I'm a Stranger Here Myself...

...doin' time on planet earth. A wandering minstrel, aye, who likes to commingle with other like-minded folk, strange kin peoples of the outer and inner circle (Whitman-sampler like, I contain multi-kulti 'tudes)... traveling the globe to bring you the thrill of victory...and the agony of de feet (o my achin' pieds)...

And 'twas a glorious evening well spent last Sunday at the KGB Bar over on East 4th Street wherein yours truly improvised an accompaniment on National steel for my pal Steve Beeber (renowned expert on all things Jewpunk--author of must-read "The Heebie Jeebies at CBGB's", editor of the recent Soft Skull Press anthology "AWAKE! A Reader for the Sleepless") who was a'reading my story "Me and the Golem" from same said book to a largish crowd...Steve's an excellent reader, story went down well, but the real fun part for me was digging the other turns by some fantastic writers, including the hilarious and foxy Catie Lazarus, Catie's a sharp dresser (wore a little red-riding hoody ensemble with a half a bear visage over her hard skull--Caroline would have loved this) who also is a stand-up practitioner of commedia del pahty, she's written for Heeb, The Forward, Time Out NY, lots of tony publishing houses too, she read from Steve's anthology a thing called "Insomnia" (a trademark symbol should go next to the a, don't have this key on my G4, sorry Catie) and had us all smiling and giggling, sometimes howling, she is quite a kosher cut-up for sure (are there any female mohel's allowed out there?)...

Bud Parr, who writes a regular blog with the provocative title "Chekhov's Mistress", delivered a strong reading of a piece entitled "I Wish I Were an Insomniac" (careful what you wish for, bud, I've been there, and a long night of the soul is oft not a pretty story)...and the lovely Priscilla Becker read a very very funny piece entitled "Taking Out the Trash", Priscilla won the Paris Review's book prize with her first book of poems "Internal West" a couple years ago, she is also a freelance music critic, I thought she looked kinda glamorously familiar when she got up to read--turns out she used to work at my pal Johnny Rocket's Rockit Scientist store down on Carmine Street, one of the best music emporiums in the city, now located on St. Mark's Place, a real good place to haunt for all sorts of genre rarities like my good friend and collaborator the writer par excellence David Dalton's ancient psychedelique arcana/waxing, "How to Blow Your Mind and Have a Freak-Out Party", possibly his only foray into recorded music which he'd probably rather forget about but which I'm told is a good 'un (wonder if my pal Julian Cope is hep to this album? Memo for further investigation!) (it's not Rockit Scientist's link, but will have to do for the nonce, they got it there, believe me!)...sure is a funny old world--hope David is getting sent his royalties from this reissue in a timely way!

Thursday Gods and Monsters had a wonderful gig at Oberlin College outside of Cleveland, never been to that school before until Michelle Cable of Panache Agency booked us (Oberlin was considered one of my "safe schools" along with Antioch back in the day, oy vey), and I brought the full industrial strength Gods and Monsters supergroup lineup with me (Jerry Harrison, Ernie Brooks, Billy Ficca, and Jason Candler--Joe Hendel was occupado with his Downtown.tv show thingy)...Oberlin treated us royally, special thanks to Brandon Adler and his crew who made the whole thing effortless, worthwhile, and big Fun--the guys played their asses off (considering Jerry was out pahtying with David Byrne at Del Posto the night before till the wee small hours of sixpence, he played like an angel), the attending student body at the 'Sco proved outstandingly receptive to the collective cut of our jib, and we're doing it to death all over again here at the Bowery Poetry Club NYC on my birthday, June 20th, with Joe Hendel hoisting his mizzenmast (well, trombone) at this one...

