He's picks me up from St. Pancras St. Station, thick accent, which I know is not POSH but at the same time it's an accent I cannot exactly place. I'm trying to figure out where I am going, and he and I get to talking. "Where are you from?" he asks. "Brooklyn" I say. "I'm from Brooklyn" I'm from Ohio originally but..
…ah yes, Brooklyn, saying Brooklyn always opens the doors, especially with the toughs, which he is one. He grew up in the streets of London in a rough area. Dad absent, it was just him and his mum. He tells me that he and his mates were young thugs smoking joints at 10 years old on their way to school. They all got nicked plenty he says, which I finally figure out means getting caught and put in jail. He tells me that he personally never went in for very long, but for his mates it was like a school vacation with all their friends present. In fact, inside it was allot easier to get "the works" than on the outside.
As an adult, there came a moment where it seemed like leaving was a very good idea (he didn't elaborate), so he did. He, his wife and his three girls now live in a very peaceful village about 50 miles outside the city. It takes him 50-60 minutes to drive in to work. "It used to be I would step outside my door and before I started my car, I'd pick up a fare and I would be working!" He misses living in London.
It drove him crazy when he first moved to the village. "It was so quiet there! There where all these people going to church on Sunday! I thought, FUCK, this is the biggest mistake of my life!"
Then his daughters started speaking like the natives. "My daughter started saying "Loik" you know "like" but with an "o" in it. I say to her..what are you doing? why are you talking like these people?!..but THEN I realize -what the hell am I doing?! I don't want them to grow up like me! "
Really, he's trying to fit in. "My mother she was a proper kind woman, she hadn't even heard curse words until my brother and I brought them home. The other day I was in a conversation and I said "flipping' and my wife was like "flipping? what the hell is flipping?" and I say I"M TRYING HERE!"
He realizes he never saw any of the tourist attractions while actually living in London. "My daughters suddenly go "hey why didn't we ever see the London Eye?" after learning about it in school, so now I'm going down to London with the kids, to show them all the places I never went to see when I lived there."
His eldest daughter complained when they left the city that she didn't want ot go, but 6 months later the super of their old building got stuck with a needle that some junky had taped under the hand railing and then there was a gruesome murder, so then he asks her. "Do you want to go back now?" "No" She says. But the kids like they are from London, he tells me, "The littlest one says "I'm from London" I say you where 2 years old you don't remember, you are not from London! You talk like your from the country!" One of the daughters was having behavior problems in school but it all cleared up one they got out of the city schools and now she's an A student.
He misses London, he misses living in the city. "Cabbies know all the best places" he's says. But then he's says about the village, "It's quiet there I don't have stress and that's good. I have a picture of Big Ben in my study. I never noticed it before, but one day I was sitting there in the cab and I was looking at it and thought. What a beautiful building! Sometimes you have to leave a place to see these things!"
He said tells me he was going to end up likely in jail, I tell him I think he's traded it in for a better jail, one with three kids that drive him crazy and a wife and a peaceful life. We laugh allot. "I've got me a proper cockney accent" he says. My kid was having trouble with another kid in school and I told him to pop him..and then I thought NO NO what the fuck, I don't want him to grow up like me!"
You know buddy, those kids are going to be ok if they grow up like you.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Tuesday, August 03, 2010
Berlin Day 1
My first day in Berlin and the jet lag feels like a brick in my head. I wander to Maur park, which is at the end of the Oderberger Strasse (street) where I am staying, and make my way up a path to a long wall covered in graffitti. I watch young guys with spray paint create some truely marvelous tags. A team of three work their three pieces in a very similar wild style with a European touch -nice snakey lines that dart in and out of the tag like the trails of giant mosquitos. There is a steam punk tag that makes me grin. I stand listening to the multiple hiss of the aerosol and the clack clack clack of the ball bearing in the cans, suddenly I realize I am also hearing a Yan Tierson tune being played on an out-of-tune piano in the distance. I wander down the hill. I find a piano painted as John Lennon. There are six pianos in the park. There is a young man sitting at one playing a Radio Head tune. There is a girl sitting on a piano playing it with her feet. I find fliers on top of the pianos advertising a solo piano festival coming in August.
Exausted and hungry I find a place to stand near the above ground rail system to have a brautwerst chips and beer.
I realize that the knowledge that the heaviness of my decision to leave my apartment in Brooklyn has not hit me yet.
Elyas arrives home and we talk about the music he's working on. Mellisa makes me an incredible rasberry smoothie, we go out for beers in the evening and talk about how the U.S. has sold it's own people out to an incredible degree. How the citizen of the U.S. is the corporation and the populace are goats to be milked. How every empire was built on slavery. Someone mentions that the Chinese, the worlds 2nd largest economy has enslaved their own population for economic devleopment and how the U.S. benefits from that like second hand smoke.
The street Elyas lives on has been torn up, it's become trendy, there is a "German Garment" pop-up store. They tore out trees and they are putting in parking meeters. There is a jack hammer outside the window in the morning. The motor for the jack hammer hums a tone, when the jack hammer starts up, the pitch goes down a perfect 5th, like Beethoven's 5th.
Exausted and hungry I find a place to stand near the above ground rail system to have a brautwerst chips and beer.
I realize that the knowledge that the heaviness of my decision to leave my apartment in Brooklyn has not hit me yet.
Elyas arrives home and we talk about the music he's working on. Mellisa makes me an incredible rasberry smoothie, we go out for beers in the evening and talk about how the U.S. has sold it's own people out to an incredible degree. How the citizen of the U.S. is the corporation and the populace are goats to be milked. How every empire was built on slavery. Someone mentions that the Chinese, the worlds 2nd largest economy has enslaved their own population for economic devleopment and how the U.S. benefits from that like second hand smoke.
The street Elyas lives on has been torn up, it's become trendy, there is a "German Garment" pop-up store. They tore out trees and they are putting in parking meeters. There is a jack hammer outside the window in the morning. The motor for the jack hammer hums a tone, when the jack hammer starts up, the pitch goes down a perfect 5th, like Beethoven's 5th.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Recording session in Paris for Henry Darger exhibit with Philippe Solal from the Gotan Project
Recording session in Paris for Henry Darger exhibit with Philippe Solal from the Gotan Project
http://spillspace.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/darger1.jpg
Feloche's (Felix) producer at Ya Basta! records is Philippe Cohen Solal, composer for the Gotan Project which is a very big tango-electronica act here in Europe. Feloche tells me that Philippe has a session he wants me to come in on, I look on his computer screen and start to see the twisted imagery of Henry Darger. Philippe is getting different musicians together, incuding Calexico, to write music to be played during the new touring exhibit of Darger's work.
It turns out that Philippe was in NYC and saw a Darger piece at the American Folk Art Museum and was blown away. Then for some reason, he had business in Chicago a couple of days later with the very woman same woman who had been Dargers landlady and now had his life's work. She and her husband owned the building that had Darger lived in. They had let him live there for free. He was a local character in an old WW2 coat, digging in the trash. The new yuppies in the area thought he looked homeless and tried to get him kicked out of the hood. What they didn't know was that he was digging in the trash for images. He was writing and illustrating a 1500 page tome featuring little girls in a fantasy world engaging in bloody battles with adults.
Darger's tome could have been lost in the trash except the husband was a Bauhaus school designer who was amazed to find Henry's work while cleaning out the apartment. Henry had gotten to the point where he couldn't take care of himself and was in a home. The bed in the apartment was covered with years of illustrations, Henry had been sleeping sitting in a chair for 20 years.
I used almost every sound making device I had, to pull and pop texture and commentary into and onto the music Phillippe had written. It was an extremely successful recording session, recorded with my effected mic and a stereo pair ala Joe "Bass" Dejarnette that gave the whole thing a very dimensional sound in movement. I did a little wind. "That is like the wind in Chicago!" Phiippe tells me. He wants wind? I gave him wind that pulsed with the music tuning itself subtly up the scale as the phrase played. Roller chimes, canister music boxes, obnoxiophone, I kept discovering new things, the play-back was magic.
France is treating me very we
http://spillspace.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/darger1.jpg
Feloche's (Felix) producer at Ya Basta! records is Philippe Cohen Solal, composer for the Gotan Project which is a very big tango-electronica act here in Europe. Feloche tells me that Philippe has a session he wants me to come in on, I look on his computer screen and start to see the twisted imagery of Henry Darger. Philippe is getting different musicians together, incuding Calexico, to write music to be played during the new touring exhibit of Darger's work.
