references in there (smiling Gwynplaine-like clownish "joker hysterical faces" painted near the murder scenes), and a deranged imbecilic psycho-killer who looks like a cross between Rondo Hatton and the carrot-headed thing behind the door from "The Brain That Wouldn't Die"--and Fiona Shaw (last enjoyed in this parrish in her one-woman rendition of "The Wasteland on 42nd Street"--yes!-- as rich as Kiki and Herb on Broadway) does some over-ripe madwoman melodramatics, rolling her eyes and chewing the scenery not all that far afield from Bette Davis in "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" and Joan Crawford in "Straitjacket"...I ain't seen Brian D since Caroline and I had brunch with him at the old Paris Commune on Bleecker Street a couple years ago with his then-squeeze Elli Medeiros (so brilliant on my new album "Coming Clean" singing "Skin Diving"--a/k/a, Everyone Into the Gene Pool), and before that when he came with Elli to see me perform in Torcy, so hey B, despite my carpiing it was still way better and more entertaining than alot of other films out there, you're still a master, so is Dylan, I gotta go now to go talk to a French journalist about Arthur Russell and my new one...SEE YA!