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.
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
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.
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