It turns out that Philippe was in NYC and saw a Darger piece at the American Folk Art Museum and was blown away. Then for some reason, he had business in Chicago a couple of days later with the very woman same woman who had been Dargers landlady and now had his life's work. She and her husband owned the building that had Darger lived in. They had let him live there for free. He was a local character in an old WW2 coat, digging in the trash. The new yuppies in the area thought he looked homeless and tried to get him kicked out of the hood. What they didn't know was that he was digging in the trash for images. He was writing and illustrating a 1500 page tome featuring little girls in a fantasy world engaging in bloody battles with adults.
Darger's tome could have been lost in the trash except the husband was a Bauhaus school designer who was amazed to find Henry's work while cleaning out the apartment. Henry had gotten to the point where he couldn't take care of himself and was in a home. The bed in the apartment was covered with years of illustrations, Henry had been sleeping sitting in a chair for 20 years.
I used almost every sound making device I had, to pull and pop texture and commentary into and onto the music Phillippe had written. It was an extremely successful recording session, recorded with my effected mic and a stereo pair ala Joe "Bass" Dejarnette that gave the whole thing a very dimensional sound in movement. I did a little wind. "That is like the wind in Chicago!" Phiippe tells me. He wants wind? I gave him wind that pulsed with the music tuning itself subtly up the scale as the phrase played. Roller chimes, canister music boxes, obnoxiophone, I kept discovering new things, the play-back was magic.
France is treating me very we
Sunday, February 28, 2010
I fuck and fight WITH nyc. -my new album, the people involved, NYC and love.
"new york is impossibly handsome
impossibly bright
but his hands are too busy
his shirts are too shiny and tight
on fridays he dances to metronomes
so he can keep counting
all night all night all night" -Dayna Kurtz
My album is almost done. After 2.5 years, 15 thousand dollars (seriously, I know!), one important relationship, recording certain compositions then rejecting them and then recording them again, working with Joe Bass on exactly HOW to capture the sounds over a 3 year period, I am of course now exhausted yet energized, broke and in debt, heart broken but elated, but.....
Jeff Lipton of Peerless Mastering is mastering "Sonic New York". He's the guy who mastered 69 Love Songs for Magnetic Fields and has worked with them allot. He is seriously brilliant. I thought the mastering was done but there is a touch to much high end in the sound for my taste so he is going to have another go at it at the end of next week. This process is slow and painful but good. Mastering is still a bit of mystic art to me but I am being obsessive that this whole thing be a masterpiece. Seriously. You will hear this album and you will think-this is one of the most intense and beautiful things I have ever heard.
Evan Rosen, who is a really really talented young designer, and I are going back and forth on the cover art and the design. His work for the cover is really spot on and absolutely captures the feeling of seeing the mythic city from Brooklyn. Everyone I've been showing it to loves it. He went ahead and made another deeper concept version which I didn't like for this project as much but had great ideas in it. I am finding that allot of peoples initial instincts are right. The way the engineers first hear the mix before they overly tweak is right.
This of course being said by a guy is tweaking allot himself but...I have been right so far. I kow what makes my work read, even if I am discovering some of that as I go.
The design is a work of art, it featuring Evan's work and photos by my father. You will see. I am even considering NOT putting a bar code on it because really, what is the point these days? When will I be selling this retail? If it gets picked up by a label after the first 1000 copies then they can deal with it. I am requesting they not shrink wrap it, I will sign every copy.
I don't want this to be a throw away object. I want the document that is this work to seem like a small piece of wonder in your hands and incredible to your ears.
This album was created because sound engineer Joe Bass Dejarnette and I lived in a house together for 3 years and he was the first person to figure out how to capture my sound by putting a dry stereo pair of mice acoustically near my mouth while recording and putting maybe 5 percent into the recorded sound against the mics. He got this trick from something they used to do with Jimmy Hendrix's guitar.
Brilliant, it somehow made all my crazy sounds present and real. We had to learn to record human beat box (Adam Matta!) and work with tuba (Oren Marshall and Don Godwin), we worked with my two favorite singers in the U.S. Aimee Curl and Rhiannon Giddens from the Carolina Chocolate Drops. I also worked with Don Godwin on some of the recording and on mixing. On "Dreamland" (which will be my bonified summertime regional NYC hit) Sammy Rubin from Project Jenny Project Jan did the production, he was VERY VERY generous with his time and gave me the gift of his amazing artistic sense of arrangement.
Sarah Alden and Kerthy Fix were the albums constant critics and could hear the mixes with fresh ears. Meeta Gawande invested the initial amount that got the project started, Larisa Fuchs lent me money when I had to get my teeth fixed and all my money was going into the record, my Kickstarter friends and fans were very very important, and Jim and Sandy Shirey pitched in when I absolutely needed it and of course my composition gigs and touring gigs paid for it. My former partner for much of the creation of this album Lizzie Wort was a constant inspiration and encouraging force. She is in the music.
The album will be done just in time for tour with Amanda Palmer and Jason Webley (Jason told me "YOU HAVE TO HAVE THIS DONE BY TOUR!" and offered to put up the money and put it on his label to get it printed. He really supports me in a lovely way) and Amanda of course is the only artist at her level of success to go. "I know what to do with this guy! I'll put him onstage to rock the shit out of the audience." I am very thankful for Amanda. I am also thankful for programmer Bill Bragen, party maven Larisa Fuchs and listings czar Jeff Stark who have supported me during my time here in NYC. Shit I gotta stop thanking people or I'll never get to the end of this note.
This album will have cost 15K to 16K to make after the first printing and with the website, maybe more. Fucking what the fuck. How did that happen? Well I flew in a tuba player from London and then the airline charged him $700 to get his tuba back to the UK for starters, I'm not kidding. This is ALLOT of money for a fairly unknown artist who chose the lucrative profession of avant-garde circus composer.
...What have I made? Well in the end you have to please yourself. I have made an album that if I discovered, not being me, that would make me fall in love, fall in love with the music and with the city the album is about and the people performing on it. I have made an album that would make me jealous of it's raw innovation. SONIC NEW YORK is surprising and beautiful and very very dirty and real.
So there you go. I am at a new point of life and this album, this work, this group of 17 compositions about and inspired by New Rock City is the baby I'm birthing at the end of it.
In the end, this whole thing, living in New York City, struggling to make a living doing something that has a limited commercial appeal. Kissing a lover on tope of a building, eating at Punjabi's amid turbaned Taxi cab drivers while listening to Banghra for first time, having long conversations with incredibly vibrant complex friends, walking into the sea with The Hungry March Band at the end of the Mermaid Parade. eating in the covered mall on Arthur Avenue, the honor of knowing so many honest and ferociously talented people...this whole New York thing has been about love. It's a fucking act of love.
I don't "fuck and fight in New York City" I fuck and fight WITH New York City!
I know am lucky in this life. I know that. I know I am a bit of an uncompromising crazy fucker about what I chose to do in life and how I chose to do it. I think it has made my life harder in some ways and easier in others. I don't give a shit about certain things that if I gave a shit about would help my career (seriously to a fault). I just do what I want and by some fucking miracle keep landing on my feet.
So, right now at 5.55 in the morning on an insomniatic Sunday morning I love you all. I really do, I mean everybody. I love this city, as much as I hate the bitch, and as likely as I am likely to leave it soon-I love New York.
Cheers,
Skip
impossibly bright
but his hands are too busy
his shirts are too shiny and tight
on fridays he dances to metronomes
so he can keep counting
all night all night all night" -Dayna Kurtz
My album is almost done. After 2.5 years, 15 thousand dollars (seriously, I know!), one important relationship, recording certain compositions then rejecting them and then recording them again, working with Joe Bass on exactly HOW to capture the sounds over a 3 year period, I am of course now exhausted yet energized, broke and in debt, heart broken but elated, but.....
Jeff Lipton of Peerless Mastering is mastering "Sonic New York". He's the guy who mastered 69 Love Songs for Magnetic Fields and has worked with them allot. He is seriously brilliant. I thought the mastering was done but there is a touch to much high end in the sound for my taste so he is going to have another go at it at the end of next week. This process is slow and painful but good. Mastering is still a bit of mystic art to me but I am being obsessive that this whole thing be a masterpiece. Seriously. You will hear this album and you will think-this is one of the most intense and beautiful things I have ever heard.
