CollisionWorks

Work continues on the three August shows, at different levels and paces and amounts of stress.

Harry In Love: A Manic Vaudeville is staged and we did a book-in-hand (mostly, some people are nicely off-book for bits and pieces already) stumble-thru and fix-thru that went well enough to show we're in good shape. There is much work to be done, but we have the time to do that work, easily. It's going to be a serious laff-riot, really.

Spell is proceeding well, though I need to write faster on it - the text is coming, but not as I'd like (speedwise, I mean, I've wound up very happy and even surprised with what's come out for this one). The cast is good, though still incomplete - we lost an actress, as I mentioned, and the one I asked to replace her hasn't returned my contact, so I'll move on to asking another. Thank goodness the cast on this show is so cheery to work with - the show itself is pretty bleak and uncomfortable (yeah, I'm great at talking up my own shows - "Bleak and Uncomfortable!" - now that's an ad line for ya . . .).

Everything Must Go (Invisible Republic #2) has had more time off than I'd like, but there were cast conflicts with other shows, and marriages, and so forth. There is a lot to do on this one and not enough time scheduled - I need to find more time to dedicate to this show. Also, I'm behind in the writing on this one too - which is a surprise, as this is the kind of language that normally comes naturally and easily to me (as it did on what is now Invisible Republic #1, That's What We're Here For (an american pageant)). Next rehearsal for this one is tomorrow, and I have to have more text and choreography ready for that, so today is the writing day (mostly for EMG, I hope, and some for Spell), and tomorrow I'll schlep over to The Brick as early as I can and start really getting the choreography down.

I'm still getting over my shyness in choreographing dance on other peoples' bodies; That's What We're Here For was a big step for me, but there I had the one "real" dance for (and by) Maggie Cino and me, and the rest were mainly stylistic pastiches, and worked out a lot with the cast, while this one is mostly me doing actual personal, non-parodic work, with better dancers than I am. Nerve-wracking.

Last night was the end of The Brick's The Film Festival: A Theater Festival (except for some extensions of really good shows that you should all go and see), and we had the closing-night ceremonies and awards ceremonies. This is the second year of this post-fest party, which is on its way to being a tradition, as awards ranging from the semi-serious to outright ridiculous are given, with every piece in the fest winning at least one award (the Special Olympics of Indie Theatre, if you will), with a focus on in-jokes funny (maybe) only to festival participants, or more usually to about 10 regular members of The Brick crowd. Bottomless amounts of alcoholic beverages are served. Lisa Levy, lovely in a gorgeous dress, forces everyone entering the theatre to be interviewed as if on the red carpet as a camera broadcasts the uncomfortable results on the gigantic screen inside. Jeff Lewonczyk, "America's Funnyman," hosts and everyone groans at what he thinks is funny, as Lawrence Krauser tickles the ivories beautifully, giving an inappropriate air of an actual planned show to the whole evening. Private grievances are aired, friends and reputations are insulted, Audrey Crabtree presents awards as a character both disturbing and endearing (supposedly the "special" 13-year-old love child of one of the Brick artistic directors), I stumble around imitating a drunken Orson Welles, technical matters go awry. And it all ends in chaos. Then we drink some more. I blast some Motown over the PA. And some of the theatre-film geeks (me, Lewonczyk, Danny Bowes, James Comtois, and others) play trivia games for way too long. A good evening all around.

Last night, for the second year in a row, I received the award for "Most Misunderstood" show. In a vaguely-drunken, vaguely-Wellesian tone I pointed out that while Ian W. Hill's Hamlet was definitely misunderstood, especially by the critics - and I flinched a bit when I realized that one of the critics I was talking about was sitting right in front of me, oh well - there was no good reason why such a straightforward show as Ambersons should be misunderstood, but that the Backstage critic had managed to do it anyway. I promised to continue to aim to receive that same award EVERY year from now on in the Brick summer festivals (and I shall, oh yes, I SHALL).

