The Road Never Ends
Friday night I had a quite a happy reunion at the White Horse with my old friend Dezso Antal a/k/a Toni, the great sax player for the formidable Hungarian punk/free jazz ensemble The Scientists...
Toni was in town with his lovely girlfriend Danielle for a long overdue NYC holiday, hadn't seen him in about 10 years, last time was at the Turm in Halle Germany when his group opened for Gods and Monsters on our spring European tour 2000...Toni is a wonderful guy, he and Scientists leader Dr. Marius had hooked several memorable solo gigs up for me in Budapest in the 90's, including one in an old Communist youth club that will stand with my gig at the Roxy in Prague in '96 for sheer endurance (played for 3 hours straight), these gigs are memorable also as Toni worked at a travel agency at the time and thus booked me several times into a deluxe 4 star hotel/spa on beautiful little Margit Island, a hotel notable for its opulent mudbaths, geo-thermic sulfur immersion pools, massage therapy, etc., all activities running concurrent 24 hours non-stop despite the presence of oh, maybe 3 other guests in the hotel at that point mid-winter, all club activities presided over by smiling muscular Hungarian women eager to pummel you into happy submissive bliss in the general direction of Health Castle and environs..
These Margit hotels (there were several of them clustered together on the island) were designed to cater to party apparatchiks and families as a holiday reward for hard time spent pressed into service for Marx and country....I dig dirty old black iron Budapest...alot...
My first gig there was in the 2000 seater Petofi Hall solo as part of the Knitting Factory 's Caravan of Stars tour in '91, there was a cd sampler out then entitled "Knitting Factory Tours Europe 1991" with selections from all the acts on the tour, that contains some of the earliest of my recorded solo work, which received excellent notices in places like The Wire...it was a wonderful jaunt, 21 shows in 22 days in 7 countries, a fun but grueling trek through Holland, France, Belgium, Spain, Germany, Switzerland and Austria by train, plane, and our own tourbus (said vehicle originally driven by a maniacal French coke dealer doubling as the bus driver, who was observed jn the hotel room he shared with Knit Fac numero uno Michael Dorf on the first night of the tour burning the midnight oil at 3am chopping up ounces to sell...he was needless to say summarily given the boot, pronto, and a replacement driver flown in by the tourbus company)... my party hearty tour companions on that swing through Europe consisted of James "Blood" Ulmer and his band (the great Amin Ali and Calvin Weston, who was quite a cut-up), the brilliant Thomas Chapin Trio, and Sam Bennett's Chunk, with the excellent Jerome Harris joining them on guitar...
But I digress (half the fun of writing these things!)...after our lovely reunion at the White Horse Tavern on Hudson and 11th Street (my local, the infamous 19th century wood-paneled saloon where Dylan Thomas drank himself to death, where I have conducted quite alot of press interviews over the years...and did one this week, in fact, with the Danish jazz journalist Lars Movin...at the end of which a British kid watching the soccer match on the telly in there with his dad approached me for an autograph, claiming he'd recognized me by my hat!)--after we'd toasted our reuniting after a 10 year hiatus, I took Toni and his gal pal to Le Poisson Rouge to catch the second Manhattan show in history from Throbbing Gristle, ye olde UK industrial punk outfit led by my pal Genesis P. Orridge...
And, they were in fine form playing before a nearly full house, 95% of whom looked like they hadn't even been born when TG's "United" single first came out in '78 (still have the picture sleeve vinyl 45 in my collection--which they didn't perform that night, too bad!--the B side btw was "Zyklon B Zombie", Zyklon B gas--manufactured by IG Farben--being the lethal constituent piped into the concentration camp "showers" during the Second World War)...Throbbing Gristle made a good sampled squawllng synth racket too, over the the top of which Gen crooned and howled his tales of J.G. Ballardian techno-sex atrocities in songs like the infamous "Hamburger Lady"...