Evan Rosen, who is a really really talented young designer, and I are going back and forth on the cover art and the design. His work for the cover is really spot on and absolutely captures the feeling of seeing the mythic city from Brooklyn. Everyone I've been showing it to loves it. He went ahead and made another deeper concept version which I didn't like for this project as much but had great ideas in it. I am finding that allot of peoples initial instincts are right. The way the engineers first hear the mix before they overly tweak is right.
This of course being said by a guy is tweaking allot himself but...I have been right so far. I kow what makes my work read, even if I am discovering some of that as I go.
The design is a work of art, it featuring Evan's work and photos by my father. You will see. I am even considering NOT putting a bar code on it because really, what is the point these days? When will I be selling this retail? If it gets picked up by a label after the first 1000 copies then they can deal with it. I am requesting they not shrink wrap it, I will sign every copy.
I don't want this to be a throw away object. I want the document that is this work to seem like a small piece of wonder in your hands and incredible to your ears.
This album was created because sound engineer Joe Bass Dejarnette and I lived in a house together for 3 years and he was the first person to figure out how to capture my sound by putting a dry stereo pair of mice acoustically near my mouth while recording and putting maybe 5 percent into the recorded sound against the mics. He got this trick from something they used to do with Jimmy Hendrix's guitar.
Brilliant, it somehow made all my crazy sounds present and real. We had to learn to record human beat box (Adam Matta!) and work with tuba (Oren Marshall and Don Godwin), we worked with my two favorite singers in the U.S. Aimee Curl and Rhiannon Giddens from the Carolina Chocolate Drops. I also worked with Don Godwin on some of the recording and on mixing. On "Dreamland" (which will be my bonified summertime regional NYC hit) Sammy Rubin from Project Jenny Project Jan did the production, he was VERY VERY generous with his time and gave me the gift of his amazing artistic sense of arrangement.
Sarah Alden and Kerthy Fix were the albums constant critics and could hear the mixes with fresh ears. Meeta Gawande invested the initial amount that got the project started, Larisa Fuchs lent me money when I had to get my teeth fixed and all my money was going into the record, my Kickstarter friends and fans were very very important, and Jim and Sandy Shirey pitched in when I absolutely needed it and of course my composition gigs and touring gigs paid for it. My former partner for much of the creation of this album Lizzie Wort was a constant inspiration and encouraging force. She is in the music.
The album will be done just in time for tour with Amanda Palmer and Jason Webley (Jason told me "YOU HAVE TO HAVE THIS DONE BY TOUR!" and offered to put up the money and put it on his label to get it printed. He really supports me in a lovely way) and Amanda of course is the only artist at her level of success to go. "I know what to do with this guy! I'll put him onstage to rock the shit out of the audience." I am very thankful for Amanda. I am also thankful for programmer Bill Bragen, party maven Larisa Fuchs and listings czar Jeff Stark who have supported me during my time here in NYC. Shit I gotta stop thanking people or I'll never get to the end of this note.
This album will have cost 15K to 16K to make after the first printing and with the website, maybe more. Fucking what the fuck. How did that happen? Well I flew in a tuba player from London and then the airline charged him $700 to get his tuba back to the UK for starters, I'm not kidding. This is ALLOT of money for a fairly unknown artist who chose the lucrative profession of avant-garde circus composer.
...What have I made? Well in the end you have to please yourself. I have made an album that if I discovered, not being me, that would make me fall in love, fall in love with the music and with the city the album is about and the people performing on it. I have made an album that would make me jealous of it's raw innovation. SONIC NEW YORK is surprising and beautiful and very very dirty and real.
So there you go. I am at a new point of life and this album, this work, this group of 17 compositions about and inspired by New Rock City is the baby I'm birthing at the end of it.
In the end, this whole thing, living in New York City, struggling to make a living doing something that has a limited commercial appeal. Kissing a lover on tope of a building, eating at Punjabi's amid turbaned Taxi cab drivers while listening to Banghra for first time, having long conversations with incredibly vibrant complex friends, walking into the sea with The Hungry March Band at the end of the Mermaid Parade. eating in the covered mall on Arthur Avenue, the honor of knowing so many honest and ferociously talented people...this whole New York thing has been about love. It's a fucking act of love.
I don't "fuck and fight in New York City" I fuck and fight WITH New York City!
I know am lucky in this life. I know that. I know I am a bit of an uncompromising crazy fucker about what I chose to do in life and how I chose to do it. I think it has made my life harder in some ways and easier in others. I don't give a shit about certain things that if I gave a shit about would help my career (seriously to a fault). I just do what I want and by some fucking miracle keep landing on my feet.
So, right now at 5.55 in the morning on an insomniatic Sunday morning I love you all. I really do, I mean everybody. I love this city, as much as I hate the bitch, and as likely as I am likely to leave it soon-I love New York.
Cheers,
Skip
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
a clown wedding
A clown wedding-The marriage of Jonah Logan of the Daredevil Opera Company and Sabrina from Circus Orange
-a long but rather incomplete description of events.
I always wondered what would happen if one of my circus friends got married...
We get there at night after meeting at the airport, I, coming from visiting my lovely parents in the rolling green lush of Athens, Ohio and the rest of The New York crew popping up from the city. We are all Bindlestiff alumni aside from Amy Conan, Magic Brian's girl friend, who is rather upset because Delta sent her and Brian's bags with their wedding clothes to Vermont. Una the aerialist is here and her man, accordion rock vocalist god, Corn Mo (who I commandeered into being the next Bindlestiff musician one night in a giant Dallas frat bar, when he opened for us). We are all old friends and it's wonderful when these circus people meet each other. Our immediate reaction is to laugh. I love that about the circus folks, they really get a kick out of each other, we are contantly grinning at each other and joking. We love being around each other.
We arrive at the Vision and Design compound which is the Logan family's business that includes fire works and a full fabrication shop. Its about 2 hours outside of Toronto in the middle of no-where. I'm looking forward to seeing them all again, they are really great people .This is where we built and rehearsed all the Daredevil Opera Company shows. It's dark when we get there. There is a new 150 foot tower they've built above the tree line to catch the internet right next to the clowndominium I can't wait to climb it.
We hear a vehicle tearing through the dark path in the woods and know it's Jonah coming to get us. We stand in a line goofily, arms around each other to great him and he pulls up in a fantastic Thai taxi cart, bedecked with curved rails and colored lights. We hop on and we are off through the trees on a twisting path lined with candles, past the "dangerous turtle pond" (Jonah has a fear of fish and other swimming creatures...parents watch what you name your kids) and into the clearing of a former asparagus field. It's beautiful, the tent rises, lined with lights and I feel like I'm Harry Potter arriving to school for the first time. It's magic.
It's a small beautiful circus tent, red and yellow stripped with twin peaks. Inside the ten, hand made wooden benches and coctail tables with single logs for supports-bark in-tack, a little stage and the crew putting the final touches on everything. A moon pinata hangs from the ceiling with 50-60 strings hanging off to it, each attached into the body. Becks from The Circus Orange doesn't recognize me. The last time she and Tom Comet saw me was years ago when we all did Rocket Johnny and Roxxane Rolls Death Stunt Show in Australia. I had very little hair and it was died Orange!. (I remember that Jonah and Tom trying to find the right strength pyro-charge in order to blow up a Watermelon. They didn't want it totally vaporize the Watermelon but also it could not throw chunks. It was for William Tell like bit where a character uses the Assblaster 3 to shoot a watermellon off another clowns head.) In the tent there is a running tap of good beer and Jonah pulls out a bottle of Canadian Rye whiskey, which tastes very young compared to the petey scottish stuff I like. It is still delightful. We don't get to meet Sasha, who owns the tent. Apparenlty he is 60 years old with the body of a very fit 28 year old, is a great character and has a 40 year old wife who is a belly dancer with a PHD.
The next day I get to see my Daredevil composing/sound design partner Paul Weir, it's been quite awhile and since then he went back to school and became an EMT. We sit in a trailer with a table full of musical toys and practice a tribute to the couple that I had been devising. We click right together, experimenting and suggesting and commenting. They used to call us the "Odd Couple" when we where building the score for Anti-Gravity's Crash Test Dummies for the New Victory Theater. We would work right next to each other, Paul's computer station neat and immaculate next to my mess of chords, drum machine and guitar pedals. "Can I have my headphones?" he once asked and I had to unbind them slowly from the industrial spaghetti.
