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...
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...
posted by Gary Lucas at 9:49 PM
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