Kaballah Child

Dear Readers, I am sorry to have been so remiss in posting for such a long time, but simply have been, I dunno, busy is not the word for it...let us say, consumed by creative fires which cannot be extinguished...

Najma Akhtar and I just finished recording our debut album at the House of Vibes in Highland Park NJ last week, a couple days after our extremely well-received Joe's Pub debut..and I have to say, it is the probably most exciting music I've been involved in outside Gods and Monsters in a long, long while...there is a new track "Naye Din" up on my MySpace jukebox, check it out (special thanks to Dibyarka Chatterjee for tabla extraordinaire, and former Klezmatic Alicia Svigals for her lovely, soaring violin)...

Concurrently I am finishing up Gods and Monsters' new studio album at The Maid's Room, Jack McKeever's joint on Clinton Street on the LES (Rufus cut alot of his first album there), which is absolutely our best one ever, Jerry Harrison, Ernie Brooks, Billy Ficca, Joe Hendel and I are burning throughout, there are several new tracks from it up on MySpace also, we should be done mixing this one pretty soon...

and then of course there is the new Fast 'n Bulbous album, which we recorded when Phillip Johnston was in town recently for my curatorial teach-in, "Beefheart Night at the Knit" (which I'm told received a laudatory review in the New York Sun newspaper, haven't been able to locate this yet--come on Jamie!), it's quite ramped-up sonically and energy-wise from oour first one, although that album, "Pork Chop Blue Around the Rind" was no slouch itself, receiving numerous encomiums worldwide, hear hear...

Not to mention that I am finishing final editing of an album of my solo guitar arrangements of the Czech classics (Dvorak, Smetana, Janacek--and the Plastic People of the Universe, of course!), which was originally commissioned by my pal Czech UN ambassador Martin Palous for the 14th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, which I debuted live a few years back at the Czech Embassy in DC...

and please please please do not forget the new internet-only release (through IODA) of my album "Monsters from the Id: Rarities and Verities", now available for download on iTunes, and most other digital portals worldwide, along with many of my long out-of-print albums--and it's a real good 'un, lots of previously unheard tracks there, collaborations with Alabama 3 (a live acoustic rendition of the theme from "The Sopranos") and the fantastic Essra Mohawk (Zappa's early protege, great singer/songwriter, former Jerry Garcia Band member and a hit songwriter for Cyndi Lauper--check out our song "The Devil's Gotta Move Along"), also a live solo tribute to the Boss--and restoration for digital posterity of some of my classic solo guitar sojourns (actually among my earliest recorded appearances on album, fr'instance)...

And I'm only just getting started--

Recently my friend the writer/editor Steven Lee Beeber introduced me to the fantastically gifted Pulitzer Prize winning young poet Franz Wright--son of the late poet James Wright, who also won the Pulitzer Prize for his poetry (omigod, what are the odds of this)...yes, they say the apple doesn't fall far from the tree (take Jeff Buckley, for instance)...and I have to add that the kicker, besides making the acquaintance of a brilliant poet whose work I'd admired from afar, is that it turns out the guy is a big fan of my work, for many years apparently (blush blush)...

Thing is--I do what I do more or less in creative solitude (the universe of absence)...throw it out there in the world as best I can--and am always delighted and amazed (yes) whenever I get positive feedback from the Other Side (of midnight)...

(btw, I spotted this very same Sidney Sheldon potboiler on the shelves of the library in Nixon's house in darkest Saddle River, New Jersey, way back in '83 or so...maybe it belonged to Pat, dunno--I was on a reconnaissance expedition there as my ex-wife Ling was the publicist for Nixon's Warner Books memoir "Leaders"--most likely ghost-written by Ray Price--and somehow, the company--probably through the aegis of Howard Kaminsky, at that time the Warner Books CEO (and also, for the record, Mel Brooks' cousin!)--talked Tricky Dicky into letting Warner Books throw a press party at the heavily locked-down Nixon compound/rancho notorious--and I forced an invite through my ex to get a gander at the Great Beast--sorry, that was Crowley--up close and personal, lots of good dish to recount at a later date, let me just add that alongside Sidney Sheldon's bestseller lurking on Nixon's shelf (I always check out people's bookshelves first wherever I go), I spotted a vintage copy of J. Edgar Hoover's "Masters of Deceit"--Nixon's famous anti-Communist bible)...