The next morning Amy and Magic stop by the thrift store for some new clothes, Brian gets a great cowboy shirt and Amy gets a dress that would look perfect at a Junior Prom in the 80s.. It is supposed to rain all weekend but it doesn't, in fact the day of the wedding, the sun even comes out a bit a couple of times. The wedding starts with an industrial bubble machine spewing bubbles over the field, the caterers canopy, the 4 BBQ pits and the smoker for cooking all kinds of meats, the vats for cooking hot dogs, corn dogs and sweet potatoe chips, the cotton candy machine the carmel corn, the fire pit and all the little seating areas they've set up in the field and of course the circus tent which has flags flying at each peak. There will be amazing food and so much of it. The entire night will be endless amounts of food. To start off we have the best corn dogs of our lives, truely amazing bison sliders (meat raised locally) with pickelled local relish, peppers andtomatoe/cherry catsup and then and then...the hordurves start making there rounds, giant bbqs shrimp, stuffed mushrooms, thai-spring rolls, slices of BBQ duck, bruschetta. I allmost back into the hot oil of for the sweet potatoe chips (idiot), oh yes, there are also lamb chops and the food has barely gotten started.
After a long time of eating and socializing. I hear that the wedding party is soon going to make an appearence but no-one planned a wedding march! Fish who is the musician who took over for me when the Death stunt show went to the Sydney Opera House (and works allot with Circus Orange), says he'll play something and ends up playing the pre-show music that I wrote for the show (which was originally Bindlestiff music) mixed with his own pre-show melody. Finally the Cajun band comes through the path in the woods and plants themselves for a few songs at the entrance of the tent. They go in a we follow. Everyone takes a seat. Three circular circus platforms are in the center ring. Finally two young boys come into the tent pulling wagons with little girls throwing flowers, the groom's men in their white trimmed black jackets, the bride's maids in their floor length dresses and the groom looking ridiculously handsome. ( I once wrote a song for him in the Bindlestiff Cirkus. "he's pretty and sweet and he smells like meat, the most handsomest man in the world. from the tip of his nose to the corns on his feet, the most handsomest man in the world, all the ladies bend over, when he walks by and stick their rumps in the air, but he ignores them, even though they cry, when your this handsome, you just dont care!..." ) And she is just beautiful, looking like a young Joni Mitchell in many ways. Sabrina has such a bright energy you can tell she is lovely lovely soul.
The ceremony. I wont do it justice here, I wish I could. The master of ceremonies is Neil smart looking fellow with grey hai. He talks a bit then introduces us the person...er creature who will be performing the actually ceremony, who is female buffoon cat clown by the name of FOO that speaks in her own language. Neil then translates her babble to the audience. I don't know, it at the time but they are partners. It's a great clown/straight man relationship. Foo standing on one platform Jonah and Sabrina standing on the other two platforms, her babbling the ceromoney with ALLOT of gusto, the audience delighted and laughing. Neil, then translating what comes out into rather traditional vows. FOO loosing it a couple of times, babbling implications of Jonah's future of drinking and laziness and Sabrina's naggin and Neil skipping that part. It's very funny. The rings are brought out by one of thes boy. Jonah puts on her ring and and says "I love you because..(says something very sweet) and FOO rants/babbles at them from the stage and then storms out..then everyone with drinks and then the bride and groom are prounounced in from of family and community, man and wife, they kiss and BOOOOOMM!!! of course, confetti rains down on them and everyone while they kiss. The community then all took a string from the moon and we all pulled it apart, raining candy everywhere.
Then dinner starts, station after stations serving, smoked ribs, brisquet, lettuce rapped burritoes, curry, cheeses, wonderful toppings and sides, pulled pork, pies and I can't remember what else...and just in case thats not enough jars of candy and lots of beer and whiskey. Speaches are made for the couple, Sabrina's dear friend Lindey Goodtimes is the master of ceremonies, Jonah's old room mate in college, who is now a business man, leads the grooms men in a speech, Paul Weir and I play a love song for the couple on multiple canister music boxes, whistling and bells and there are trapeze acts.
There is a VERY funny dance/skit about the love story of Jonah and Sabrina and how they met on Circus Orange shows from the Circus Orange crew. Jonah's sister Tanya, has a little kid, named Sadie, who sings a really steller version "Home on the Range". (She's just like her granny everyone says, she used to sing all the time). Jonah's father who is a man of few words shocks Jonah by making the longest speach Jonah has ever heard. Later onstage Jonah is obvioulsy a bit stunned " I've never heard my father say so many words at one time in his life!" Jonah expresses that he is not sure what his 90 year old grandma thought of the whole thing and is not sure if she is still even there. She is actually is and in fact she stays till midnight. Una and I spend some time with her, she is a really lovely soul. Her cane has the handle of a saw and she later sits in a borrowed mens suit jacket and a hat lent to her for the cold. Becks makes sure she knows when somethings about to happen so she'll be there to see it.
Una makes a beautiful speech about meeting Jonah and how when she was questioning if she needed dance training or schooling of some sort to make her act really pop, he told her "you have it, you are already there". She talks in her forward pushing wonderful way about how much she wishes ma and pa Bindle, Keith and Steph could be there and elequenly gives love from the New York crew. We have tears in our eyes. Jonah does also. The Cajun band plays, the rock band, Goodtimes, plays, led by a great singer who is Lindsey's husband, Sabrina's I-pod pushes old school hip hop and micheal jacksons thriller into the tent. We dance and dance. Late night there is more food, poutine (an amazing dish of gravy, fries and cheese curd), battered fish..and god I don't remember what else. We dance more.
There is a giant picture frame where you step on a lever and it takes your photo. Una plays with it all night slowing doing a strip tease, Magic and I mug for the camera as potentially gay lovers, Una and I break the bottom of the frame by trying to put our legs over it all the while taking photos of us and the camera crew trying to fix it. sillyness and more sillyiness. lots of dancing, the Orange crew doing choreographed routines from their shows on the dance floor ( I didn't realize this, I thought they where just amazingly in-sinc with each other and making it all up)
There so many lovely people at this event and I don't meet even half of them.
At then end of the Circus Orange skit, which again, was just funny and wonderful, they start a parade which leads us all outside into the field. Earlier that night while magic brain and New York Crew where drinking and laughing, Magic looks up says. "We are so lucky..we are so lucky...not because of what we do, we chose to live the lives we lead but because of the people we get to be with this, because of this..." he sweeps his hand around the tent. "We are so lucky."
In the field the fireworks begin. Eric Cardinal designed it. I can honestly say I've never been so moved by a fire works display or that I've ever actually been moved at all by a fireworks display aside from the love of the boom. BOOM! The display starts with small bursts in the air. Two rockets go at slight angles from each other with a soft rocket exploding in between, it happens several times. Wow. We get it. we feel it. rapid fire rockets shoot, bang, bang,bang, bang, bang bang bang, larger bursts higher and higher and finally a huge burst, soft with multi-colored drops falling. love my friends, it's love. true love. There is the love of the couple, love of the friends, love of the family and the love of life and yes I know I am one one of the luckiest peole who ever lived, all of us in that field are. All good wishes and long love to you Jonah and Sabrina you are two rockets burning bright exploding again and again.
...morning...breakfast was pretty amazing also, with wild blueberries from Quebec, homemade yogurt, potatoes, eggs and locally made sweet garlic sausages. Jonah is walking leaning at bit on a cane. It has a magnet embedded in the handle and he's trying to steal things out of my pocket and jewlery off women's necks. Sabrina is dressed in a smart lithe cowgirl outfit. Magic Brian is hung over and can't find exedrine but I ask the moms sitting in the circle, I know they'll have it and they do. Corn Moe is happily munching away. After taking picture after picture, (Una is a great one armed camera person) we get one more photo with Paul Wier and Jonah. I did pace myself well with the food that night. Actually the whole crew is a bit dissapointed that I don't eat quite the mass quantities of food I used to but my lust of good sausage is intact. Those sweet sausages are the best sausages I've ever eaten in my life. I wrote this at the house of Tom Comet and Becks who run Circus Orange, then housed me and fed my an amazing omlet and good coffee. Tomorrow I have a Sxip's Hour of Charm at Joe's Pub and then the band is off to Megan Wyler's wedding in Italy...Itally....yum yum. I can't wait.
-a long but rather incomplete description of events.
I always wondered what would happen if one of my circus friends got married...
