Herz are Trump

Although I thoroughly enjoyed my recent shows in Germany and Austria (special thanks to Erhard Hirt, Jurgen Waldner, Josef Gebetsroither, and Hans Oberlechner--and of course, Steffen Wilde of Subtone Concerts), it is really good to be back in New York now (I missed Caroline and our new dog!)...

Poster of Gary Lucas for his Voecklabruck, Austria show, 2/9/09

Poster for Gary Lucas solo concert St. Johann, Austria, 2/7/09

click to enlarge

A long travel day back last Sunday from the snowy Tirolean town of St. Johann high in the Austrian Alps, where I had played a solo concert on Saturday night plus performing with silent films to a very enthusiastic crowd, to Salzburg and then a flight to Frankfurt airport, where I ran by complete chance into my old friend Slawomir Grunberg, the award-winning documentary film maker, right at the gate to my flight to JFK (he was coming back to the States from Warsaw)...I scored Slawomir's film "Bed and Breakfast 9/11" which aired on PBS last year on that unhappy anniversary day, and also participated in and scored his film "The Legacy of Jedwabne"...I first met Slawomir in July 2001 in Poland on the occasion of the Polish Goverment's official apology ceremony on behalf of the surviving family members of the Jedwabne massacre (of which I am one...here is an account of the background to and the actual event itself, something I will never ever forget)...

I had a day's recovery on Monday, and then Tuesday played a performance of "Sounds of the Surreal" at the World Financial Center's Wintergarden Atrium, a magnificent public space downtown right across from Ground Zero...

Gary slays 'em with "Sounds of the Surreal" at the Wintergarden at the World Financial Center, NYC, 2/10/09
marksman pictured on screen is the painter Francis Picabia, from Rene Clair's "Entr'acte" (1924)

Watch the birdie—Gary performs "Sounds of the Surreal", World Financial Center Wintergarden Atrium, NYC, 2/10/09

Gary is filmed setting up for his "Sounds of the Surreal" show for a new documentary about Gary's work, World Financial Center, NYC, 2/10/09

photos by Julia Crowe | click to enlarge

I'd played there twice before, once in a tribute to my late lamented genius friend Arthur Russell shortly after his untimely death, in the company of Ernie Brooks, Joyce Bowden, Mustafa Ahmed and Peter Zummo (all friends and collaborators with Arthur), the other time as part of a tribute to Bruce Springsteen's "Nebraska" album organized by the NY Guitar Festival's David Spelman (a really good night, the Boss was so warm and engaging after the performance, also highly complimentary of my performance of his song "State Trooper" blush blush, which I had arranged as a solo instrumental piece, you can download it now from iTunes--Bruce Springsteen is one of the friendliest and most genuine people I have ever encountered in this business)...anyway, it was a great night, the place was absolutely packed, and man were they LISTENING (and man did they applaud), I played Alberto Iglesias' theme from the film "Sex and Lucia" as a solo encore without benefit of a film going on behind me (I faced the crowd for this performance, playing to the film which appeared simultaneously on a video monitor in front of me and as a gigantic projection behind me) and you could hear a pin drop in the Atrium...re "Sex and Lucia", don't be fooled by the title, which makes it sound like a cheap porno, this is an excellent film--well worth checking out from Netflix (was first turned on to this film and its wonderful music by my friend former Cineaste editor Glenn Kenny, who requested I arrange the title theme for his wedding several years ago... and this music has remained in my repertoire ever since)...

Old friends who made the journey downtown for my show included classical guitarist and now electric guitar-slinger Julia Crowe, who has a beautiful new album out now entitled "Smoke and Steel", the new music reviewer/writer Kurt Gottschalk, who edits/operates a cool experimental music webzine and online new music store at The Squid's Ear, also Richard and Roberta Berger and Steve Spitzer, three of my dearest NYC fans/new music supporters, and also--nice surprise!--my old friend Arma Andon, longtime music industry mover/shaker/insider (Arma was at the session when George Harrison recorded "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" with Eric Clapton, for instance, he is a treasure trove of amazing stories, he was VP of Columbia's marketing dept. for many years and is currently heading up Seaview Records with the amazing Karl Wallinger of World Party)...Doug Sloan, the film maker making a documentary about my work was there as well with crew taking it all in...