Anyway--please seek out and take the time to discover and read the searing and seerlike poetry of Franz Wright...I particularly recommend his 2000 volume "The Beforelife" (Knopf)..."God's Silence" is another excellent collection... his words cut sharp and cauterize like a benign blade...and now that we're email pals (still haven't met the guy face to face), we plan to do a collaborative poetry and music performance at the Bowery Poetry Club sometime late summer/early fall, with Steve Beeber as well--Franz has a new book coming out through Knopf soon...stay tuned...

My gal Yael Naim was in town recently doing press and promotion for her new Atlantic album (her worldwide hit "New Soul" was top 10 in Austria and Italy last week...and her album just re-entered the Billboard Top 200)...

and she turned up the other night with her guy David Donatien and bandmates to support her old friend, Israeli Parisien trance dance artiste par excellence Anath Benais, who was performing at Drom, the new East Village world music joint...Yael and Anath duetted on Anath's exquisite song "Little Girl", to see and hear the two of them so soulfully and sinuously intertwine their voices was a pleasure to behold--and I sat in on a couple of tunes as well, rocking the house on a Oum Khaltoum-ish arrangement of Blondie's "Rapture", that had Anath's guy Chilean keyboard monster Pablo Vergara going out of his head with Middle Eastern string orchestra samples...

Gary and French-Israeli trance dance artist Anath Benais, Drom, NYC, 5/8/08

Gary sits in with Anath's band, Drom, NYC 5/8/08

Gary and Yael Naim, Drom, NYC 5/8/088

Gary plays with Anath and her guy Pablo Vergara (seated) at Drom, NYC, 5/8/08

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Speaking of which--has anyone noticed that Britney's "Toxic", which Yael does such a fine demolition job on, uses a sample--or a recreation--of the opening motif of a very very famous Oum Khalthoum Egyptian radio air check/tour de force, "Alf Laylah"--The Thousand and One Nights--a CD of which I purchased in Tangiers some years ago doing pre-production with the French avant-rock band Tanger for their album "Le Detroit", which came out on the French Mercury label ("I'm a producer...")

(btw, Oum Khalthoum, Egypt's most famous singer, once worked with the Italian Jewish director Togo Mizrahi, one of the main founders of Egyptian cinema, who directed her in the 1945 historical romance "Sallamah"...I like that, that music can cut across all religious, racial, and geo-political boundaries)...

Off to lovely Paris on Tuesday to perform at the annual French Tribute to Jeff Buckley at the Hard Rock Cafe in Montmartre, curated by France's biggest Jeff Buckley fan, Danielle Schuppert.

I have invited the sensational singer Ninet Tayeb along to sing with me, Ninet is a huge Israeli pop star, and a tremendous Jeff fan, who is flying in from Tel Aviv specially for this tribute, and who will perform with me the Lucas/Buckley songs "Mojo Pin", and "No One Must Find You Here"...check out this Youtube clip of Ninet shorning her luxurious locks on a recent Israel tv commercial here.

I shall also be performing with my old friend the legendary Elli Medeiros, the French/Uruguayan singer/actress/icon, hitmaker several times over with the Stinky Toys (the first and only French punk band that matters), then Elli et Jacno, and later with my friend Ramuntcho Matta, son of the famous Chilean surrealist painter Matta...Elli released an acclaimed solo album produced by Etienne Daho last year, and is currently co-starring in the Argentinean director Pablo Trapero's hot new film "Leonora", which is the talk of the Cannes Film Festival...

and last-but certainly not least-I will be performing with Hoody Goody, the beautiful and charismatic Parisien chanteuse, who will sing the traditional folk revival standard "Dink's Song" with me...

also known as "Fare thee well" and "If I Had Wings", I first turned Jeff onto Dylan's version of this Alan Lomax recorded song (which Lomax had first heard sung by a black washerwoman named Dink--the original motorcycle black madonna two wheeled gypsy queen?) off a bootleg CD I purchased on my first solo tour of Holland back in spring 1990 (clips of some of my tv appearances made during that tour--and also an entire solo concert taped at the late lamented Vera in Groningen--are up now on the OutFromUnderLive Channel on YouTube, from a boutique in Rotterdam near Rick Vermeulen's house (Rick's Americain Cafe)...and it quickly became part of Jeff's and my duo repertoire live...and later Gods and Monsters'...