We get there at night after meeting at the airport, I, coming from visiting my lovely parents in the rolling green lush of Athens, Ohio and the rest of The New York crew popping up from the city. We are all Bindlestiff alumni aside from Amy Conan, Magic Brian's girl friend, who is rather upset because Delta sent her and Brian's bags with their wedding clothes to Vermont. Una the aerialist is here and her man, accordion rock vocalist god, Corn Mo (who I commandeered into being the next Bindlestiff musician one night in a giant Dallas frat bar, when he opened for us). We are all old friends and it's wonderful when these circus people meet each other. Our immediate reaction is to laugh. I love that about the circus folks, they really get a kick out of each other, we are contantly grinning at each other and joking. We love being around each other.
We arrive at the Vision and Design compound which is the Logan family's business that includes fire works and a full fabrication shop. Its about 2 hours outside of Toronto in the middle of no-where. I'm looking forward to seeing them all again, they are really great people .This is where we built and rehearsed all the Daredevil Opera Company shows. It's dark when we get there. There is a new 150 foot tower they've built above the tree line to catch the internet right next to the clowndominium I can't wait to climb it.
We hear a vehicle tearing through the dark path in the woods and know it's Jonah coming to get us. We stand in a line goofily, arms around each other to great him and he pulls up in a fantastic Thai taxi cart, bedecked with curved rails and colored lights. We hop on and we are off through the trees on a twisting path lined with candles, past the "dangerous turtle pond" (Jonah has a fear of fish and other swimming creatures...parents watch what you name your kids) and into the clearing of a former asparagus field. It's beautiful, the tent rises, lined with lights and I feel like I'm Harry Potter arriving to school for the first time. It's magic.
It's a small beautiful circus tent, red and yellow stripped with twin peaks. Inside the ten, hand made wooden benches and coctail tables with single logs for supports-bark in-tack, a little stage and the crew putting the final touches on everything. A moon pinata hangs from the ceiling with 50-60 strings hanging off to it, each attached into the body. Becks from The Circus Orange doesn't recognize me. The last time she and Tom Comet saw me was years ago when we all did Rocket Johnny and Roxxane Rolls Death Stunt Show in Australia. I had very little hair and it was died Orange!. (I remember that Jonah and Tom trying to find the right strength pyro-charge in order to blow up a Watermelon. They didn't want it totally vaporize the Watermelon but also it could not throw chunks. It was for William Tell like bit where a character uses the Assblaster 3 to shoot a watermellon off another clowns head.) In the tent there is a running tap of good beer and Jonah pulls out a bottle of Canadian Rye whiskey, which tastes very young compared to the petey scottish stuff I like. It is still delightful. We don't get to meet Sasha, who owns the tent. Apparenlty he is 60 years old with the body of a very fit 28 year old, is a great character and has a 40 year old wife who is a belly dancer with a PHD.
The next day I get to see my Daredevil composing/sound design partner Paul Weir, it's been quite awhile and since then he went back to school and became an EMT. We sit in a trailer with a table full of musical toys and practice a tribute to the couple that I had been devising. We click right together, experimenting and suggesting and commenting. They used to call us the "Odd Couple" when we where building the score for Anti-Gravity's Crash Test Dummies for the New Victory Theater. We would work right next to each other, Paul's computer station neat and immaculate next to my mess of chords, drum machine and guitar pedals. "Can I have my headphones?" he once asked and I had to unbind them slowly from the industrial spaghetti.
The next morning Amy and Magic stop by the thrift store for some new clothes, Brian gets a great cowboy shirt and Amy gets a dress that would look perfect at a Junior Prom in the 80s.. It is supposed to rain all weekend but it doesn't, in fact the day of the wedding, the sun even comes out a bit a couple of times. The wedding starts with an industrial bubble machine spewing bubbles over the field, the caterers canopy, the 4 BBQ pits and the smoker for cooking all kinds of meats, the vats for cooking hot dogs, corn dogs and sweet potatoe chips, the cotton candy machine the carmel corn, the fire pit and all the little seating areas they've set up in the field and of course the circus tent which has flags flying at each peak. There will be amazing food and so much of it. The entire night will be endless amounts of food. To start off we have the best corn dogs of our lives, truely amazing bison sliders (meat raised locally) with pickelled local relish, peppers andtomatoe/cherry catsup and then and then...the hordurves start making there rounds, giant bbqs shrimp, stuffed mushrooms, thai-spring rolls, slices of BBQ duck, bruschetta. I allmost back into the hot oil of for the sweet potatoe chips (idiot), oh yes, there are also lamb chops and the food has barely gotten started.
After a long time of eating and socializing. I hear that the wedding party is soon going to make an appearence but no-one planned a wedding march! Fish who is the musician who took over for me when the Death stunt show went to the Sydney Opera House (and works allot with Circus Orange), says he'll play something and ends up playing the pre-show music that I wrote for the show (which was originally Bindlestiff music) mixed with his own pre-show melody. Finally the Cajun band comes through the path in the woods and plants themselves for a few songs at the entrance of the tent. They go in a we follow. Everyone takes a seat. Three circular circus platforms are in the center ring. Finally two young boys come into the tent pulling wagons with little girls throwing flowers, the groom's men in their white trimmed black jackets, the bride's maids in their floor length dresses and the groom looking ridiculously handsome. ( I once wrote a song for him in the Bindlestiff Cirkus. "he's pretty and sweet and he smells like meat, the most handsomest man in the world. from the tip of his nose to the corns on his feet, the most handsomest man in the world, all the ladies bend over, when he walks by and stick their rumps in the air, but he ignores them, even though they cry, when your this handsome, you just dont care!..." ) And she is just beautiful, looking like a young Joni Mitchell in many ways. Sabrina has such a bright energy you can tell she is lovely lovely soul.
The ceremony. I wont do it justice here, I wish I could. The master of ceremonies is Neil smart looking fellow with grey hai. He talks a bit then introduces us the person...er creature who will be performing the actually ceremony, who is female buffoon cat clown by the name of FOO that speaks in her own language. Neil then translates her babble to the audience. I don't know, it at the time but they are partners. It's a great clown/straight man relationship. Foo standing on one platform Jonah and Sabrina standing on the other two platforms, her babbling the ceromoney with ALLOT of gusto, the audience delighted and laughing. Neil, then translating what comes out into rather traditional vows. FOO loosing it a couple of times, babbling implications of Jonah's future of drinking and laziness and Sabrina's naggin and Neil skipping that part. It's very funny. The rings are brought out by one of thes boy. Jonah puts on her ring and and says "I love you because..(says something very sweet) and FOO rants/babbles at them from the stage and then storms out..then everyone with drinks and then the bride and groom are prounounced in from of family and community, man and wife, they kiss and BOOOOOMM!!! of course, confetti rains down on them and everyone while they kiss. The community then all took a string from the moon and we all pulled it apart, raining candy everywhere.
Then dinner starts, station after stations serving, smoked ribs, brisquet, lettuce rapped burritoes, curry, cheeses, wonderful toppings and sides, pulled pork, pies and I can't remember what else...and just in case thats not enough jars of candy and lots of beer and whiskey. Speaches are made for the couple, Sabrina's dear friend Lindey Goodtimes is the master of ceremonies, Jonah's old room mate in college, who is now a business man, leads the grooms men in a speech, Paul Weir and I play a love song for the couple on multiple canister music boxes, whistling and bells and there are trapeze acts.
There is a VERY funny dance/skit about the love story of Jonah and Sabrina and how they met on Circus Orange shows from the Circus Orange crew. Jonah's sister Tanya, has a little kid, named Sadie, who sings a really steller version "Home on the Range". (She's just like her granny everyone says, she used to sing all the time). Jonah's father who is a man of few words shocks Jonah by making the longest speach Jonah has ever heard. Later onstage Jonah is obvioulsy a bit stunned " I've never heard my father say so many words at one time in his life!" Jonah expresses that he is not sure what his 90 year old grandma thought of the whole thing and is not sure if she is still even there. She is actually is and in fact she stays till midnight. Una and I spend some time with her, she is a really lovely soul. Her cane has the handle of a saw and she later sits in a borrowed mens suit jacket and a hat lent to her for the cold. Becks makes sure she knows when somethings about to happen so she'll be there to see it.
Una makes a beautiful speech about meeting Jonah and how when she was questioning if she needed dance training or schooling of some sort to make her act really pop, he told her "you have it, you are already there". She talks in her forward pushing wonderful way about how much she wishes ma and pa Bindle, Keith and Steph could be there and elequenly gives love from the New York crew. We have tears in our eyes. Jonah does also. The Cajun band plays, the rock band, Goodtimes, plays, led by a great singer who is Lindsey's husband, Sabrina's I-pod pushes old school hip hop and micheal jacksons thriller into the tent. We dance and dance. Late night there is more food, poutine (an amazing dish of gravy, fries and cheese curd), battered fish..and god I don't remember what else. We dance more.