A big ugly stentorian martial mechanical mama heartbeat began and overtook most numbers throughout, which had the crowd happily bouncing along.. the last 3 numbers were cranked up to the pain level and beyond volume-wise by the overly zealous soundman, and I admit I had to put a finger in (and they say I'M loud!!)... a good complement to Gen's Psychic TV project, catch TG if you get the chance, they are the only punk/new wave band of that era (circa 1980) rated by Captain Beefheart a/k/a Don Van Vliet as being worth a damn, in an interview he did at York University in England on our 1980 tour (now, I frankly never knew Don to be overly charitable about any artist currently alive, I gyess he saw them all as competition...although in one of my last conversations he told me how he had "seen the best damn trumpet player ever" on Johnny Carson the night before..."Miles, you mean?" I asked innocently..."No man, it was a guy named, uh, Win, Tin, ahhhhh..." "Marsalis," I incredulously finished for him..."Yeah man--that's the guy!! Simply the BEST I've ever seen!!" I argued that Miles had said more with one cracked note from his horn --and he sure cracked some notes on some of my favorite sides-- than Wynton ever did with his perfectly rendered scalar stream of 684 32nd notes...but that's another story)...
And I really really like this club Le Poisson Rouge, the Red Fish, one of the best new joints in NYC at the moment... very comfortable, good sight-lines, decent PA, it's relatively large, maybe a 5-600 seater, yet projects an aura of intimacy at the same time... it actually feels more like an art-space than a nightclub, the decor is suitably ruddy roccocco with slowly shifting projections on the wall behind the bandstand that look like a spiky crown of thistles and thorns disentangling (Easter Everywhere)...
and here I shall digress again and put in some good words and a big plug for my old friend the lovely and ever-s- talented Juana Molina, who was absolutely sensational performing there on Friday Feb. 27th with her new trio...
I first encountered Juana's music quite by chance as I was leaving the studios of WFUV in summer 2003, having performed on Vin Scelsa's long-running, brilliant "Idiot's Delight" show my solo guitar arrangements of 30's Chinese pop by the famous Chinese divas Chow Hsuan and Bai Kwong, as featured on my 2001 album "The Edge of Heaven--Gary Lucas Plays Mid-Century Chinese Pop" (check out the album here)...and if you like, you can order the cd in its beautiful original packaging directly from my website as it may not be so easy to find now, as it's been out of print for awhile--a situation I am about to rectify)...
As I was packing up to leave the radio studio which is located at Fordham University in the Bronx, Vin started spinning a cut off Juana's second self-distributed album without announcing it on air or identifying it to me off-mic--and I was immediately transfixed by Juana's haunting voice, one of the most beautiful and distinctive in contemporary music, nestled in shimmering electronic soundscapes which featured expertly and delicately plucked interlocking folky acoustic guitar counterpoint to the fore--the sound really grabbed me--and I asked Vin who this mysterious woman singing such lilting and transcendent spectral music was, music sung totally in Argentine-accented Spanish (Juana hails from Buenos Aires)... and he told me her name and showed me the cover for her album "Tres Cosas"...
At that point in time I was trying to help out the Knitting Factory label's then A&R guy bring in some fresh new artists for their roster--and this music was something so singular and special that it inspired me to imagine it adding lustre to the label (I have gotten a few artists signed in my day--including free jazz saxophonist/composers Peter Gordon and Tim Berne in the mid-80's to CBS Masterworks and Columbia Records respectively, artists I also produced...and I had also done A&R for the very cool indie label Upside Records in the mid 80's...amongst my signings there were Jonathan Richman...The Woodentops...Vic Godard of the seminal Subway Sect...Float Up CP with Neneh Cherry...the fabulous Arthur Russell...Mark Stewart and Maffia: basically Mark with the Tackhead crew of Skip McDonald, Keith LeBlanc, and Doug Wimbish, with Mark and Adrian Sherwood producing--Adrian and Tackhead also recorded for us as Fats Comet... and lastly, Mark Sinclair, a skinny little coffee-colored kid who worked in the ice cream store around the corner from me who convinced first me and then with my prodding Geoff Travis from Rough Trade Records UK that he was a great rapper...you may know him today under his film moniker, Vin Diesel)...
I asked Vin Scelsa as to the recording details of the music he had just played by Juana on his program, and he said the album was sent to him directly by a small label in Buenos Aires...I subsequently looked up Juana Molina on the net, found her website, wrote her an email introducing myself, and inquired whether she was a free agent who might consider being signed at that point to a record deal with the Knitting Factory label...and she wrote right back, thanked me for my interest, said she knew my work with Jeff Buckley, and told me she had just signed worldwide with Domino...smart move as it turns out, as the KF label ceased actively signing artists only a few years later and morphed into a catalog label only--now they are about to crank up again as a full-service label and are actively signing artists again, stay tuned)...