Later, to my surprise, the "Ian W. Hill Lifetime Achievement Award for Lifetime Achievement" was given to my old Nada coeval Mr. Art Wallace. 40 years old now and I gots me a lifetime achievement award named for me . . . {sigh}

Oh, and there was another great party the evening before at the McKleinfeld's where grasshoppers were consumed (the drink, that is), many things were grilled and deep-fried (deep-fried Oreos! deep-fried Hershey bars!), and a lot of Rock Band was played. I now need a rest from this intensive relaxation schedule.

So, other things found online for your dining and dancing pleasure . . .

Three images from the always-wonderful Modern Mechanix site, the first announcing a new breakthrough in air travel:

A theme which continues with this important question:

Which leads to a sinister second question . . .

Anyone who knows me probably knows of my David Bowie fanaticism. Well, if you're like me, and I know I am, there's an article that will interest you more than it probably should in The Daily Mail online: He's made up and is releasing a comp of 12 of his own favorite songs of his - not exactly hits that would have shown up on the Changesbowie collections - and he's written liner notes about each song which the Mail has printed HERE. For those interested, the songs are "Life On Mars," "Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing (reprise)," "The Bewlay Brothers," "Lady Grinning Soul," "Win," "Some Are," "Teenage Wildlife," "Repetition," "Fantastic Voyage," "Loving The Alien," "Time Will Crawl," and "Hang On To Yourself (live in Santa Monica)."

Now I have to go make a playlist of those and see what it's like, though I'm both pleased and pissed to discover that Bowie, happy with the songs on the underrated Never Let Ne Down but, correctly, unhappy with the 80s-era production/arrangement, has gone in and rerecorded instruments and rearranged and remixed "Time Will Crawl." The song, a favorite of mine, deserves it. Now, of course, I have to buy the whole damned thing for the one track (unless I can just find the track online).

(huh . . . and of course I discover to my surprise that I don't even HAVE four of those tracks in my iTunes, as I was sure I would . . . damn)

We now have some waterfalls in NYC - to be precise, we have Olafur Eliasson's The New York City Waterfalls - four towers in the area of the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges cycling out East River water in a continuous fall all day and some of the night (technically, as has been noted, a fountain, actually). There has been an air of disappointment from some quarters about how they turned out - they looked great in the computer renderings, but most of the time, from most angles, they look . . . pretty pathetic. And I've been a bit pissed off about the fact that traffic on a stretch of the BQE under the Brooklyn Heights (which I generally drive at least twice a day) has become completely slowed, if not even jammed, during waterfall operation due to the slow-down of people taking a gander at the damned one that's right there next to the road, which looks terrible from that angle anyway.

(side note - I nearly went back and fixed this, but what the hell - I have, as a result of reading too many "period" books about earlier centuries in NYC, taken to referring to that area with a now-dropped article, as "THE Brooklyn Heights" - such as "The British are massing on the Brooklyn Heights to attack Washington's troops," or "I have to drive under the Brooklyn Heights twice a damn day," or "Fuck, I wish I could afford a townhouse in the Brooklyn Heights" - I've decided to just go with this and not give a damn anymore; luckily my brief habit, gained the same way, of calling the center of Manhattan "the central park" didn't stick the same way)

Anyway, held up again in traffic last night on my way home from the Brick, and seeing that one lit up after nightfall (and from a bad angle), I began to change my opinion. Jerry Saltz, at New York, HERE sums up pretty well what I think of them now, with a photo of the best of the falls at the best time and angle.

And finally, behind the cut, two of the better humor videos I've seen in a long time - commercials for the ersatz power-drink, POWERTHIRST!

( GRATUITOUS AMOUNTS OF ENERGY! )

Enjoy. I'm back to writing (I hope, rather than sitting at a computer screen unhappily staring and shaking nervously).

I finally got around to watching a YouTube link sent to me by old friend Michelle Primeaux -- who was in a couple of shows for me, but has apparently permanently given up acting for rock and roll (theatre's loss is rock's gain). A fellow Bowie fanatic, she is as bemused as I, I would suspect, by this six-minute-long, in-depth overview of the history of the Thin White Duke's teeth:





And, much shorter, a classic clip of special guest star George Harrison appearing on Eric Idle's 1975 comedy show Rutland Weekend Television:





Enjoy.