And a splendid time was had by all, special thanks to Ed Haber and Irene Trudell for the excellent sound recording of the show they made, which will be broadcast in the near future on WNYC...and extra special thanks to John Schaefer for booking me into his series...John is one of my oldest supporters, the host of the long-running WNYC show "New Sounds", and a fantastic force for new music in NYC and the world at large--he's had me on his show in various configurations about 20 times, most recently live collaborating with UK Indian vocalist extraordinaire Najma Akhtar--and, well I was going to hold off till we got closer to the release date, but what the hey, this is as good a time as any to announce that Najma and I have recently signed to Harmonia Mundi's World Village label for the release of our album "Rishte", due out May 25th worldwide--you can preview a track from the album, "Naya Dhin" now up on my myspace jukebox...a damn good album if I do say so meself, kind of folk blues rock raga (we used 3 tabla players) and then some, with Najma's hypnotic and sensual voice weaving in and out of my guitars and soundscapes and casting its spell--watch out strange kin people!...

Gary with his new mini-Schnauzer Lulu, NYC, 1/28/09

photo by Lisa Baer | click to enlarge

Lots of activity going on now, Caroline and I got a wonderful new puppy recently, a mini-Schnauzer named Lulu, and she is quite the handful, but utterly delightful--tearing around our apartment at breakneck speed (she doesn't want to stop playing, ever) and we just got back from "puppy-obedience school", a nice way to while away a lazy Sunday afternoon, except I have so much music now to prepare and rehearse for various upcoming shows, including 2 major film scoring commissions--one from the Film Society of Lincoln Center for the great Tod Browning crime thriller "The Unholy Three" (1925) starring Lon Chaney, Victor McLaglen, and Harry Earles, the other from the Holland Festival for Abel Gance's 1919 anti-war masterpiece "J'Accuse", which I am scoring in collaboration with the Dutch-Iranian composer Reza Namavar and an ensemble...

How I got into scoring films is an interesting tale...was way way way into film as a wee lad, particularly horror and science fiction films, which you might have gathered :-)...in fact I used to collect the edited-down silent Castle Films 8mm versions of the Universal 30's and 40's great horror cycle and project them to my friends on the walls of our basement, first one I collected was "The Bride of Frankenstein" in fact (wherein comes the source of my band's name--the sequence when mad Ernest Thesiger toasts Colin Clive: "To a New World of Gods and Monsters!")...I used to stare at these images for hours, transfixed, I used to inhabit these films, and create my own musical soundtracks for them in my head...was only later on when I got older that I got to view the full sound versions of these films on tv and in revival houses, and heard the Franz Waxman/Hans Salter mittel-European scores for the first time, scores largely a pastiche of the classics (Richard Strauss, Wagner and Bruckner, particularly)...

But my earliest experience composing actual music for films dates from the time I spent working while still in high school for the NY State Upstate Medical Center's documentary films unit--which I got accepted into by virtue of a celebrated stop-motion animated film I'd created about DNA for an Excel high school biology course...one of the documentaries this unit produced was "Aquatic Ecology", narrated and hosted by upstate New Yorker Rod Serling...

Of course I had been a huge fan of "Twilight Zone"--whose Marius Constant-penned hypnotic electric guitar-driven theme was one of the first motifs I was inspired to master on guitar, along with Monty Norman's James Bond theme...

Anywho, I was asked to come up with a main title theme and background music for their "Aquatic Ecology" documentary, which I performed on my acoustic 12-string Swedish Klira guitar...I always seemed to have had a knack for improvising to film, maybe as a result of studying them so closely--a knack which has served me well over the years, as you can see from this clip from the Maysles Films' HBO documentary "Lalee's Kin: The Legacy of Cotton", which I've just put up on YouTube...

and I always get a kick out of the fact that my first venture into film music was on a Rod Serling-related project (though no sea monsters here, only the land monster, Man)...