Juana came to NYC a few months later and I caught her live set at Joe's Pub--and she was just as captivating a personality live as on disc...I saw many subsequent shows of hers in NYC over the years--and she always enchanted; in fact, I would rank both her and another old friend of mine, Yael Naim, as two of the most creative artists making music today, forget about their gender...and I tried my best to sign them both to the Knitting Factory label back in the day...
Juana Molina is returning to NYC to play Summerstage on July 8th, and if you are in the city you should definitely come out to see her and her band...they really rocked Le Poisson Rouge in front of a packed and enthusiastic audience when I saw her play there in February, and they will surely rock Summerstage...
And rock is not something you would automatically associate with Juana, whose earlier recordings and live approach have been a bit more laid-back on the electronic folk pastoral tip...yet she is really rocking out here and now on her current album material while retaining a kind of natural sylvan psilocybic edge (there is a glade somewhere)...
Her new album "Un Dia" is certainly her best ever, the grooves dig in deep--the bass drum accents really hit you in the solar plexus, WHOMP!--as the songs wend their way down curious, exotic, and always unexpected byways, with Juana's childlike voice playfully out front chanting and caressing the melodies, which loop de loop flip-flop fly away an aquaplano...
Certainly one of the best albums of 2008, with truly gorgeous packaging (especially the Argie edition which I ordered through Amazon, the cover and design on this is amazing)... check out some of her cool new tracks here--they are au naturally mind-manifesting in the very best way...
Some more back-story:
A couple nights after I saw Juana play in NYC at Le Poisson Rouge, in the company of my friends the music writer Richard Gehr and his lovely wife (Jazz at Lincoln Center's Bill Bragin was there as well), I performed at the Highline Ballroom as part of the Rock-It Science Festival put together by my friend, best-selling NY Times author and McGill University professor Dan Levitin, whose book "This is Your Brain on Music" is a must-read if you have any kind of interest at all in the ineffable power of music to move you, mood-swing you, and mesmerize you (ineluctable modality of the audible...it may be the finest book of its kind, in the tradition of--though vastly different from--my friend Geoffrey O'Brien's book "Sonata for Jukebox: Pop Music, Memory, and the Imagined Life")...
Another Rock-It Science organizer was Professor Joseph LeDoux, a distinguished professor and neurosurgeon whose group The Amygdaloids are something else again...also the musician and guitarist Tim Sommer, late of the great avant-pop ensemble Hugo Largo...the house band was composed of my old friend Lenny Kaye, who certainly needs no introduction, and featured both Steve Wynn of the Dream Syndicate and Peter Holsapple of the dB's on raving guitars (and what superb guitarists all three are!)...Holding down the drum chair was Steve's wife Linda Pittmon, who has to be one of the most muscular and in- the- pocket drummers I've ever seen...
also on the bill performing was violinist/composer/neurologist Dave Soldier, with whom I'd performed at Giorgio Gomelsky's 75th birthday party the weekend before...also Dee Snider from Twisted Sister...and a host of other luminaries...
I had been invited to perform solo at the festival as a special guest on the bill, and was given my own 20 minute set, originally to take place right before my pal Rufus Wainwright's performance...
In any case, the organizers decided to switch the order at the last minute...
and so I went on directly AFTER Rufus delivered his customary great set...
and I have to say, despite Rufus being the natural headliner, I quite held my own with the crowd, and more (they didn't walk out...and in fact cheered me, loudly)...
I began with a solo acoustic guitar version of Arthur Russell's anthemic "Let's Go Swimming", which I have been performing in nearly every show I've played solo or with my band since 1994 (I love introducing audiences to Arthur's music, he should be ALOT better known!)...
I followed this with my original solo electric guitar instrumental "Rise Up to Be"--the music I gave to Jeff Buckley in '91, which became the instrumental basis our song "Grace"...
Dan Levitin, who is a great multi-instrumentalist as well as a terrific writer, professor and audio engineer (he worked on Blue Oyster Cult's albums with my old friend Sandy Pearlman) joined me on percussion--snare drum-conga and wind chimes-- for the extended electronic guitar coda to this composition...
and I finished with an incendiary instrumental solo version of my song "One Man's Meat" (is another man's poisson), which David Johansen sang on my Gods and Monsters album "Coming Clean", and performed live with us at the Bell Atlantic Jazz Festival a few years back...
What can I say--a truly great night of all sorts of music and music-making...I really loved playing at this Rock-It Science Festival thingy!!