And another, for you and yours . . .


1. "Reality" - David Bowie - Reality

Recently, mainly in regards to Bowie's hysterically funny appearance on Extras, I've been hearing the "Bowie hasn't done anything good in 20 years" line a lot. I assume this is from people who haven't been paying any attention to him in the last fourteen years. First, if you're going to use the "no good work since [whenever]" line with DB, you might as well go for saying it's been 27 years since he did anything good (Scary Monsters and Super Creeps). Second, though no album or project from 1981 to 1993 is fully up to the quality of what he was putting out from say, 1970-1980, the best of it is as good as anything from his "classic" period, and the worst of it is nowhere as bad as the worst material from that time.

Third, since 1993, the man has recorded some of the best albums he's ever put out, and no one's paying any goddamn attention to them in the USA (I was pleased recently to discover they are at least selling respectably in the UK; I thought they were flopping everywhere). The Buddha of Suburbia, Outside, Earthling, Heathen, and Reality are all excellent albums (there's another album in there, 'hours', which would go fourth on that list, but it isn't all that good, though it's not as bad as it's sometimes made out to be by Bowie fans; the songs on it are much better live). And no one cares.

I saw Bowie live after each of the last two albums, and watched audiences only come alive when he did "Changes," "Fame," and "Ziggy Stardust." "Changes" especially. That's going to be THE SONG that Bowie is remembered for. "Changes." I have almost all of his recorded work in the iTunes and iPod, from "Louie Louie Go Home" to "Bring Me the Disco King" -- 244 songs; I've left out very, very little from his entire career, really -- and you know what songs are among the ones I DON'T have in there? "Changes," "Fame," and "Ziggy Stardust," because they're not all that good and I wanted to leave room for all the better Bowie songs.

Now I didn't like either Earthling or Reality much when I first heard them, but repetition made me "hear them" better -- Berit likes to take credit for the fact that she "got" Reality first, after I had dismissed it as "scattered" and far inferior to Heathen, and it was only her playing it over and over that got me to actually listen to it. Yes, she's right. The songs on Reality, including this title track, tend to jump around and feel at first like parts of several different songs put together. The more you listen to them, the more cohesive they are.

Bowie's still doing great work, and should be paid attention to. I'm still waiting for the next one, anxiously (though he'll probably change direction and break my heart, AGAIN).


2. "Following You" - Pierre Dutour et Son Orchestre - Chappell Dance and Mood Music, volume 9

Late '60s slick, cool library track. Organ, guitar and horns. Big hard frantic drums. Exciting.


3. "King Kong" - Tarantu1a Ghoul & The Gravediggers - Las Vegas Grind! volume 2

Cheesy lounge-band "rock" with a great groove despite itself. Almost an instrumental, but occasional interjections from a female voice (and then calls from the band). "I'm goin' ape!" Good dancing or driving music.


4. "No One Receiving" - Brian Eno - Vocal (box set, originally from Before and After Science)

Isaac Butler recently asked at Parabasis if there was as important figure in post-Beatles rock as Brian Eno.

No, there isn't.

Besides his own solo song albums (this is the first track from the fourth one, from 1977, and sounds like the state-of-the-art in the "avant-garde" rock music of 1982), his influence, not only on the bands he produced himself, but on the music producers who either came up as his engineers and proteges, or who simply learned by example, has affected almost ALL popular music since 1980 or so. Wish he'd keep making song albums himself, though, those are my favorite work of his (his recent Another Day on Earth was okay, with fine moments, but thin altogether).

Here the groove takes over, predating his work with the Heads and David Byrne by a few years, but not sounding that different, and featuring the great vocal stylings of what I think of as "The Brian Eno Chorale" (as Bowie has said, "Brian, he sing all mix down and multi-tracked lik' a lil' girl!"). I noticed recently that Eno also has the BEST bass guitar sounds in all of his work. I don't know what he does, but no one gets the great bass sounds he does. Firm, solid, undistorted, driving without being bossy. Not easy.


