New York is Now!

...was the title of one of my favorite Ornette Coleman albums (or in Joycean kittyspeak--New York is Mkgnao!)--which still very much describes the general zeit and zounds, forsooth-sayers abounding and resounding in Gotham-boig last week as we inch closer and closer to the diurnal equinox, the beloved winter solstice...closer still to the fiery vortex of music, the very quintessence/the beating heart of our granite Metropolis...

Week began last Wednesday with a classical smash, an alte/neu mash-up at the Lyric Chamber Music Society of NY, an Eastern-tinged concert taking centerstage in the beautiful old wooden paneled upstairs concert hall in the Kosciuszko Foundation on East 65th Street, where the Taiwanese virtuoso violinst Cho-Liang Lin mesmerized playing music by Mendelsohn, Debussy, and Chinese new music composer Zhou Long. Accompanied by the rapier-like cello moves of lovely Hai-Ye Ni, with keyboard fireworks courtesy of radiant pianist Helen Huang, it was an evening that concentrated the mind wonderfully (right between the ears), the sonic equivalent of soulful looks and smouldering glances hurled back and forth across the East/Wide metaphysical divide...thanks to the prescient and sensitive Artistic Director of the Lyric, Yale University classical scholar Joan Thomson Kretschmer, for inviting me to this event...Joan has a very cool book out- for children of all ages-entitled "Michelangela and Debuts" (Writers Club Press)...

Thursday I had a guest shot/ pop-in at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum at 108 Orchard Street where I sat on a panel led by Steven Lee Beeber discussing his very controversial tome (to readers of The Wire, anyway--book's gotten thumbs up nearly everywhere else) entitled "The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB's--A Secret History of Jewish Punk" (Chicago Review Press), I was in the lap of some very good company indeed--including my old friend tres lovely and brilliant Vivien Goldman, an English-Jewish brainiac after mein own heart since oh I dunno I guess I first met Viv here in the early 80's but knew her pioneering jumpin' punk 'n reggae-reportage very well indeed before finally meeting her, her words fairly jumping off the pages of "Sounds" (the UK music mag) in the late 70's, where she was a star journalist...Viv went on to be a guest presenter on Channel 4 in auld Blighty, and currently teaches the history of, uh, ur, uh, Punk, at the Uni-level (NYU to be precise)...Vivien has a new book out herself all about the making of Bob Marley's seminal "Exodus" album entitled (natch) "The Book of Exodus" (Three Rivers Press)...a must-read! She was there and knows what-of she speaks (Viv also had a great 12inch single out on Ed Bahlman's late-lamented 99 Records, lived in a house in London with Geoff Travis and Mark Stewart and Adrian Sherwood once upon a...but that's another story!).

Also on the panel (Danny Fields was a no-show, feel better Danny!) was a be-yarmulk'ed Legs McNeill, the original Punk Magazine Pin-up Boy/Everyschlub turned historian as the co-author/compiler of "Please Kill Me"... Legs wore a token keepaw in solidarity with the overall subject under discussion but had to leave early... also ran into Bob Dylan amanuensis High Times scribe Larry "Ratso" Sloman there, as well as my good friend the Fabulous Fabulist Mitch Myers, who has a new book out in April that memorializes in prose his droll NPR wordjazz/anectdotal music essay oral spew, book's entitled "The Boy Who Cried Freebird" (Harper Collins)...a wonderful night yes suree, great attentive crowd, whole jewpunk symposium was being videotaped for G-d knows where, many intelligent questions emanating from the younger g-g-g-g-generation attending including neo-punkers Austin and Deenah and 'Moggie' Bloom (mrkgnao!)--dug the tenor of this whole Tenement Museum scene, hitherto unexplored by me ('tho must say I always had a soft spot for that "Tenement Symphony" sequence in The Marx Brothers' film "The Big Store"), now methinks a Tenement Museum tour would be in order sometime soon-ish, are you listening Helene Silver? Mitch and Viv and I went over to Congee Village round the block afterwards for some good 'n tasty Chinese food, ran into Steve Beeber emerging from another bar like synchronized clockwork several hours laterweaving his merry way down the Lower East Side...