(special thanks to Day-V for roadie-ing and for taking the photos from that night, which I posted in my last blog--check 'em out, they are up on my website as well...and thanks again to Dan and Joe and Tim for organizing such a super-event)...
Some good news re future gigs just coming over the wire--
I am confirmed now to play with "The Golem" at the Malaga Film Festival in lovely Spain down on the Costa del Sol on June 26th...
This occurs directly after my appearance on June 23rd and 24th at the Stadsschouwburg in Amsterdam performing at the Holland Festival with my new solo guitar score to accompany Abel "Napoleon" Gance's 1926 anti-war masterpiece "J'Accuse" live--this will be a collaboration with the young Dutch-Iranian composer/prodigy Reza Namavar and the Cameleon Ensemble led by Wilmaar Devisser...and I'm damn excited about it!
also--
I was just booked for a slew of European dates, with more on the way, at the end of November, along with my friend the great jazz/blues vocalist Dean Bowman...we will be performing as Chase the Devil, our spiritual roots duo project which I love playing live with him...we are midway through recording our new album with Steve Addabo at the controls...stay tuned...
Meanwhile--check out some new Chase the Devil tracks here...
plus there a bunch of clips from our recent show at the landmark Eldridge Street Synagogue on the Lower East Sde up on YouTube up here
Lastly--
despite my constant attempts to stay cheerful and positive, this has been a very sad time for me with the recent death of my father Murray Lucas on Passover.
He was 86 and had been in ill health for some time.
I got my chance to pay my respects to him last Monday afternoon at the memorial service held for him in the Reform Temple of Riverside California...Riverside is where he and my mother had retired 4 years ago after living most of their married lives (60 some years) in my hometown of Syracuse New York...
Caroline and I flew down there on Sunday and returned to NYC on Tuesday, staying with my sister Laurie and her husband Ezra Greenhouse--both journalists working at the Riverside Press-Enterprise newspaper--and also their son Max, a really gifted guitarist rocker who's now playing with a great band, Windows of the Soul...
The service was packed with local friends of my Dad...he was a very easy-going man and had quite a natural charm about him, and thus made friends very easily, he was one of the nicest and kindest of men you could ever imagine..
My first cousin Bob Goldman flew his entire family in his private plane down there from San Jose...
Bob's father, my uncle the late David Goldman, was an amazing entrepreneur, a total ball of fire and electric energy--and a real inspiration to me in my life...I loved David, and worked for him in Taipei in the mid-70's after graduating from Yale...Quite the operator, David owned bowling alleys and pool halls in Rochester NY, promoted bigtime rock concerts featuring everyone from The Who and the Yardbirds to Black Sabbath...and eventually bought the Voit Corporation, who make most of America's basketballs and other sporting equipment...
Bob has got alot of David's moxie, and i must say I have alot in common with Bobby in the family in terms of similar energy and maverick vision status...
Bob is a very successful entrepeneur/inventor who invented digital downloading of music in the early part of this century, and he has 4 of the earliest patents registered with the US government in his name to prove it...
He believed that his patents had been infringed in a big way when downloading for $$ first took off, and he took Microsoft to court--and eventually settled with them for an extremely hefty sum of money...
He has just invented a new piece of medical technology that delivers specific medication directly on-site to the area of injury, as opposed to general infusion techniques that flood one's entire system with medication...Bravo, Bobby! He came down there with his lovely wife Janine and their two adorable girls...
Ar rhe memorial ceremony, to my mother's delight I chose to play my solo acoustic arrangement of "Our Love is Here to Stay" by George Gershwin--my dad loved Broadway show-tunes, Tin Pan Alley songs, and standards--especially Gershwin's... and I think he really would have enjoyed hearing this song.
I know that it mirrored exactly how everyone there felt about my father.
It was a really beautiful moment--
and if you listen closely to the audio track of the YouTube clip, you can hear me choking the words "Goodbye Dad" into the mic at the end...
Woops--our little mini-Schnauzer Lulu is living up to her name right now (what a handful she is!)...