5. "Steps in the Dark" - Gert Wilden & Orchestra - I Told You Not To Cry

More soundtrack loveliness. I don't know how many shows I've used this track in. Maybe not as many as I think. Slow, languid, sexy sleaziness, with a few peppy bits. Vibes and alto saxophone.


6. "Carolina in My Mind" - James Taylor - Those Classic Golden Years 07

Once again, the hated James Taylor shows up because I downloaded a comp of pop songs from a certain period that included him, listened to a bit of the song, thought, "Well, this is actually a kind of pretty little pop song," and kept it in the iTunes and iPod.

Well, this is actually a kind of pretty little pop song. His voice does get on my nerves, but the song is pleasant, and the arrangement is good. Nice change up from all the other stuff I have in here.


7. "Just Like a Woman" - Bob Dylan - Blonde on Blonde

Came nicely out of the previous song. Bob during the Great Time. Don't think I have anything to say about those two years of Dylan now except, listen to them.


8. "I Won't Cry" - Little David & The Harps - The Roots of Doo Wop - Savoy Vocal Groups

A histrionic without being quite over-the-top vocal performance enlivens this solid little track. Nothing special about it. Good, but there are dozens and dozens of sides like this.

This is from a comp that's meant to document the transitional period between "Black Vocal Groups" (The Ink Spots, The Mills Brothers) and "Doo Wop." This track is full-on doo wop. Close to actual rock & roll actually, with the drumming going on. Rock & roll drums.


9. "The Day the Devil" - Laurie Anderson - Strange Angels

Anderson's remake of a song she wrote with Peter Gordon for his 1986 album, Innocent, where it was done as more of a straight, slower, blues/gospel number as I remember (Gary Lucas on bottleneck guitar, vocal by Clarence Fountain). I have that on vinyl, and haven't listened to it in 15 years or so, so the memory is fuzzy.

Anderson's remake from 1990 is faster and peppier, lots o'synth, but scores big points for her wonderful distorted vocal as "The Devil" (whose monologue includes references to both Dylan's "Ballad of a Thin Man" and the Spuds McKenzie Budweiser ads) and for the full gospel choir that comes in for the chorus and finale.

I love this album of LA's, right from when she was learning to really, really sing. She's still holding back a bit on the record, but her voice is beautiful (I saw her live at BAM a few months after it came out, and she was vocally cutting loose on some of the album's songs, singing to the rafters, in a way she doesn't on the recording). Where's another great record from her? I've been waiting.


10. "Little Orphan Nannie" - Kaleidoscope - Side Trips

Music designed to make you say, "Man these guys are stoned!" Flagrantly "offbeat," "psychedelic," and "experimental" in a massively self-conscious way (catch the album title), though not quite (JUST not quite) so smug about it as to be annoying or unlistenable. Huge Zappa influences in use of sound effects bridging different song styles in different sections, weird little talking and comments off on the side, and a kind of snide quality to the harmony vocals. Fun, sure.


More work to happen to the car today; have to get out and get to it. Almost everything on it is fixed and working great now, just some "cosmetic" work to happen now (the side sliding door is broken and fastened with tie line to keep it closed).

Glad the car is working, we've got traveling to do. Tonight, off to The Brick to see the two plays by Thomas Bradshaw. Tomorrow, up to Garrison, NY to a gallery opening (paintings by Ivy Dachman, my stepmother). Sunday, up to Portland, ME. Maybe more later today. Don't know about the Friday Cat Blogging. I need new photos. Oh, I can't skip a week of that; I'll find something.

My old friend Vanessa Veselka, whom I've known for 24 years but haven't been in any contact with for the last 9, found me last night through email (via The Brick), and we're back in touch. She has had several wonderful bands over the last 15 years (Bell, The Pinkos, The Red Rose Girls) and now has a MySpace page HERE. Due to dial-up/computer issues, I can't listen to her songs there now, but if you're interested, please do. I'm glad to be in touch with her again. It's good to have friends going back that far (thanks to this blog, I'm back in touch with a friend I've known for nearly 30 years, too). I'm beginning to feel like this intarweb thing actually might bring people together rather than keep them apart . . .