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

Click to enlarge

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