Lulu, NYC, 4/13/09 | photo by Honey Twigg Aldrich
Have to dash...
xxLove
Gary
Toni was in town with his lovely girlfriend Danielle for a long overdue NYC holiday, hadn't seen him in about 10 years, last time was at the Turm in Halle Germany when his group opened for Gods and Monsters on our spring European tour 2000...Toni is a wonderful guy, he and Scientists leader Dr. Marius had hooked several memorable solo gigs up for me in Budapest in the 90's, including one in an old Communist youth club that will stand with my gig at the Roxy in Prague in '96 for sheer endurance (played for 3 hours straight), these gigs are memorable also as Toni worked at a travel agency at the time and thus booked me several times into a deluxe 4 star hotel/spa on beautiful little Margit Island, a hotel notable for its opulent mudbaths, geo-thermic sulfur immersion pools, massage therapy, etc., all activities running concurrent 24 hours non-stop despite the presence of oh, maybe 3 other guests in the hotel at that point mid-winter, all club activities presided over by smiling muscular Hungarian women eager to pummel you into happy submissive bliss in the general direction of Health Castle and environs..
These Margit hotels (there were several of them clustered together on the island) were designed to cater to party apparatchiks and families as a holiday reward for hard time spent pressed into service for Marx and country....I dig dirty old black iron Budapest...alot...
My first gig there was in the 2000 seater Petofi Hall solo as part of the Knitting Factory 's Caravan of Stars tour in '91, there was a cd sampler out then entitled "Knitting Factory Tours Europe 1991" with selections from all the acts on the tour, that contains some of the earliest of my recorded solo work, which received excellent notices in places like The Wire...it was a wonderful jaunt, 21 shows in 22 days in 7 countries, a fun but grueling trek through Holland, France, Belgium, Spain, Germany, Switzerland and Austria by train, plane, and our own tourbus (said vehicle originally driven by a maniacal French coke dealer doubling as the bus driver, who was observed jn the hotel room he shared with Knit Fac numero uno Michael Dorf on the first night of the tour burning the midnight oil at 3am chopping up ounces to sell...he was needless to say summarily given the boot, pronto, and a replacement driver flown in by the tourbus company)... my party hearty tour companions on that swing through Europe consisted of James "Blood" Ulmer and his band (the great Amin Ali and Calvin Weston, who was quite a cut-up), the brilliant Thomas Chapin Trio, and Sam Bennett's Chunk, with the excellent Jerome Harris joining them on guitar...
But I digress (half the fun of writing these things!)...after our lovely reunion at the White Horse Tavern on Hudson and 11th Street (my local, the infamous 19th century wood-paneled saloon where Dylan Thomas drank himself to death, where I have conducted quite alot of press interviews over the years...and did one this week, in fact, with the Danish jazz journalist Lars Movin...at the end of which a British kid watching the soccer match on the telly in there with his dad approached me for an autograph, claiming he'd recognized me by my hat!)--after we'd toasted our reuniting after a 10 year hiatus, I took Toni and his gal pal to Le Poisson Rouge to catch the second Manhattan show in history from Throbbing Gristle, ye olde UK industrial punk outfit led by my pal Genesis P. Orridge...
And, they were in fine form playing before a nearly full house, 95% of whom looked like they hadn't even been born when TG's "United" single first came out in '78 (still have the picture sleeve vinyl 45 in my collection--which they didn't perform that night, too bad!--the B side btw was "Zyklon B Zombie", Zyklon B gas--manufactured by IG Farben--being the lethal constituent piped into the concentration camp "showers" during the Second World War)...Throbbing Gristle made a good sampled squawllng synth racket too, over the the top of which Gen crooned and howled his tales of J.G. Ballardian techno-sex atrocities in songs like the infamous "Hamburger Lady"...
A big ugly stentorian martial mechanical mama heartbeat began and overtook most numbers throughout, which had the crowd happily bouncing along.. the last 3 numbers were cranked up to the pain level and beyond volume-wise by the overly zealous soundman, and I admit I had to put a finger in (and they say I'M loud!!)... a good complement to Gen's Psychic TV project, catch TG if you get the chance, they are the only punk/new wave band of that era (circa 1980) rated by Captain Beefheart a/k/a Don Van Vliet as being worth a damn, in an interview he did at York University in England on our 1980 tour (now, I frankly never knew Don to be overly charitable about any artist currently alive, I gyess he saw them all as competition...although in one of my last conversations he told me how he had "seen the best damn trumpet player ever" on Johnny Carson the night before..."Miles, you mean?" I asked innocently..."No man, it was a guy named, uh, Win, Tin, ahhhhh..." "Marsalis," I incredulously finished for him..."Yeah man--that's the guy!! Simply the BEST I've ever seen!!" I argued that Miles had said more with one cracked note from his horn --and he sure cracked some notes on some of my favorite sides-- than Wynton ever did with his perfectly rendered scalar stream of 684 32nd notes...but that's another story)...