There's more, of course...

but Caroline is calling me to come and watch The Daily Show with her right now (She who must be obeyed!)

Love,

xxGary

Save the Country

The sun is shining strongly this morning, the Village looks better and more inviting than ever out my window, and before I go out to get our coffee this morning (no more bagels at breakfast--well, maybe once a week, with poached eggs or lox on top...nope, it's more like cold cereal with fruit again these days, regular diet and exercise after 4 months hiatus for working out means I'm now back to trim, lean and mean, fit and fighting shape as it were--so necessary in a Grand Theft Auto 4 world), hey I actually love working out now with my iPod Nano set on stun (a typical playlist, which I put together recently for Rhapsody.com's "Celebrity Picks", can be found here, with my comments here, now I wish I would have chosen Laura Nyro's "Save the Country" instead of "Stoned Soul Picnic" as more relevant the way things are going these days, but too late now, whatcha gonna (gonna do the best I can)--"Save the Country" never fails to get my adrenaline flowing...

Last Sunday I went over to The Tank at Collective Unconscious on Church Street in Tribeca near the Knitting Factory, a great not-for profit Artist's Space (useta be the Harmony Burlesque Theatre), to see my friend lovely Marie Losier's new film about Tony Conrad, the great minimalist musician who worked once upon a trine with Lamonte Young and John Cale in The Dream Syndicate, I'd met Tony at the late lamented Tonic's John Fahey Tribute some years ago, this sweet good-natured guy who just happened to have helped change the face of music has been teaching upstate for some years (Tony's due to retire next year I believe)...Marie is the coolest young film maker on the planet in my estimation, she curates the programs at the Alliance Francaise here and also travels the world showing her beautiful whimsical and splendiforous films at festivals and art museums, check out http://marielosier.net/-- and her portrait of Tony was one of the most delightful, goofy, disjunctive and ever so relevant portraits of a master strategist at play bouncing around his Buffalo loft (teaches at Suny Buffalo) in an inflatable pumpkin suit, amongst other sartorial delights (polka-dot pajamas particularly fetching) while cracked 20's old timey music and novelty 78's from his collection fill the air, dancin' to the fiddle and saw he ran down along the knoll with Marie in tow and I grinned and chuckled with delight throughout this filmic portrait--imagine a film combining the best of the Brothers Quay (some cool stop motion sequences, dear to my Harryhausen heart), Mike and George Kuchar, Richard Elfman's "Forbidden Zone", Guy Maddin, David Lynch too, and you would have some idea of the formidable arsenal of filmic whatsis Marie Losier flings at the screen like so much flying pigment (if pigments could fly)...they were showing other goodies that afternoon as well, films by Chris Marker, Balthazar Clementi (son of Pierre), Robert Frank and more, plus "Voice of Turtle:, music by Christina Courtin and friends, Christina has a beautiful unclassifiable voice and these were neat, quirky songs you couldn't label, her band was good as well--a definite find, she's singing again at the IFC Cinema on May 7th and 8th before screenings of I dunno, but its worth your while to investigate. the music was that good...

Thursday night Caroline and I were invited by our friend John Nichols, the brainy and witty and charming Washington correspondent for The Nation, to a reading of a great new play, " Don't Blame Me, I Voted for Helen Gahagan Douglas" up at Symphony Space on Broadway and 95th, as part of a special fund-raising event for the magazine, my favorite weekly must-read along with The New Yorker...the play was a fascinating new comedy/drama by Michelle Willens and Wendy Kout about the infamous 1950 US Senate race in which the young Richard Nixon destroyed the elegant Congresswoman Helen Gahagen Douglas (actress and wife of leftist activist actor Melvyn Douglas), which is how Nixon acquired his "Tricky-Dick" moniker...in light of Karl Rove and his ilk this play has an incredible relevance and resonance today...Christine Lahti and James Naughton were superb as the celebrity couple and Jason O'Connell was a fantastic Nixon, with all proceeds from the event going to The Nation magazine...now Nixon was to me the man you love to hate, a villain of Shakespearean dimensions to rival Iago, I picketed him in 1968, walking out on his stock stump speech at the Syracuse War Memorial during the Presidential campaign with my leftist buddies (members of MISC--the Multi-Issue Student Committee, my high school version of SDS, founded by my friends Allen Sack, Peter Smith, Joe Ycas, Tom Karp, David Horowitz--not that David Horowitz--also David Feld, lovely Louise Feld, and others--red-diaper babies mainly, sons and daughters of various leftwing SU professors, iconoclastic visionaries, rugged individualists all-- these kids were some of the best and the brightest, not to mention the sharpest and coolest..."I wonder what they're doin' with their lives?")...