There is a giant picture frame where you step on a lever and it takes your photo. Una plays with it all night slowing doing a strip tease, Magic and I mug for the camera as potentially gay lovers, Una and I break the bottom of the frame by trying to put our legs over it all the while taking photos of us and the camera crew trying to fix it. sillyness and more sillyiness. lots of dancing, the Orange crew doing choreographed routines from their shows on the dance floor ( I didn't realize this, I thought they where just amazingly in-sinc with each other and making it all up)
There so many lovely people at this event and I don't meet even half of them.
At then end of the Circus Orange skit, which again, was just funny and wonderful, they start a parade which leads us all outside into the field. Earlier that night while magic brain and New York Crew where drinking and laughing, Magic looks up says. "We are so lucky..we are so lucky...not because of what we do, we chose to live the lives we lead but because of the people we get to be with this, because of this..." he sweeps his hand around the tent. "We are so lucky."
In the field the fireworks begin. Eric Cardinal designed it. I can honestly say I've never been so moved by a fire works display or that I've ever actually been moved at all by a fireworks display aside from the love of the boom. BOOM! The display starts with small bursts in the air. Two rockets go at slight angles from each other with a soft rocket exploding in between, it happens several times. Wow. We get it. we feel it. rapid fire rockets shoot, bang, bang,bang, bang, bang bang bang, larger bursts higher and higher and finally a huge burst, soft with multi-colored drops falling. love my friends, it's love. true love. There is the love of the couple, love of the friends, love of the family and the love of life and yes I know I am one one of the luckiest peole who ever lived, all of us in that field are. All good wishes and long love to you Jonah and Sabrina you are two rockets burning bright exploding again and again.
...morning...breakfast was pretty amazing also, with wild blueberries from Quebec, homemade yogurt, potatoes, eggs and locally made sweet garlic sausages. Jonah is walking leaning at bit on a cane. It has a magnet embedded in the handle and he's trying to steal things out of my pocket and jewlery off women's necks. Sabrina is dressed in a smart lithe cowgirl outfit. Magic Brian is hung over and can't find exedrine but I ask the moms sitting in the circle, I know they'll have it and they do. Corn Moe is happily munching away. After taking picture after picture, (Una is a great one armed camera person) we get one more photo with Paul Wier and Jonah. I did pace myself well with the food that night. Actually the whole crew is a bit dissapointed that I don't eat quite the mass quantities of food I used to but my lust of good sausage is intact. Those sweet sausages are the best sausages I've ever eaten in my life. I wrote this at the house of Tom Comet and Becks who run Circus Orange, then housed me and fed my an amazing omlet and good coffee. Tomorrow I have a Sxip's Hour of Charm at Joe's Pub and then the band is off to Megan Wyler's wedding in Italy...Itally....yum yum. I can't wait.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
a weekend in nyc
5 performances in three days. Last weekend was the latest installment of Sxip's Hour of Charm at Joe's Pub with many stand out performances and the thrilling contortion butoh of Johnathan Nosan. Who pretty much freaked the whole audience out by completely bending his body into unreal shapes all the while keeping himself from bursting into laughter or tears. You couldn't tell and the effect was very exhilarating and disturbing.
But this last weekend I find myself with the Luminescent Orchestrii one hour north of NYC, with the traffic it took two hours, sweating in the heat of a grade school auditorium. 30 children are dressed as mermaids, sea monsters and fisherman doing a play about a mermaid and her human husband, their multitude of children, a lost tail, and here we are playing the music, making sound effects and ending the whole event with "Neptune's Daughter" one of our current "hits" and the reason partially we got the gig. That was a rehearsal on Friday and two shows on Sunday.
On Saturday I trudged up to 28th street and 6th to watch the rehearsal of of a modern dance piece by Heidi Latsky featuring a Lawrence Carter-Long who is disabled and walks with difficulty but runs easier than we walks. The piece is tricky because you don't want it to be overly sentimental, it need to convey the strength and individual nature of the performer and not "Oh look at the crippled guy". It's been interesting and in order to ready myself Heidi introduced me to a piece of music I now love Gavin Bryars's The Sinking of the Titanic. Wonderful, smart, deep and wonderful.
Then I am at NYC's last regular and expansive underground party RUBULAD. The place has never looked better, art hangs everywhere, hanging from the ceilings like origami vines...actually some of it may have been origami vines. Ververitsi a new Balkan brass band plays and they are just lovely. Then Adam Matta and I hit the stage and proceed to do the best dance set of my life. For those of you who don't know, Adam Matta is an incredible human beat box that I love playing with. We did a deep house number with me playing double harmonicas through bull horns and Adam just laid it down hard. People loved it..and THEN after wandering about the party for a bit. WHY ARE WE BUILDING SUCH A BIG SHIP? hit the stage. my god I love this band. From New Orleans. Accordion, a ton of horns, stand up bass and back up singers, great song writing. orchestral, punk and New Orleans all at the same time. fun fun fun. good good good good. find these folks on myspace. Go find them playing you will be so happy.
I also performed twice in a puppet show the Saint Annes Warehouse with my friend and one of my favorite puppeteers Erin Orr working on a puppet show that she and Rima Fand, friend and band member have been working on. The show is based on the poetry of Spanish poet Lorca, which Rima is rather obsessed with. The show is wonderful, the music is divine, really. I am making the sound effects, when Don Cristaballs heart gets shoved back into his chest I make a sound that sounds like bone being drilled by a bit with an actual drill grinding into a plastic bottle. We all go to eat afterwards at Superfine under the bridge. So that is NYC in a weekend. 5 performances (two at the school, two at saint annes, one at rubulad) and two rehearsals.
But this last weekend I find myself with the Luminescent Orchestrii one hour north of NYC, with the traffic it took two hours, sweating in the heat of a grade school auditorium. 30 children are dressed as mermaids, sea monsters and fisherman doing a play about a mermaid and her human husband, their multitude of children, a lost tail, and here we are playing the music, making sound effects and ending the whole event with "Neptune's Daughter" one of our current "hits" and the reason partially we got the gig. That was a rehearsal on Friday and two shows on Sunday.
On Saturday I trudged up to 28th street and 6th to watch the rehearsal of of a modern dance piece by Heidi Latsky featuring a Lawrence Carter-Long who is disabled and walks with difficulty but runs easier than we walks. The piece is tricky because you don't want it to be overly sentimental, it need to convey the strength and individual nature of the performer and not "Oh look at the crippled guy". It's been interesting and in order to ready myself Heidi introduced me to a piece of music I now love Gavin Bryars's The Sinking of the Titanic. Wonderful, smart, deep and wonderful.
Then I am at NYC's last regular and expansive underground party RUBULAD. The place has never looked better, art hangs everywhere, hanging from the ceilings like origami vines...actually some of it may have been origami vines. Ververitsi a new Balkan brass band plays and they are just lovely. Then Adam Matta and I hit the stage and proceed to do the best dance set of my life. For those of you who don't know, Adam Matta is an incredible human beat box that I love playing with. We did a deep house number with me playing double harmonicas through bull horns and Adam just laid it down hard. People loved it..and THEN after wandering about the party for a bit. WHY ARE WE BUILDING SUCH A BIG SHIP? hit the stage. my god I love this band. From New Orleans. Accordion, a ton of horns, stand up bass and back up singers, great song writing. orchestral, punk and New Orleans all at the same time. fun fun fun. good good good good. find these folks on myspace. Go find them playing you will be so happy.
I also performed twice in a puppet show the Saint Annes Warehouse with my friend and one of my favorite puppeteers Erin Orr working on a puppet show that she and Rima Fand, friend and band member have been working on. The show is based on the poetry of Spanish poet Lorca, which Rima is rather obsessed with. The show is wonderful, the music is divine, really. I am making the sound effects, when Don Cristaballs heart gets shoved back into his chest I make a sound that sounds like bone being drilled by a bit with an actual drill grinding into a plastic bottle. We all go to eat afterwards at Superfine under the bridge. So that is NYC in a weekend. 5 performances (two at the school, two at saint annes, one at rubulad) and two rehearsals.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
the cloud club
the cloud club
The Cloud Club, the home of Amanda of the Dresden Dolls, an organized clutter, a forest of books, posters, ancient spinning wheels, the voices of old ghosts forced out from yuppie developments in the surrounding area, moved in, sleeping in the walls, lending a spiritual warmths, a hidden charge in the sinus like a battery. It was evoked, this house, not so much built but evoked in the 1960s, We sleep around the house. The two art girls spooning in geodesic glass cloud dome, one is spring wire the other a filament of colored tissues, the gay thin gay boy who oozes his english-ness like a good smelling cologne sleeps slinked on a crooked couch that would break the back of most men, It is an ancient awkward piece of furniture bent from years of use, designed for ladies to sip tea on , "I'll sleep fine" He tells me." I am use to sleep on top of a grand piano."