And I really really like this club Le Poisson Rouge, the Red Fish, one of the best new joints in NYC at the moment... very comfortable, good sight-lines, decent PA, it's relatively large, maybe a 5-600 seater, yet projects an aura of intimacy at the same time... it actually feels more like an art-space than a nightclub, the decor is suitably ruddy roccocco with slowly shifting projections on the wall behind the bandstand that look like a spiky crown of thistles and thorns disentangling (Easter Everywhere)...
and here I shall digress again and put in some good words and a big plug for my old friend the lovely and ever-s- talented Juana Molina, who was absolutely sensational performing there on Friday Feb. 27th with her new trio...
I first encountered Juana's music quite by chance as I was leaving the studios of WFUV in summer 2003, having performed on Vin Scelsa's long-running, brilliant "Idiot's Delight" show my solo guitar arrangements of 30's Chinese pop by the famous Chinese divas Chow Hsuan and Bai Kwong, as featured on my 2001 album "The Edge of Heaven--Gary Lucas Plays Mid-Century Chinese Pop" (check out the album here)...and if you like, you can order the cd in its beautiful original packaging directly from my website as it may not be so easy to find now, as it's been out of print for awhile--a situation I am about to rectify)...
As I was packing up to leave the radio studio which is located at Fordham University in the Bronx, Vin started spinning a cut off Juana's second self-distributed album without announcing it on air or identifying it to me off-mic--and I was immediately transfixed by Juana's haunting voice, one of the most beautiful and distinctive in contemporary music, nestled in shimmering electronic soundscapes which featured expertly and delicately plucked interlocking folky acoustic guitar counterpoint to the fore--the sound really grabbed me--and I asked Vin who this mysterious woman singing such lilting and transcendent spectral music was, music sung totally in Argentine-accented Spanish (Juana hails from Buenos Aires)... and he told me her name and showed me the cover for her album "Tres Cosas"...
At that point in time I was trying to help out the Knitting Factory label's then A&R guy bring in some fresh new artists for their roster--and this music was something so singular and special that it inspired me to imagine it adding lustre to the label (I have gotten a few artists signed in my day--including free jazz saxophonist/composers Peter Gordon and Tim Berne in the mid-80's to CBS Masterworks and Columbia Records respectively, artists I also produced...and I had also done A&R for the very cool indie label Upside Records in the mid 80's...amongst my signings there were Jonathan Richman...The Woodentops...Vic Godard of the seminal Subway Sect...Float Up CP with Neneh Cherry...the fabulous Arthur Russell...Mark Stewart and Maffia: basically Mark with the Tackhead crew of Skip McDonald, Keith LeBlanc, and Doug Wimbish, with Mark and Adrian Sherwood producing--Adrian and Tackhead also recorded for us as Fats Comet... and lastly, Mark Sinclair, a skinny little coffee-colored kid who worked in the ice cream store around the corner from me who convinced first me and then with my prodding Geoff Travis from Rough Trade Records UK that he was a great rapper...you may know him today under his film moniker, Vin Diesel)...
I asked Vin Scelsa as to the recording details of the music he had just played by Juana on his program, and he said the album was sent to him directly by a small label in Buenos Aires...I subsequently looked up Juana Molina on the net, found her website, wrote her an email introducing myself, and inquired whether she was a free agent who might consider being signed at that point to a record deal with the Knitting Factory label...and she wrote right back, thanked me for my interest, said she knew my work with Jeff Buckley, and told me she had just signed worldwide with Domino...smart move as it turns out, as the KF label ceased actively signing artists only a few years later and morphed into a catalog label only--now they are about to crank up again as a full-service label and are actively signing artists again, stay tuned)...
Juana came to NYC a few months later and I caught her live set at Joe's Pub--and she was just as captivating a personality live as on disc...I saw many subsequent shows of hers in NYC over the years--and she always enchanted; in fact, I would rank both her and another old friend of mine, Yael Naim, as two of the most creative artists making music today, forget about their gender...and I tried my best to sign them both to the Knitting Factory label back in the day...
