Oh Dear, Look What They've Done to the Blues

An email from me this morning to two good friends of the musician/music geek variety, with an emphasis on Bowie and music from within that early/mid 70s stylistic form of Rock sometimes known as "Glam" or "Glitter":

Hey guys . . .

Pardon me for just throwing this out to you, but I'm in a very curious zone right now and not getting a straight answer from the intarweb.

What do either of you know about Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel? I've just downloaded the 1975 album

The Psychomodo and am currently downloading the 1974 album The Human Menagerie, and I'm trying to find out more about these albums (and trying to understand why I've never heard of them before), but I keep finding incomplete or outright contradictory info online.

You possibly don't know any more than I'm finding - especially as I keep doing searches while I'm writing this and finding more and stranger-but-interesting dead ends, but just in case you do, I'm really curious.

I first heard of Cockney Rebel when their song "Make Me Smile" was used over the end credits of

Velvet Goldmine - I thought it was a new song written and produced for the movie "in the style of glam," and, I thought, though a good song, not all that well-done as a "period pastiche," as it sounded way too modern in its production and instrumentation. Of course, it was an actual UK hit single from 1975, so . . . so much for my usually-good ear for such things.

Now I just got

Psychomodo and discovered that another song from Velvet Goldmine, sung by the faux-Bowie character as his big farewell, "Tumbling Down," originates on this album. I had thought this was a well-done Aladdin Sane-era Bowie pastiche written specifically for the film, with just the "right" kind of occasionally clunky-but-charming lyric ("Hail to the Monkey/We're having a funky/Reunion . . ."), but no, it's from an actual post-Glam album (don't know if anyone has defined that as a genre, but it seems to have the same relation to Glam as "post-Punk" does to Punk, so it seems right). The original, even more than the film version, REALLY tries to out-Rock-n-Roll-Suicide "Rock n Roll Suicide" in the grand pompousoid rock-Camp department.

The source I'm downloading these from lists Roy Thomas Baker as either producer or arranger (mentions his string arrangements but nothing else), and that would make sonic sense (it sounds a bit like RTB, who would have been producing Queen at this point, doing a

Berlin-era Bob Ezrin). But in looking up credits, there's no mention of this in the credits for these albums, or in RTB's credits (though I discovered that RTB was an engineer on Electric Warrior, didn't know that). Alan Parsons seems to be behind the production for these (and Harley is the singer on one of Parsons' projects, I, Robot). Some other familiar names are in the booth (eg; Geoff Emerick). Notes on the '74 album note that one song is about Marc Bolan, and I see that Harley sings backup on the title track of Dandy in the Underworld.

So my main question I guess is Why haven't I ever heard of this guy and band before? I mean, I know there were plenty of faux-Bowies at the time, and most of them weren't all that good (though I enjoy the one Jobriath track I have), but Harley's a bit more individual and better than that. And he's still working.

Okay, I guess I shouldn't be surprised, as Scott Walker's never really made it across the Atlantic, but I'd HEARD of HIM.

Ah, just skimmed through the '74 album - and it's not nearly as good as the '75 one. The earlier one is a weird mish-mash of the folkier side of T-Rex, with a bit of early Roxy Music (the longer, jammy stuff from the first two albums), and the string arrangement from "Wild-Eyed Boy from Freecloud." With a bit of MOR pop. And one song that has an intro that's not quite the intro of "Running Gun Blues" at double speed, but it's close enough. So maybe this is why I haven't heard of him - he wasn't all that good except on one album and a single or two . . .

Do you anything about Harley/Cockney Rebel of any interest? As mine is piqued, and even his own official site is just kind of annoying and seems to assume you know him and his work well if you're visiting.

Just wondering,

IWH

Okay, I need to listen to Harley/Cockney Rebel some more, in full, now. The brief "skimming" I mention above didn't do him justice. I was about to write a paragraph here about how disappointed I was to hear more of his stuff after liking the first things I'd heard, but now I'm listening to the first album again, and it's better than I'd thought. So . . . I'll listen to both of them in full and see what I think then.

At this point, for some reason, what's coming to me now is that he has the same relationship to "Glam" as Arthur Lee's Love did to late-60s L.A. hippie-rock -- a kind of after-the-fact of the BIG WAVE summation of the "dark/destructive side" of the period that is OF the style without being fully IN the style. Interesting . . .