Saturday night Caroline and I went up to Zankel Hall to hear the Yale Symphony Orchestra perform at the Musical Olympus Festival Concert, which featured First Prize winning young international prodigies joining the orchestra, including Romania's Mihai Marica on cello, the Russian Nikita Lyutikov on clarinet, and the Hungarian French horn whiz Szabolcs Zempleni playing Strauss' Horn Concerto No. 1...our favorite though was Georgian pianist Khatia Buniatishvili who played Chopin's Concerto No. 2 for Piano and Orchestra--an incredibly difficult finger-buster--in a blissed-out, rapturous trance that had the audience weeping for joy, she brought out nuanced lines and passages with such passion and fire there was nothing more to say at the end but Bravo, which the audience, did, loudly...I am an alumnus of this very same orchestra, having played electric guitar with them under the baton of John Mauceri in 1973 in the European premiere of Leonard Bernstein's "Mass" at the Vienna Konzerthaus...and I must say, the 2008 YSO is a marvel of sophistication under the baton of Singapore's Darrell Ang--and a beautiful thing to hear, indeed...you really should try and catch them...

C and I then went downtown to meet our friend Richard and enjoy a fine Middle Eastern meal at Mamlouk on East 4th Street between A and B, where we beheld the miracle of my friend the very gifted vocalist Anath bellydancing up a storm, she got the crowd up and swaying with her immediately, including Caroline, who cut a mean boogie (while Richard averted his eyes-- for shame!), Anath's going to be at Drom in the East Village on May 8th, and I should be there that night also sitting in with her and her partner, ace Chilean keyboardist/sampler extraordinaire Pablo--you really should check their music out-- together they weave an exotique tapestry of sounds Middle Eastern and otherwise (I love their version of Blondie's "Rapture", it's on Youtube), they make shimmering trancelike musique nonstop, extremely hypnotic and danceable...Anath's a good friend of Yael Naim's, who may well be there too (btw, I'm sitting in with Yael and David Donatien at Central Park Summerstage the night of June 22nd--please come and check Yael out live-- she is simply Incroyable!)

(Wipe that smile off your face, Lucas!)

No way...

xxLove


Gary

Fun House

Just back from supping with Caroline at the fabulous Al Fama restaurant, corner of Hudson and Perry Street here in the w-w-wild West Village--nostalgic for Portuguese cooking (they have some of the best I've ever tasted...and I am missing Portugal a lot again after my super gigs there last month with Dead Combo in Coimbra, which made the front page of the Portuguese national paper Publico here, I returned there tonight and ordered the excellent fillet steak you carve up yourself and cook to taste (rare, very rare in my case) on a sizzling stone and eat in tiny bites dipped in chili sauce and garlic sauce...plus hot cinnamon and egg custard pastelas for dessert... mmmmmmmm...

this was the first eatery to stick on the corner there (going strong for 6 years now) since I moved here in '77, replacing many a non-starter pectopah (I recall a procession of dreary Japanese and Spanish joints--and I love good Japanese and Spanish food)..so long may Al Fama reign..in fact, the enterprise was kicked off in style befitting the elegant and immaculately decorated cool clean interior with an appearance by the exquisite young Portuguese fado superstar Mariza, with whom I shared a bill on world music maven dj Charlie Gillett's 30th anniversary show on BBC London some years back (along with Nick Hornsby and Nick Lowe, check it out here), Mariza was holding her American record release party at Al Fama right after they opened...and I have since enjoyed many a lovely mid-summer's night dream there kicking back with friends at tables the restaurant sets out along leafy Perry Street...go there and say hello to their charming hostess Denise Costa, and indulge yourself in sybaritic decadence...it ain't THAT pricey--and it's definitely worth the $$...