Juana Molina is returning to NYC to play Summerstage on July 8th, and if you are in the city you should definitely come out to see her and her band...they really rocked Le Poisson Rouge in front of a packed and enthusiastic audience when I saw her play there in February, and they will surely rock Summerstage...
And rock is not something you would automatically associate with Juana, whose earlier recordings and live approach have been a bit more laid-back on the electronic folk pastoral tip...yet she is really rocking out here and now on her current album material while retaining a kind of natural sylvan psilocybic edge (there is a glade somewhere)...
Her new album "Un Dia" is certainly her best ever, the grooves dig in deep--the bass drum accents really hit you in the solar plexus, WHOMP!--as the songs wend their way down curious, exotic, and always unexpected byways, with Juana's childlike voice playfully out front chanting and caressing the melodies, which loop de loop flip-flop fly away an aquaplano...
Certainly one of the best albums of 2008, with truly gorgeous packaging (especially the Argie edition which I ordered through Amazon, the cover and design on this is amazing)... check out some of her cool new tracks here--they are au naturally mind-manifesting in the very best way...
Some more back-story:
A couple nights after I saw Juana play in NYC at Le Poisson Rouge, in the company of my friends the music writer Richard Gehr and his lovely wife (Jazz at Lincoln Center's Bill Bragin was there as well), I performed at the Highline Ballroom as part of the Rock-It Science Festival put together by my friend, best-selling NY Times author and McGill University professor Dan Levitin, whose book "This is Your Brain on Music" is a must-read if you have any kind of interest at all in the ineffable power of music to move you, mood-swing you, and mesmerize you (ineluctable modality of the audible...it may be the finest book of its kind, in the tradition of--though vastly different from--my friend Geoffrey O'Brien's book "Sonata for Jukebox: Pop Music, Memory, and the Imagined Life")...
Another Rock-It Science organizer was Professor Joseph LeDoux, a distinguished professor and neurosurgeon whose group The Amygdaloids are something else again...also the musician and guitarist Tim Sommer, late of the great avant-pop ensemble Hugo Largo...the house band was composed of my old friend Lenny Kaye, who certainly needs no introduction, and featured both Steve Wynn of the Dream Syndicate and Peter Holsapple of the dB's on raving guitars (and what superb guitarists all three are!)...Holding down the drum chair was Steve's wife Linda Pittmon, who has to be one of the most muscular and in- the- pocket drummers I've ever seen...
also on the bill performing was violinist/composer/neurologist Dave Soldier, with whom I'd performed at Giorgio Gomelsky's 75th birthday party the weekend before...also Dee Snider from Twisted Sister...and a host of other luminaries...
I had been invited to perform solo at the festival as a special guest on the bill, and was given my own 20 minute set, originally to take place right before my pal Rufus Wainwright's performance...
In any case, the organizers decided to switch the order at the last minute...
and so I went on directly AFTER Rufus delivered his customary great set...
and I have to say, despite Rufus being the natural headliner, I quite held my own with the crowd, and more (they didn't walk out...and in fact cheered me, loudly)...
I began with a solo acoustic guitar version of Arthur Russell's anthemic "Let's Go Swimming", which I have been performing in nearly every show I've played solo or with my band since 1994 (I love introducing audiences to Arthur's music, he should be ALOT better known!)...
I followed this with my original solo electric guitar instrumental "Rise Up to Be"--the music I gave to Jeff Buckley in '91, which became the instrumental basis our song "Grace"...
Dan Levitin, who is a great multi-instrumentalist as well as a terrific writer, professor and audio engineer (he worked on Blue Oyster Cult's albums with my old friend Sandy Pearlman) joined me on percussion--snare drum-conga and wind chimes-- for the extended electronic guitar coda to this composition...
and I finished with an incendiary instrumental solo version of my song "One Man's Meat" (is another man's poisson), which David Johansen sang on my Gods and Monsters album "Coming Clean", and performed live with us at the Bell Atlantic Jazz Festival a few years back...
What can I say--a truly great night of all sorts of music and music-making...I really loved playing at this Rock-It Science Festival thingy!!
(special thanks to Day-V for roadie-ing and for taking the photos from that night, which I posted in my last blog--check 'em out, they are up on my website as well...and thanks again to Dan and Joe and Tim for organizing such a super-event)...
Some good news re future gigs just coming over the wire--
I am confirmed now to play with "The Golem" at the Malaga Film Festival in lovely Spain down on the Costa del Sol on June 26th...