Four or Five Crazee Shows

Merry Mount is down and over and now I'm on to the rest of the year's shows: My four for June and August, and directing Bryan Enk and Matt Gray's Penny Dreadful episode for March, which I can't do anything on just yet, until I get the script from the guys.

I will also be the main point-person for The Brick, most likely, in the management/running of the Tiny Theatre Festival in May and the Clown Theatre Festival, which I guess will be in October again. And Berit and I will have plenty to do in our duties as co-TDs of the space for The Film Festival: A Theater Festival in May/June. I don't know if the Baby Jesus Festival will now continue as a yearly thing or remain Biennial, but if it's up this year, that's December taken.

Berit is busy with props and other things for Cat's Cradle and Hiroshima for UTC#61, as well as stage managing Aaron Baker's 3800 Elizabeth. I will be coming in to set up the video system for the UTC shows, and as Berit will be house managing those, I'll be taking over for her on the management of Aaron's show (and the running of Penny Dreadful) when those conflict.

But the primary concerns in the home of Gemini CollisionWorks are our shows for the year. An update on current status, since that's what the blog is supposed to be about:

The Magnificent Ambersons by Orson Welles: A Reconstruction for the Stage

(performing June, in The Film Festival at The Brick, with, I hope, a few more performances in July - because of one performer's schedule, we can't do any shows in June after the 15th, which is fine by me, but better if we get a July extension)

The script is all together, and we're currently casting and discussing design. We need an actual costume designer on this besides Berit & I. I'll ask the two I know, like, and trust. Apart from that, B & I are in a good starting place.

Needs a cast of at least 16, though the more I look at the script, the more I worry I need a couple more to fill out the stage at one point, which is a pain, because then it gives everyone in the "chorus" parts less to do in the double-casting. I need to really look at the ballroom scene and plan it out on paper to see if I can stage it workably with the 16-person plan.

A lot to be done with shadow puppets. Must start playing with that. I have to do some sound editing on the music cues - I have the complete Herrmann score now, but many of the cues on the CD are linked together as mini-"suites" and I need to cut them up into discrete cues. We're going to have to rehearse with the music behind us, so I should have it ready. Powerpoint projections, too. Whee.

Must set up a first reading ASAP as soon as I have a cast. Currently cast: Timothy McCown Reynolds as Eugene Morgan, Stephen Heskett as George Amberson Minifer, Shelley Ray as Lucy Morgan, Walter Brandes as Jack Amberson (and myself as narrator). I've offered the roles of Fanny Minifer and Isabel Amberson Minifer to two actresses, but haven't heard back from them yet. Must email them today. Stephen introduced me to an older actor he takes class with who would seem perfect for Major Amberson, and who found the concept interesting, so I'll email him as well to see about meeting and reading. I have to get the nine "primary" roles set before filling out the rest of the cast, but I have a list of the actors I'd like to round out the cast, if I can get them. Also, while I think I can do it with these people, I need to go over the script and figure out the double-casting exactly to be sure. At the same time, there are issues of the casting kind that are exactly the ones I have a completely unreasonable discomfort in dealing with:

First, there are a couple of actors I know who are great, and would be great in certain roles in this show, but the roles are really good ones that are also really REALLY small, and I'm always unhappy with asking actors I don't know all that well personally, and who generally are cast in big, showy parts (and deservedly), to come in for one or two scenes in a show where they'll be sitting around a lot of the time (or moving scenery).

Second, there are two "small boys" needed for one scene in the show, and the best way to deal with this is to cast two diminutive actresses I've worked with before who could play both small boys and older women quite well. Again, in my unreasonable but quite real shyness, I'm having trouble emailing them to ask about their interest, as though there's something insulting about me asking them to play the boys, though both of them have played a small boy for me before.

Finally, the Ambersons, in an accurate-enough piece of period detail, have a black butler, Sam, who is a presence throughout much of the play, though he's not a huge part either. But he's important, and I can't imagine doing the play without him. At the same time, I am uncomfortable with putting out a casting notice looking for a black man to come in and be a rich white family's butler (over the years 1885-1910), who also can't really double in any other parts in the show (except in a crowd scene at the end), let alone asking the black actors I know to take it on. There is, of course, probably no good reason for my discomfort (as Berit noted, and I paraphrase, "Why are you uncomfortable? He's not written as some shambling offensive stereotype. He's a black servant to a family that in that time and place would have accurately had one.").