Still recovering (the steak helped!) from a Gods and Monsters live blow-out Saturday night, the guys and I played a legendary underground party (which shall remain nameless to protect the guilty) which goes down in an un-safe house every 3 weeks or so in darkest Brooklyn, on the fringe of South Williamsburg/Bed-Stuy/the Brooklyn Navy Yard--a not very fashionable industrial no-man's land that is growing dismayingly trendier slowly but surely every day...party held at the most peculiar building, a two story loft decorated Pee-Wee's Playhouse style with day-glo tsotchkes and handmade boho objet d'arts dangling from the ceiling and encrusting every wall and available surface space...a real Laff-in-the-Dark Fun House cum Factory with a great stage area when you climbed the steps up to the first floor to enter where we mesmerized the crowd filing in with an intense and loose free-form psychedelic jammy of a set (Ernie Brooks and Billy Ficca from Modern Lovers and Television comprising one badass rhythm section and throwing thunderbolts as one with their rhythmic cut and thrust, Jason Candler like a fresh cool breeze on alto sax and fx, young Joe Hendel was on the f'ing case on keyboards and trombone, hot from walking the walk on his downtowntv.com programmy "The Latest Show on Earth"--boy knows how to improvise)...multiple dj's were spinning gold in the basement dance hall areas--2 of 'em, real good they were too, I climbed down there after our set to walk in on one blasting an old crackling London 45 of "She Said Yeah" by the Stones (the old Larry Williams tune done rave-up stylee and sporting Keith's proto-metal riffing fuzz-toned guitar--one of my favorite all time tracks, with a guitar solo that sends me every time I hear it and sits firmly at #1 in my Top 5, along with Lou Reed's "I Heard Her Call Name" and Hendrix's "The Stars That Play With Laughing Sam's Dice") (a/k/a "STP LSD"), the other spinner was playing a nasty 70's r&b track by unknown black female with rude 'n lewd lyrics, entire place was crawling with attractive young sharp-dressed hipsters of both sexes, young old and in betweenies all young at heart (including the beatnik who was projecting movies in a Harum Scarum-style tent set up on the roof overlooking the industrial wasteland, I climbed the rickety fire escape up top, waded through the gimlet-eyed stoners (thought I wuz a donut, you tried to glaze me--didn't need to, I was High on Life at this do just people peeping--everybody seemed tranced out on something or other in this rollicking rip-roaring timezone of a son of flubbery/flim-flam flummery/rubber-room of a crib--PAHTY HAHTY!)--and walked in on him in the midst of projecting an 8mm, sepia-tinted print of (!) (never seen this before) Max Fleischer/Betty Boop/Cab Calloway's classic 1933 'toon "The Old Man of the Mountain", which I've sung snatches of onstage with Fast 'n Bulbous, like the other night at the Knitting Factory Beefheart Tribute, in homage to our hirsute baritone sax player Dave Sewelson, who kinda resembles the toon's protagonist...

Okey dokey, 2-count them-2 of my favorite cultural artifacts--"She Said Yeah" and "The Old Man of the Mountain"--cosmically hurled flung dummy-like/Aaron Kaye-style in my face (pie in the fucking sky) upon entering the twin sanctum sanctorums of (what was this party head-quarter's name again?)--I mean, what more could one ask for? Hey hey hey, boyz and grrrrrls--I was in 7th Heaven! The Ultimate Pu-Pu Platter a'set before me! Wandering through this glowing bifurcated house 'o smiles, grinning from ear to eternity, like a newborn child, God was smiling his beatific Buddah smile down upon me tonight at noon like the Teletubby Sun-Baby (Sun Tzu Spark?) (Pulitzer prize winning Chronicleer/Chanticleer's Sun Pie hisself?)...

Jackpot! Banco! Kismet! Polovetsian Dances! (Prince) Igor on chains, backed by his baying hounds! ("Take my hand, I'm a stranger in (roll the) Pair 'o Dice")!

A Quincunx Quiddity! Serendipity!!

(Double Jeopardy??)...

Maybe so...maybe some sick sense was telling me it was possible to have too much fun--too much, too soon--in one night (all summer in a day...)

("A lifetime in a night."--James Joyce, "Ulysses")

Soooooo--

me and roady Davy scaramooched outta there to our waiting livery/car service around quarter to 2 am, special thanks to Kris Anton and Chris the cool party promoter and lovely Sari and the lovely girl with ostrich feathers on her head (step on yr head and do the ostrich) who shimmied before us while we played and the guy who told me he'd learned "Flavor Bud Living" in an open tuning (wrong, but what the hey) and the lovely Russian girl who said she had come there specifically to see me play, and, and, uh....

Well--apparently the cops raided this here floating world crap game tethered to the mast 'o (what was that name again? Rhymes with Cool de la) at 3am and busted some folks there for selling liquor...and alice be toke-less brownies... and bic pen barrels filled with the unnameable (giving new meaning to the apothegm 'flick yr bic')...

but the party will regroup and reconstitute itself like wild mercury quivering on the plate of life...

and we'll be playing there next time at the witching hour itself we were so well received there (contributing mightily to getting this party started) saith the party promoters, who truth to tell have survived numerous busts and shakedowns over the last 15 years since they started up (where's that confounded name?) (seems like this goes on a lot in Brooklyn--certainly the last few times we played there...

next stop for G&M--Oberlin College in (I know a rhyme that comes with a riddle) Ohio this Thursday, dear people (what's round on the end and high in the middle? oHio)-- with the full supergroup lineup (Jerry Harrison is joining us for this one--thanks to Michelle Cable and Panache Booking for hooking it up, at, appropriately enough, the Dionysus Disco...)