This occurs directly after my appearance on June 23rd and 24th at the Stadsschouwburg in Amsterdam performing at the Holland Festival with my new solo guitar score to accompany Abel "Napoleon" Gance's 1926 anti-war masterpiece "J'Accuse" live--this will be a collaboration with the young Dutch-Iranian composer/prodigy Reza Namavar and the Cameleon Ensemble led by Wilmaar Devisser...and I'm damn excited about it!
also--
I was just booked for a slew of European dates, with more on the way, at the end of November, along with my friend the great jazz/blues vocalist Dean Bowman...we will be performing as Chase the Devil, our spiritual roots duo project which I love playing live with him...we are midway through recording our new album with Steve Addabo at the controls...stay tuned...
Meanwhile--check out some new Chase the Devil tracks here...
plus there a bunch of clips from our recent show at the landmark Eldridge Street Synagogue on the Lower East Sde up on YouTube up here
Lastly--
despite my constant attempts to stay cheerful and positive, this has been a very sad time for me with the recent death of my father Murray Lucas on Passover.
He was 86 and had been in ill health for some time.
I got my chance to pay my respects to him last Monday afternoon at the memorial service held for him in the Reform Temple of Riverside California...Riverside is where he and my mother had retired 4 years ago after living most of their married lives (60 some years) in my hometown of Syracuse New York...
Caroline and I flew down there on Sunday and returned to NYC on Tuesday, staying with my sister Laurie and her husband Ezra Greenhouse--both journalists working at the Riverside Press-Enterprise newspaper--and also their son Max, a really gifted guitarist rocker who's now playing with a great band, Windows of the Soul...
The service was packed with local friends of my Dad...he was a very easy-going man and had quite a natural charm about him, and thus made friends very easily, he was one of the nicest and kindest of men you could ever imagine..
My first cousin Bob Goldman flew his entire family in his private plane down there from San Jose...
Bob's father, my uncle the late David Goldman, was an amazing entrepreneur, a total ball of fire and electric energy--and a real inspiration to me in my life...I loved David, and worked for him in Taipei in the mid-70's after graduating from Yale...Quite the operator, David owned bowling alleys and pool halls in Rochester NY, promoted bigtime rock concerts featuring everyone from The Who and the Yardbirds to Black Sabbath...and eventually bought the Voit Corporation, who make most of America's basketballs and other sporting equipment...
Bob has got alot of David's moxie, and i must say I have alot in common with Bobby in the family in terms of similar energy and maverick vision status...
Bob is a very successful entrepeneur/inventor who invented digital downloading of music in the early part of this century, and he has 4 of the earliest patents registered with the US government in his name to prove it...
He believed that his patents had been infringed in a big way when downloading for $$ first took off, and he took Microsoft to court--and eventually settled with them for an extremely hefty sum of money...
He has just invented a new piece of medical technology that delivers specific medication directly on-site to the area of injury, as opposed to general infusion techniques that flood one's entire system with medication...Bravo, Bobby! He came down there with his lovely wife Janine and their two adorable girls...
Ar rhe memorial ceremony, to my mother's delight I chose to play my solo acoustic arrangement of "Our Love is Here to Stay" by George Gershwin--my dad loved Broadway show-tunes, Tin Pan Alley songs, and standards--especially Gershwin's... and I think he really would have enjoyed hearing this song.
I know that it mirrored exactly how everyone there felt about my father.
It was a really beautiful moment--
and if you listen closely to the audio track of the YouTube clip, you can hear me choking the words "Goodbye Dad" into the mic at the end...
Woops--our little mini-Schnauzer Lulu is living up to her name right now (what a handful she is!)...
Lulu, NYC, 4/13/09 | photo by Honey Twigg Aldrich
Have to dash...
xxLove
Gary
posted by Gary Lucas at 2:28 PM
2 comments
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2 Comments:
I love music too. And that any kind of music will do. Sans for heavy metal or rapt, but that's another story. Thoughts and prayers are with you and your family. You seemed really close to your dad. I love my dad too. I am a daddy's girl. BTW, the Bob Goldman you are talking about. Your first cousin. Also was a contestant on the 80's video game show "Starcade." Where he won a Moon Patrol video game prize. Nice to see him do really well. As with you, in life! Peace!
Cool! I'm probably in Malaga by the time you're playing there. It would be nice to see the show. Th movie is just amazing and I'm looking forward to hear your music.
Regards!
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