And in terms of asking the actors I know, it comes more under the heading of a regular problem I have that I touched on above -- once I've cast an actor in some big showy role in a show, I have trouble casting them in a smaller, supporting role, even if they're perfect for it, as I feel like I'm insulting them or something. I also get uncomfortable with certain actors I keep casting in smaller roles in show after show after show, who I know could give an amazing lead performance if I had the show with the role, but I never do. So I wind up feeling bad about continuing to ask them to come in and be, yet again, another great utility infielder of a performer.

Berit tries to help get me over this by asking me if I feel at all bad about how, having played a number of grand, wonderful, major roles on stage, I still get asked to come in and do a little supporting role here and there for someone (often non-speaking). And, no, I don't. I go and do the work where I'm needed if it's not interfering with my own. So if I'm fine with it, why should I assume it's an insult to other actors? I mean, yes, I've had 2 or 3 actors tell me, "I don't do small roles anymore," but with a simple informative politeness.

{sigh} I'm just paranoid. What else is new? This is why I always used to do real full ensemble productions most of the time, where there weren't any obvious "bigger" or "smaller" roles and it was all about everybody on stage all the time working together. Which, happily, is what two of my August shows will be like.

And . . . hmmn . . . after a little more thought, I've realized that I do know and have worked with an actor who could actually play Sam and multiple other characters in the show, I think . . . oh, yeah, that'd work. Okay, problem solved.

Spell

(performing August at The Brick)

I have fragments of script to start with on this one, but I'm building it around the specific actors I'm casting in it, and will create it through rehearsal, then go and write it and bring it back. Then repeat. Create all the design at the same time, so light, text, sound, costumes, set, props are all one integrated system from the start.

Moira Stone is cast in the "central" role, Ann, which is not so much a "lead" as the nucleus of an atom that everything else is spinning madly around. I know there are three witches who each speak a different, non-English language (I have actresses in mind for these who can do this, who've all expressed interest, but I have to confirm with them); a doctor who keeps switching from male to female (two actors in mind there, too); Ann's male alter-ego, Andy, who keeps switching places with her (several possibilities); and a chorus of figures you could think of either as revolutionaries or terrorists, and their bloodied casualties or victims. It seems to be breaking down naturally into 7 men and 7 women, which seems right for the piece.

So Moira is set - I have to contact the six others who have specifically expressed an interest in this show (and I've begun crafting parts around them). Another two people I'd like in this have expressed a general desire to be in one of this year's shows. And then there's another five I'd like in this I have to ask. This one's getting more and more alive for me, and it's really exciting.

This one is about terrorism, and my ongoing argument with myself about whether or not the use of terrible violence can be a potentially positive weapon for social change (if you're wondering who always wins that argument, well, I'm making theatre and not bombs, so it should be obvious, though I still sometimes wonder . . .).

Dance To That Which One Is Created For (Invisible Republic)

(possibly still a working title, but it'll do for now - performing in August at The Brick)

This one is both exciting and scary. I have a theme, a visual concept, some songs, an idea of mood, and a desired cast in mind, and nothing else. And it has to wind up being an actual play. With dances. This will be interesting, and I hope it won't frustrate the cast too much as we work to get there. I know it's about business and selling.

Gyda Arber (who I imagine tap dancing on a table to "Dry Bones") and Dina Rose Rivera (who, wonderfully, can dance en pointe as I was hoping - this will be an interesting new step in choreography for me) seem to be in on this one. I think this one will have four men and four women, and I have the others in mind already. I'm a little worried about eight people not being enough to displace enough air in the stage space for what I want, but any larger or smaller number seems really wrong.

So, emails to go out here, too.

Harry in Love: A Manic Vaudeville

(performing August at The Brick)

Richard Foreman's script is cut and ready. Mostly cast, 4 out of 6 at least - Josephine Cashman and I are playing Hilda and Harry Rosenfeld, Ken Simon is Karl Wasselman, and Walter Brandes is Paul Toothstein (aka "Hilda's-Brother").

Still to be cast are Doctor Meyers and Max Gelb - I've had an actor in mind for years to play the Doctor, and I just emailed him to see if he might be interested. I was stuck on anyone to play Max, but an actor I like that I didn't have any idea was interested in working with me emailed today out of the blue to say that he indeed was, and he's perfect for Max, so I sent him the script. So we'll see if I get these last two people, and if so, then we'll set up a reading and begin.

And that's it for now. And maybe for a few days until more actual things come up. I am strangely optimistic, an odd feeling for me . . .