Saturday night Caroline and I caught David Byrne's new song cycle "Here Lies Love" at Carnegie Hall, and were utterly captivated by its majestic lyrical arc depicting the rise and fall of Imelda Marcos (particularly the title song, whose soaring, uplifting chorus I can't get out of my head...). With deadpan Zen commmentary courtesy David between song doing the heavy-lifting of exposition effortlessly, a medley of lilting, tuneful (and occasionally stark and somber) new Byrne songs brought the mellifluous voices of singers Joan Almedilla and Ganda Suthivarakom to the fore over a percolating stew of percussion, bass, keyboards, and drums, eventually joined by strings at the end, which worked very well indeed over dance-vamps courtesy of David's collaborator British DJ Fatboy Slim...I enjoyed the whole evening mucho , the new work-- albeit a work in progress, without sets or lighting or props, just bare-faced unadorned Music, which is usually the best way to go, for me-- flowed seamlessly from ultra-creative David, who is certainly one of the most charismatic and poised performers going (and what a great voice! Honestly, I wouldn't have minded at all if there was just a wee bit more of David singing in the mix of this show). He received a deservedly jubilant ovation from the packed Carnegie Hall house...

Sitting directly next to me and Caroline in the comfy parquet of Carnegie Hall was avant-rock royalty in the form of longtime life partners Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson, who were both very warm and friendly--Lou in particular absolutely made my year so far, he really made me blush by saying very complimentary things about my guitar work for Jeff Buckley...what can I say? I've obviously admired this iconic couple's work individually for decades (my first glimpse of Laurie Anderson at the Academy of Music around the time of "O Superman" turnd out to be one of the best concerts I've ever attended... 25 years later she continues to amaze). And what can you say about Lou's work--except to say that as far as longterm/ longhaul oeuvre's go, Lou's remains consistently Outstanding... I'd previously cited Lou's guitar solo on the Velvet Underground's "I Heard Her Call My Name" in the pages of the late lamented Musician magazine as probably my single favorite guitar solo of all time--suffice to say, his songs are timeless, anthemic, and stirring-- he pretty much wrote the whole punk rulebook years before the term gained any parlance...and I'm always intrigued to see where he will take his sound and vision next...

Then it was down to The Box, a really really cool new hole-in-the-wall partypad on Chrystie Street operated by Simon Hammerstein (of Oscar H & Hammerstein Ballroom fame),a plush lush little boite with a Blue Angel-ish type of theatre/cabaret atmosphere complete with miniature stage peformance area and an intime balcony overlooking the main action downstairs, superb soft-focus romantic lighting and very well-appointed accouterments/tschotschkes part od the overall design (decoupage and painted walls like some kind of psychedelic, warmoestraat-ish Wendy-house--scenes from Babar the Elephant intermingled with feline faces from Milo Manara's erotic comic strips "Click"-- yowzah!)...when Caroline and I finally arrived there after braving the frigid steppes of lower Manhattan a smiling David Byrne greeted us by the bar, Bob Hurwitz from Nonesuch was holding court at his table, I ran into Paul Miller a/k/a DJ Spooky who I hadn't seen in ages with his delightful female companion the Japanese a capella chanteuse/performance artist Mai Ueda, also bumped into avant-jazzer neuroscientist Dave Soldier on the way out around 2am, really could have stayed all night the buzz was so nice...

and then Sunday night I caught Jonathan Richman performing a really strong career-overview of a wonderful set at the Knitting Factory, Jonathan was in superlative form and fine voice (think of it-- David, Lou, Laurie and Jonathan, all in one weekend--now there's a NY minute for ya)...flamenco star Kiko Veneno opened in a duo with a another male guitarist and they did a rocking version of Dylan's "Stuck Inside of Mobile (with the Memphis Blues Again)" in Spanish that got a large Spanish youth contingent on their feet...then Jonathan came out with wispy beard and striped tee and danced and rocked and rolled and frolicked and frei-lached acoustically doing Richman classics old and new including "That Summer Feeling", "Egyptian Reggae", "Give Paris One More Chance"-- he even went back to precise Modern Lovers style with a rendition of "Girl Fren", Ernie Brooks was supposed to have made it down but didn't show, too bad for him as he would have loved to see his old bandmate on such a night, went backstage and spoke to Jonathan who spoke not a word back to me or anyone else in the dressingroom but instead scribbled messages to us and mimed to us all to save his voice, he nodded vigorously and happily upon hearing that Gods and Monsters are covering a version of The Modern Lovers' "She Cracked" on our forthcoming live DVD/CD (yes! Jerry Harrison sang it, and is currently mixing it down to 5 point one surround sound in Sausalito--btw, Jerry produced Kenny Wayne Sheperd's new album, which is #1 on the Billboard Blues chart only 10 days out!)...I ran into Steve Paul backstage too, who has this great new website up at www.downtowntv.com,where you can see clips all about his new Puppet Music Hall project, and more cool stuff... another classic night of musical scrapple from the Apple...to paraphrase Jonathan: Give New York one more chance!

Gotta run now to catch singer/songwriter Piers Faccini at Joe's Pub (Piers is a big favorite of my old friend French music writer Gilles Tordjman, who urged me to go and check him out)...

xxLove

Gary