Sarah who was a drunken rose the night before and Benji who always has a sweet parallel song unheard to everyone, says they both can share the closet with a bed in it. I am on the floor waking to stand next to the heater's blaze. In order to get to the geodesic star dome you must climb a knotted trunk bequethed with antlers.
Amanda's bedroom has a full sized grand piano. In the morning I awake to the propietor of the house coming in. I immediately recognize him to be a ships captain with white beard. He is checking the heat in every room to make sure everyone is warm. Buildings are ships that need to be constantlly nurtured and and repaired just to stay still. That is what we want from buildings yes? Their stillness. We trust them to be unchanging. We nurture them into stillness. Still, the building is never finished. In the room below the store dome are organic plaster forms folding into a room, a window in front of the fire place looks down into the kitchen below, there is an ancient piano once owned by a Chinese show girl and objects, chimes, candelabras, and books at every finger teach. "He sees the building as a ship that IS going to take-off someday." Amanda tells me the next day. Out of the corner of my eye a small blue sparks shiver down the wall, I hear all the pianos and electric keyboards settle slightly in all the rooms with a hum.
Pa's Lounge is an empty rumpus room, obviously a working class bar that has found a way to sustain by allowing shows in its adjacent room. Boston is a hard market for venues. The club owner is blunt and a hard kidder, an east coaster, he likes us. There has apparently been only one other band he has left the door open between the bar and club. Baby Dee has played here which is amazing, I only imagine her playing in places with velvet curtains and waiters with white gloves, though I've never seen her play at places like this. Everyone dances for Luminescent Orchestrii an awkward and beautiful hora, Amanda eggs them on dancing. She sings "Sweet Dreams" with us holding the mic out to the audience to sing along. We tear through our our new Macadonian tune and everyone dances dances. Brian and I feed each other beats and find our way in and out of half realized arrangements.
Amanda has a dream about a cult, in which middle class families strip naked and put their feet together in a circle, igniting a flame where they would burn their sins and regrets.
There is an order to this house. There is the smallest bit of gold attached to every object present. I finally notice, it is very tiny, almost too tiny to see, on the lower right hand corner of every object. You might mistake it for for a piece of glitter. On books, on shoes, a towel, a bit of soap, I almost dig it out with my fingernail but, well, it's not my house. It could be pyrite or maybe it is glitter, but it even at these small sizes it has a suggestion of weight, that anchors it and everything down.
"Imagine the house lifting, you'll know it's about to go, for the gold glitter in the air, a sparkling dust releasing the house into the heavens."
"I stole the corner stone of your book collection, took my days to figure it out. Now their is uneasy reading in the library.
I stole a handful of hands, small hands, that could fit into my big hand, they grasped and would not let go, it was much more trouble than it was worth.
I stole reading glasses which, not designed for my eyes made everything impossible to read. Except billboards so I walked along the highway and did just that.
I stole the right to steal a stone then to hide it in my palm like a funny trick. This made the trick trite and so made the trick at first akward then awful to do, but I did it anyway because I had gone to all the trouble."
The Cloud Club, the home of Amanda of the Dresden Dolls, an organized clutter, a forest of books, posters, ancient spinning wheels, the voices of old ghosts forced out from yuppie developments in the surrounding area, moved in, sleeping in the walls, lending a spiritual warmths, a hidden charge in the sinus like a battery. It was evoked, this house, not so much built but evoked in the 1960s, We sleep around the house. The two art girls spooning in geodesic glass cloud dome, one is spring wire the other a filament of colored tissues, the gay thin gay boy who oozes his english-ness like a good smelling cologne sleeps slinked on a crooked couch that would break the back of most men, It is an ancient awkward piece of furniture bent from years of use, designed for ladies to sip tea on , "I'll sleep fine" He tells me." I am use to sleep on top of a grand piano."
Sarah who was a drunken rose the night before and Benji who always has a sweet parallel song unheard to everyone, says they both can share the closet with a bed in it. I am on the floor waking to stand next to the heater's blaze. In order to get to the geodesic star dome you must climb a knotted trunk bequethed with antlers.
Amanda's bedroom has a full sized grand piano. In the morning I awake to the propietor of the house coming in. I immediately recognize him to be a ships captain with white beard. He is checking the heat in every room to make sure everyone is warm. Buildings are ships that need to be constantlly nurtured and and repaired just to stay still. That is what we want from buildings yes? Their stillness. We trust them to be unchanging. We nurture them into stillness. Still, the building is never finished. In the room below the store dome are organic plaster forms folding into a room, a window in front of the fire place looks down into the kitchen below, there is an ancient piano once owned by a Chinese show girl and objects, chimes, candelabras, and books at every finger teach. "He sees the building as a ship that IS going to take-off someday." Amanda tells me the next day. Out of the corner of my eye a small blue sparks shiver down the wall, I hear all the pianos and electric keyboards settle slightly in all the rooms with a hum.
Pa's Lounge is an empty rumpus room, obviously a working class bar that has found a way to sustain by allowing shows in its adjacent room. Boston is a hard market for venues. The club owner is blunt and a hard kidder, an east coaster, he likes us. There has apparently been only one other band he has left the door open between the bar and club. Baby Dee has played here which is amazing, I only imagine her playing in places with velvet curtains and waiters with white gloves, though I've never seen her play at places like this. Everyone dances for Luminescent Orchestrii an awkward and beautiful hora, Amanda eggs them on dancing. She sings "Sweet Dreams" with us holding the mic out to the audience to sing along. We tear through our our new Macadonian tune and everyone dances dances. Brian and I feed each other beats and find our way in and out of half realized arrangements.
Amanda has a dream about a cult, in which middle class families strip naked and put their feet together in a circle, igniting a flame where they would burn their sins and regrets.
There is an order to this house. There is the smallest bit of gold attached to every object present. I finally notice, it is very tiny, almost too tiny to see, on the lower right hand corner of every object. You might mistake it for for a piece of glitter. On books, on shoes, a towel, a bit of soap, I almost dig it out with my fingernail but, well, it's not my house. It could be pyrite or maybe it is glitter, but it even at these small sizes it has a suggestion of weight, that anchors it and everything down.
"Imagine the house lifting, you'll know it's about to go, for the gold glitter in the air, a sparkling dust releasing the house into the heavens."
"I stole the corner stone of your book collection, took my days to figure it out. Now their is uneasy reading in the library.
I stole a handful of hands, small hands, that could fit into my big hand, they grasped and would not let go, it was much more trouble than it was worth.
I stole reading glasses which, not designed for my eyes made everything impossible to read. Except billboards so I walked along the highway and did just that.
I stole the right to steal a stone then to hide it in my palm like a funny trick. This made the trick trite and so made the trick at first akward then awful to do, but I did it anyway because I had gone to all the trouble."
Sunday, January 14, 2007
land of tiny apples and miniature sodas
At a party last week in Minneapolis..
...a fellow comes in with a pickle and and 3 prong plug. We go into the basement, he sticks the prongs on either end of the pickle, sticks the plug into the wall. The pickle lights up! Don't try this at home unless you are a culinary electronic geek. They wouldn't let me eat the pickle.
YEARS AGO IN Minneapolis....
There was dark stain in the concrete where the Vietnam Vet who lived upstairs had fallen drunk one night and cracked his head. Ian and I, where living in a basement with low ceilings, the rent was amazingly cheap. I was making giant frog puppets for The HEART OF THE BEAST PUPPET THEATER,in a old blunt working-class art deco theater on Lake Street. For $10 you could have two pizzas and a pitcher of year.or was it one pizza and two pitchers of beer? Progressive drinking nights at bars, the drinks go up 15 cents every 5 minutes. They start at zero. My first Eastern European punk band PUSH PUSH CARNIVAL was planning on moving here. I was astounded amazed to go to Nyes, my favorite bar ever and watch the the ancient polka band, led by an old lady who is helped onstage, stepping up onto a chair. They are in gritty side room. The main room of is filled with classy magical vinyl seating and chunky lights and has an amazing piano bar where old people would sit and drink and sing. I loved this place.