Also up on YouTube now is the new Wild Rumpus video for our song "Rock the Joint" which I mentioned in a previous blog, wonderfully hand-animated by Tabitha O'Connell who has worked on "Ren and Stimpy" among other cool animations (I have been really lucky this year to have had so many AMAZING female collaborators!! Once again in the film dept., special thanks to Jill A. Black, who did such a great on my "Obama" video with Peter Stampfel)...

And the hits just keep on coming :-)

First review out of the box for the new Fast 'N Bulbous "WAXED OOP" album (out now at better stores everywhere) is an absolute rave, from All About Jazz magazine...

and Moors Magazine from Holland just featured a really lovely review of my new psychedelic improv album with Swiss guitar madman Gerald Zbinden, "Down the Rabbit Hole", which I devoted a whole blog or 2 to back in the day recording the album in Lausanne if you check my archive...

Have to go practice now, some Bruckner, Wagner and Dvorak (not horror movie music, but actual pieces by these composers that I've arranged and transcribed, music I'm playing up at McGill University's School of Music in a couple weeks for their annual MusiMars Festival)...


xxLove


Gary

Wild Man Blues

Here I be slaving over a hot keyboard at the Cafe Unterhaus in lovely Passau Germany, outside the gorgeous snowladen vista ´oer the beautiful blau Danube flowing under the 11th century fortress-castle visible also from the window of my room at the Hotel Wilder Mann (yep, an ancien deluxe hotel named for, uh, dunno...the wild man of Borneo, Yum Yum Eatemup? Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria, who stayed here once? Other guests to have sampled the delights of this gravitas-laden gravy boat of a stately medieval manor, according to the photos ringing the löbby, have included Gorbachev, Helmut´s Schmidt und Kohl (maybe Helmut Newton as well?), Neil Armstrong, Yoko Ono (I don´t believe it...but there she is hanging on the wall pictured in floppy hat and shades, coming off the tour of the Passauer Glasmuseum, also in the Hotel proper)...anyhow, the Wild Man Hotel a splendid place to hang my hat for 2 days after playing a very very satisfying solo concert in Muenster on Sunday night (thank you Erhard Hirt)at the C.U.B.A....

... and then a travel day from hell...no Deutsche-Bahnhof porter with luggage cart waiting in Köln to help with the transfer of my bags despite being reserved by my agent--hey it happens--nearly had a heart attack dragging my acoustic and electric guitars, monster-case of electronics, garment bags etc. down along and across the platform to hop the next train in the 5 minutes alotted before departure--couple that with broken cell phone, broken Nano, loud obnoxious Dutch businessman in first class sanctum sanctorum yammering into his cell phone between Frankfurt Flughafen and Nurnberg...oh well...

Two changes of train and seven hours traveling across sunny meadows and open skies of Germany and finally arrived in Passau at the German/Austrian border, to be picked up by Jurgen Waldner from the Kunst Museum Cafe where I am performing tonight, my first time in Passau (I have played about 60-70 different cities the length and breadth of Germany in the last 21 years, in various configurations--always wanted to play here, the scenery really caught my eye, passed through Passau on the way into Austria once to play in St. Georgen, an actual hamlet, literally standing at the crossroads, two or three buildings only huddled at a rural intersection so far out a train don´t go there, marking the spot where...Saint George slew the dragon? Performed in a huge barn-like building with stage back of a manorhouse, a well-paid gig as I recall, afterwards holed up in a tiny room in the manor round midnight with about 17 horse flies buzzing my kopf, went and got wet towel and faced off one on one with the very unwise flies...okay boys, it´s you or me...and St. Georgen-like, smote every one of the pestilential critters in a knock-down dragged-out fight to the death...and later slept the peace of the just)(very un-Schweitzer-like of me, I admit)...

Me, I like this restless, peripatetic life...and I like playing this mix of high-low joints, from the funkiest of roadhouses (St. Georgen gig a literal barn-burner), to elegante, crystal-chandeliered concert halls (the Sin B Martinu venue in the Czech Republic remains one of my favorites, right up there with Royal Festival Hall in London...bring 'em on)...

Off to soundcheck (Don Van Vliet once observed rather tartly, when I tried dragging him away from his tea at an English motorway hotel circa 1980 in order to get him in the van so we could make the next city in time for a soundcheck: "I don´t need my sound checked!")

xxLove


Gary