Be there now...

xxLove


Gary


ps two excellent gigs earlier in the week: beginning with "Beefheart Night at the Knit", a Pick of the Week in both the New Yorker magazine and the Village Voice, a special gala event featuring the return of Fast 'n Bulbous, who were all in town (my co-leader Phillip Johnston flying in from Sydney Australia for this) to record our second album for Cuneiform--plus a cast of 1000's (including many many beautiful Van Vliet paintings and drawings courtesy of Beefheart.com, which were projected in all their grandiloquence on a large screen throughout the poetry readings and side-splitting and poignant reminiscences by Danny Fields, Alan Vega, Hal Willner, Kurt Loder, Lee Ranaldo, Giorgio Gomelsky, Brainpang a/k/a Peter Warner, Mike Edison, Glenn Kenny, David Lynch remotely, Darryl Read by way of London, Felice Rosser from Faith, Billy Altman, Jamie Cohen, Dusty Wright who also filmed much of the event--a podcast should air on his culturecatch.com webzine in a couple weeks)...I curated the night as a conscious-raising exercise to call attention once again to this sadly still very much overlooked American visionary genius, my former employer and mentor Don Van Vliet...

Gary, Dave Sewelson and Joe Fiedler let 'er rip at "Beefheart Night at the Knit", NYC, 4/9/08

Gary and surprise guest Robyn Hitchcock got the time to teach ya at "Beefheart Night at the Knit", NYC, 4/9/08


The band played two white-hot sets, debuting new renditions of Beefheart classics such as "Woe is a Me Bop" and old favorites (an incandescent "Kandy Korn")...and at 12:30am the overflow crowd was treated to a surprise appearance by Robyn Hitchcock, who sat in as a duo with me playing National steel on "Sure 'Nuff 'n Yes I Do", "China Pig", and "Click Clack" (Robyn hightailed it downtown to join our party after his gig with the aforementioned Nick Lowe uptown, which is why he was a surprise guest, we couldn't advertise his appearance! He was bloody magnificent too...)

Second great gig was me sitting in with Gallo and the Roosters, my good-hearted Italian pals with whom i cut an album in Milano last February after my Spanish solo tour...C showed up on Friday to catch us at John Zorn's joint The Stone on 2nd Street and Ave. C--and was dazzled by Danilo Gallo's cinematic charts and the propulsive interplay of drummer extraordinaire Zeno di Rossi, saxophonist Francesco Bigoni, local trombonist Curtis Hasselbring, and yours truly...can't wait till you hear our album...

Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind...

...like the new Martin Scorsese/Rolling Stones Concert Film "Shine A Light", which I caught on the immense Imax Screen on 67th Street and Broadway yesterday--a trip to the Imax an experience not unakin to having an up close and personal audience with Oz, the Great and Powerful--sound and vision telegraphed, nay sledge-hammered relentlessly into your photo-receptors/auditory canal, plus...crowd control courtesy of the Imax factotums who ordered everybody (press liggers mainly) to move their seats to make room for late-coming idlers/dawdlers...

Okay, I have to admit, I'm more than partisan here, Stones were--and may still be-- my alltime favorite band-- they were for sure growing up in Syracuse (still clock lots of mileage with 'em on my iPod Nano, pre-68 Stones predominantly)...