Afterwards there was a terrific party in the Symphony Space lounge/restaurant with the best catering by far in many a moon though I was trying to stick to the program and we got to meet the actors and some of The Nation crew, including the charming New York based journalist and associate publisher Peter Rothberg, and also the Nation's star contributor, the lovely and brainy writer/feminist/poet Katha Pollitt, whose work I have admired for ages (I loved her book "Learning to Drive"--check out her blogspot...she is an old old friend of Gods and Monsters' bassist Ernie Brooks, as well!)-- and also enjoyed chatting with Katha's English academic husband Steve Lukes, who instantly bonded with my London-born wife as he, it turned out, was best mates and co-authored a book with Caroline's former philosophy professor at the University of East Anglia, Martin Hollis, the famed British pragmatist philosopher...

Later on the lovely and fiercely intelligent publisher and editor of the Nation Katrina vanden Heuvel swept in to the party coming straight from a big New York Magazine Awards ceremony being held earlier that night, where The Nation had racked up several awards, and instantly gathered a large coterie around her, I'd seen her give a talk last year at the Barnes and Noble on Union Square (which they are closing, for shame) and found her to be one of the most forceful and engaging speakers I've ever encountered, we chatted a bit, she was exceedingly charming and friendly and really hip (a Steely Dan fan!), her latest book is "Taking Back America: And Taking Down the Radical Right"...

Afterwards John Nichols, Caroline and myself raced downtown to the White Horse for a late night snack and good and hilarious conversation (John is such a fun guy, and one of the most cogent public speakers and writers in America--check out his regular Nation column "The Beat")--I am really glad that The Nation is around to fight the good fight and roll back the darkness threatening to engulf this fair land, please do yourself a favor and subscribe, details at http://www.thenation.com/...

My live debut show with Najma Akhtar was like a dream, quite a beautiful night last Saturday at Joe's Pub, we had done several well received radio appearances during the week on John Schaefer's "New Sounds" program and Rob Weisberg's show on WFMU (both archived on my website homepage) in the run up to the show, and we had a really good large crowd, Dibyarka Chatterjee added his customary energy and good vibes on tabla, and Najma was in fine form throughout, and we received an ovation and several encores for our hour plus set...special thanks to Shante and Jennifer at Joe's Pub and Bill Bragin who first set up the gig before departing for Jazz at Lincoln Center, plus all the friends who showed, including some new ones such as legendary producer/mixer Ron St. Germain who was there with his wife, also my friend the Emmy Award-winning documentary producer Peter Bull who I'm working on a new score for, Kurt and his wife from The Gripweeds, a large Indian contingent (including Dibyarka's mother, who is an excellent classical Indian singer in her own right). Pakistani pistol Shaista Husain and her guy Gus, my old Dutch friends Karin Van Heek and her beau Martine, film editor Michael Taylor, cinefantastique Marie Losier, health guru Richard Swanson, WKCR's Charlie Blass, filmmaker Eli Kabbillio and his wife, former Zoo World editor/CBS publicist and all around knowledge brother & good guy Arthur Levy and his actor son Jake, Bill Bragin himself who was loving it, Gary Nesbitt and his wife Terry plus Freddie Fry and their whole Jersey posse, we are nearly done recording our debut album and will put the finishing touches on it very soon, it sounds incredible--stay tuned...

Najma Akhtar and Gary Lucas wirh Premi Ankolekar backstage at Joe's Pub, Gary and Najma's live debut show, 5/3/08 | photo by Satej Ankolekar

Najma and Gary backstage at Joe's Pub, 5/3/08 | photo by Satej Ankolekar

Gary and his old friend and former editor ("Zoo World" magazine) Arthur Levy backstage at Joe's Pub, 5/3/08 | photo by Jake Levy

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xxLove

Gary