It is too flat for me in Minneapolis, and too snowy, and too cold. After the first big snow, Ian and I sit in in the 2 pizzas/one beer place, where he is working as a buser. We watch a drunk man holding onto a bumper and let himself be dragged down the street.
I was disturbed by the architecture downtown, which was a series of mirrored buildings. Mirrors reflecting mirrors into a sort of architectural singularity. But it makes sense, If you have a job down town you can spend the entire winter without going outside, the buildings downtown are connected to walkways. You could be home, get into your car in the parking garage and then to work and back. There is no outside of buildings for you.
You have to be aware of building in New YOrk. They are batteries. It's like walking around giant batteries, you are always aware of their kinetic potential to leap up and form themselves into giant robots.
RIGHT NOW IN Minneapolis
I am in Minneapolis working on an amazing play by Lisa D'Amour called Marsupial Girl, at the Childrens Theater Company. I wrote hip-hop west texas slide guitar harmonica stomp. It is one of the best things I've ever worked on. The whole crew is amazing. John Heimbuch of Walking Shadow Theater, who saw me at the First Avenue Dresden Dolls show sets me up a solo show at Acadia. Lovely fellow.
The parties here are too well lit and polite or they are sleazy and drunk, no in between.
...a fellow comes in with a pickle and and 3 prong plug. We go into the basement, he sticks the prongs on either end of the pickle, sticks the plug into the wall. The pickle lights up! Don't try this at home unless you are a culinary electronic geek. They wouldn't let me eat the pickle.
YEARS AGO IN Minneapolis....
There was dark stain in the concrete where the Vietnam Vet who lived upstairs had fallen drunk one night and cracked his head. Ian and I, where living in a basement with low ceilings, the rent was amazingly cheap. I was making giant frog puppets for The HEART OF THE BEAST PUPPET THEATER,in a old blunt working-class art deco theater on Lake Street. For $10 you could have two pizzas and a pitcher of year.or was it one pizza and two pitchers of beer? Progressive drinking nights at bars, the drinks go up 15 cents every 5 minutes. They start at zero. My first Eastern European punk band PUSH PUSH CARNIVAL was planning on moving here. I was astounded amazed to go to Nyes, my favorite bar ever and watch the the ancient polka band, led by an old lady who is helped onstage, stepping up onto a chair. They are in gritty side room. The main room of is filled with classy magical vinyl seating and chunky lights and has an amazing piano bar where old people would sit and drink and sing. I loved this place.
It is too flat for me in Minneapolis, and too snowy, and too cold. After the first big snow, Ian and I sit in in the 2 pizzas/one beer place, where he is working as a buser. We watch a drunk man holding onto a bumper and let himself be dragged down the street.
I was disturbed by the architecture downtown, which was a series of mirrored buildings. Mirrors reflecting mirrors into a sort of architectural singularity. But it makes sense, If you have a job down town you can spend the entire winter without going outside, the buildings downtown are connected to walkways. You could be home, get into your car in the parking garage and then to work and back. There is no outside of buildings for you.
You have to be aware of building in New YOrk. They are batteries. It's like walking around giant batteries, you are always aware of their kinetic potential to leap up and form themselves into giant robots.
RIGHT NOW IN Minneapolis
I am in Minneapolis working on an amazing play by Lisa D'Amour called Marsupial Girl, at the Childrens Theater Company. I wrote hip-hop west texas slide guitar harmonica stomp. It is one of the best things I've ever worked on. The whole crew is amazing. John Heimbuch of Walking Shadow Theater, who saw me at the First Avenue Dresden Dolls show sets me up a solo show at Acadia. Lovely fellow.
The parties here are too well lit and polite or they are sleazy and drunk, no in between.
Saturday, November 11, 2006
The new album is out!
The new album is out and already receiving great reviews! Get your copy of "Sombule" now on CD Baby--and see below for the great review they gave me.
"Drawing from his finesse and facility as a "real-life circus composer," Sxip Shirey's imagination for sounds, sound combinations and textural color -- ranging from experimental and far-out electronically-enriched nuggets to slow and heavy gypsy folk songs to eccentric Wurlitzer organ pieces to the odd country folk song -- makes him one of the most curious combinations of composer-sound designer-performer meets storyteller-curator. As dramatically different as his stylistic signatures may be, and while the album may seem to have multiple personalites, there is a hard-to-define consistent character to it all; a playful, mischievous wink-and-nudge, up-to-no-good theme that ties it all together under one title. Some have called his style a combination of gypsy, tango, klezmer and punk and along with that, you could throw in some circus effects and a little tickling psychosis. With all that genius wrapped up into one little package, you've certainly got a peculiarly addictive album here." --CD Baby
Sunday, January 15, 2006
YOW!!!
Yow! You know when Bugs Bunny slugs down a shot of something from a bottle marked XXX, his face gurns sideways, he coughs and his eyeballs roll like winning slots, mouth opens and he deposits his soul into his lap.. I'm drinking a shot of Slivovitza, the plum moon shine of Eastern Europe. I was contacted by a friend and told to go to asterisk, the underground rock n' roll party space in Brooklyn and Serbian Chef Vule would be throwing a Serbian New Years party. So me lovely and talented Larisa and I gussied up and here we are.
Now the first time I had Slovitza was the Edinburgh Fringe Festival where I was performing with the pyro-technic clown troupe The Daredevil opera Company. I has hanging out with this Serbian girl I saw performing at a show. One of the members of her company gave me a shot of something and I thought "My god my tongue has literally become numb". Serbian Girl is later baffled that I don't want second helpings of food. "The men in my country eat..allot." She is further baffled when I do the dishes.
Here at New Years, Vule is happily wielding a machete. He's hacking apart a whole pig that he has deep fried into edible chunks, amid a field of absolutely delicious Serbian delicacies. There is cheese, sausage, fresh bread, pepper spread, egg plant spread, nuts. There is even something like my Albanian Grandmother's "Peta", which is a dish somewhat like spinacopita, made of leaves of dough butter, egg and cheese. Yum.
A little muscular pit bull is running around and being fed hunks of pork by everyone. The friend who told me about the party is eyeing the basoon player who is jamming with the sax player, and two percussionists from The Hungry March band. She is single for the first time in 8 years and really wants an basoon lesson suddenly. We are all dancing. (except of course the hipsters who stand on the side lines looking like nervous kids at a junior high school dance). Her friends come across as these amazing crazy sexy librarians.
Later I am talking with the cymbal player's boyfriend... "You!" I say. "You are going out with Lucky!"
"What?" he says.
"Don't you know that your girlfriend is known as "Lucky" among the Burning Man people. She's got a reputation that if you get your hair cut from her, you'll get "Lucky" that night."
"Maybe" he says." That's why she refuses to cut my hair!"
Now the first time I had Slovitza was the Edinburgh Fringe Festival where I was performing with the pyro-technic clown troupe The Daredevil opera Company. I has hanging out with this Serbian girl I saw performing at a show. One of the members of her company gave me a shot of something and I thought "My god my tongue has literally become numb". Serbian Girl is later baffled that I don't want second helpings of food. "The men in my country eat..allot." She is further baffled when I do the dishes.
Here at New Years, Vule is happily wielding a machete. He's hacking apart a whole pig that he has deep fried into edible chunks, amid a field of absolutely delicious Serbian delicacies. There is cheese, sausage, fresh bread, pepper spread, egg plant spread, nuts. There is even something like my Albanian Grandmother's "Peta", which is a dish somewhat like spinacopita, made of leaves of dough butter, egg and cheese. Yum.
A little muscular pit bull is running around and being fed hunks of pork by everyone. The friend who told me about the party is eyeing the basoon player who is jamming with the sax player, and two percussionists from The Hungry March band. She is single for the first time in 8 years and really wants an basoon lesson suddenly. We are all dancing. (except of course the hipsters who stand on the side lines looking like nervous kids at a junior high school dance). Her friends come across as these amazing crazy sexy librarians.
Later I am talking with the cymbal player's boyfriend... "You!" I say. "You are going out with Lucky!"
"What?" he says.
"Don't you know that your girlfriend is known as "Lucky" among the Burning Man people. She's got a reputation that if you get your hair cut from her, you'll get "Lucky" that night."
"Maybe" he says." That's why she refuses to cut my hair!"
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