"Then I'm gonna teach you 'bout the Rolling Stone"--lewd lyric by Richard ("Louie Louie") Berry from his song "Rockin' Man" (check the ace Ace compilation "Get Out of the Car")

Stones first rolled into my consciousness upon overhearing the immortal meme-like refrain of "The Last Time" on someone else's transistor, a riff from the Gods which burned itself into my brain and wouldn't switch off (Brian played this motif live on his D and G strings, up around the 9th, 7th and 5th frets of his Vox Phantom--not at all what they teach you in "Guitar Player"-- not at all obvious a voicing... and not as easy to play up there as it sounds)...and before I ever set eyes upon the band live, or even in a trashy magazine, I recall seeing a long-haired adolescent British lad of schoolboy age mime to this same track from what appeared to be the stage of the Marquee Club on a special British edition of the Jack Lescoulie-hosted early 60's show "1,2,3 Go!", on an episode where Jack took us kids on a trip to jolly old London--who was this young pretender to the throne anyway, about 12, 13 years old at best? Boy did a mean Mick Jagger impression)...

Up at Camp Kennebec in North Belgrade, Maine (where I endured 7 enforced, sequestered summers), I remember my friend Ben Sandmel (N'awlins based music writer who last I heard was managing the Hackberry Ramblers) sharing his well-thumbed copy of the Ballantine paperback "Our Own Story by The Rolling Stones, as we told it to Pete Goodman" with me (hie thee to Alibris)-- which really further, uh, fired my imagination (book was a great, great read, containing eye-catching photos of Brian giving the finger to photographer Nicholas Wright, who was snapping a pic of him blowing harp at the "Not Fade Away" session... and a shot of Keith, bareback 'cept for a sweater slung over his shoulder, traipsing down a hill clutching what looked like a woman's handbag)...

In fact, my first actual rockrockrockaroll experience was catching the Stones live the night before Halloween 1965 at the Syracuse War Memorial (guys played up at Cornell in Ithaca that same afternoon, those were the good old Jerry Brandt/ALO grueling touring days)...local Syracuse DJ "Dandy" Dan Leonard compered, and first off introduced upstate act Ed Wool and the Nomads, who were on for barely 2 numbers, and who were then joined by New Yawk hairdresser/personality Monte Rock III (who later scored a hit with "Get Dancin'" under the moniker Disco Tex and The Sexolettes ...he also played the dj in "Saturday Night Fever" who utters the immortal line: "I love that polyester look!")...Monte couldn't sing much, but got the crowd's attention sporting green-dyed hair (yes) for the evening...he was followed by Patti LaBelle and the Bluebells, who were cresting then with "I Sold My Heart to the Junk Man", who brought us straight up into the blue empyrean 'oer the roof of the War Memorial and beyond....followed by largely unsung r&b greats and "Shindig" stalwarts The Vibrations, who shimmied and twisted and soulfully stirred the pot some more...who were themselves followed (love those package tours) by The Rockin' Ramrods, a garage band/British Invasion knock-off from Boston, who had a regional hit out on Claridge then with "Don't Fool with Fu-Manchu" (trying to tie-in with the Christopher Lee/ Seven Arts Fu Manchu flick out then...B side was entitled "Tears Melt the Stones")...and finally...finally...

On came the Stones!

Opening with Solomon Burke's "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love" from "The Rolling Stones- Now!" (get the CD reissue which has the longer, alternate take of the track), Mick commanded center stage from the get-go, sporting a hound's tooth-checked jacket (coulda been the inspiration for Dylan's clobber on his electric tour with The Hawks a year later), pointing to various audience members at each "I Need You, You You!" juncture, squeals, swoons, general audience pandemonium ensuing on the beat, Syracuse audience up but not quite out of their seats/out of their heads...Keith duckwalked up and down the stage flailing his black Gretsch Country Gentleman (after Duane Eddy, Keith was my first real Guitar Hero, still is) as Mick tried out some hitherto unseen moves, including up-ending/inverting his mic stand and swinging it in a 180 degree arc over his head...Brian looked positively beatific in plaid wool pants and big fuzzy sweater, Bill stood there stock-still chewing gum, every so often tilting his bass up to head level Ernie Brooks style...and Charlie? Charlie knocked out one great groove after another, effortlessly, immaculately dressed and coifed, without breaking a sweat...

They played a whole 20 minutes! (yeah, those were the days...)...

Ending with "Satisfaction", Mick prowling the lip of the stage, goading the audience on, daring them to rush it/him, his every move shadowed by a black security guard doppelganger moving as one with Mick directly in front of him...a couple girls broke through the security perimeter and rushed onstage...but were quickly beaten back and hauled off by the rent-a-cops...

And then the Stones waved to the kids holding the banners and signs in the upper tiers ("Charlie is My Darling"), ran off the stage without an encore, the lights came up fast...and...as I was already a huge fan of the group...I was, as they say, gob-smacked-- I couldn't believe I'd actually seen them live, they'd been right up there in front of me, they'd played ferociously...but suddenly they were sort of like this hazy apparition, 5 revenants who had strutted and fretted their hour (well, 20 min.) on the stage, big as life and twice as natural...

and now they were g-g-g-gone, vanished into very thin air...the memory lingering on (for decades, in my case)...which made you want to see them again and again ( "Always leave them wanting more," my Dad advised me when I described having played a 3 hour marathon solo concert at the Roxy in Prague to him)...

It was truly the best concert I had ever experienced, up to that point--first true rock event of my life (subsequent to the Stones I'd only ever witnessed live, lessee, Andres Segovia...The Righteous Brothers... Peter, Paul and Mary...and the great Hermione Gingold, starring in "Milk and Honey" on Broadway)..

Best ever concert--

until I caught Beefheart live at Ungano's NYC in 1971 in his NYC debut...

but that's another story...

So last night, I went up to the IMax Cinema with Caroline, courtesy of Cineaste editor/film-fanatic-about-town Richard Porton...sighted Premiere.com's big Glenn Kenny sitting a few rows in front of us, and invited Glenn back to sit with us for the big collective peep...

And lo and behold, it was a DAMN GOOD Stones concert film (well, the band is usually never less than totally awesome live, so that was no big surprise)...

With a few choice historical clips sprinkled throughout (shame whomsoever won't release Andrew Loog Oldham and Peter Whitehead's "Charlie is My Darling" documentary, Andrew initiated that film when he was only 19 and not technically of age to sign a binding contract in the UK, so there has been some dispute as to its ultimate ownership--shame, as it is a profoundly amazing--and unsettling--film, as good in its way as "Don't Look Back")...

Caroline was in heaven throughout, the group played magnificently and looked fit and in fighting shape...

Only minor quibble from my end is that there was nary a full frontal shot of Brian or Bill to be seen (unless you count the footage of the Stones in drag shooting the picture sleeve for the "Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow?" single-yep, the Stones got to Drag City first, before both The Mothers and Bowie)...

Another memorable highlight from last week:

Caroline and I had a wonderful dinner with John Nichols, the Washington correspondent for "The Nation" (which should be required reading on your syllabus, class)...I heard John speak earlier that evening on March 25th at the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen in New York up on West 44th Street, just down the road apiece from the Algonquin Hotel, as part of a lecture series sponsored by the magazine, he was erudite, provocative, witty, and very much to the point about the coming election (turns out he's an Obama supporter, as am I), he had quite a fan club rooting for him there in this magnificently paneled, august old Labor Library (I once heard my childhood friend Walter Horn deliver a lecture to the Henry George Society there, it's a fantastic space unknown to most Manhattanites), the audience was mixed race and mixed age, Old Lefties and young informed activists abounding--the guy should really run for office himself as he is quite the charismatic and persuasive speaker on the big issues that really count, or should count, to us all...in short, a very cool guy...Gore Vidal described him thusly: "Of all the giant slayers now afoot in the great American desert, John Nichols’s sword is the sharpest."

Afterwards I invited John downtown to dine and hang with me and Caroline at our favorite neighborhood restaurant, Pepe Verde.. literally, a West Village hole-in-the-wall boasting really fresh and delicious home-cooked Italian food...

and what can I say, it was one of the best meals we've shared with anyone in a long long while, John was delightful and had us in stitches (I mean, anyone who can switch from informed gossiping about the candidates to discussing the relative merits of Blue Oyster Cult vs. Black Sabbath is alright in my book!)...

Always good to make a new friend--sadly, a precious commodity not that easy to come by the older one gets (just you bear in mind/true friends is hard to find/yr gonna need somebody on your bond)...

but in John's case it was really effortless, delightful fun getting to know him better...

and you should know him better as well, dear reader...

check out John Nichols' blog

Some things just stick in your mind...

xxLove


Gary