Sunday, November 19, 2006
it hit me last night that taking this show on the road would make ultimate dramaturgical sense…going literally “up and down from town to town” as the narrator sings would add the ultimate layer of of rock and roll realness to this tapestry…and as theater folk also know a thing or two about the road as well, it just seems like the right thing to do…
/s
Saturday, November 18, 2006
my daughter has been in town for the past week…i havent paid much attention to this blog cuz she and i have been doing a live blog…thats when you bump into us on shattuck and we tell you whats up…its been a wonderful whirlwind week…she digs the bay area just as much as i do…she got to check out the play from the control booth tonight (thanks Cyd!)…i hope to return to this here spot with fotos of this and that so stay tuned…thursday and friday shows were really jamming…tonight (friday) was especially intense…and we had a really great hang at Downtown afterwards with the cast, crew and some super-friends and supporters of the show who were absolutely cool. there are alot of things that make me proud of my daughter but one of my favorite little things is her ability to hang with adults. i used to hang out with my dad and his friends as well…i didn’t get all their jokes…but that never stopped me from laughing…
/s
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
sunday night…took bibi to see jake rodriguez (composer, performer, PS sound designer and all around genius dude) and an amazing drummer (his name escapes me sorry dude you were great – i’d pay to hear you wash dishes) and what a beautiful set of music it was…large chunks of sonic matter hurled in every direction like medicine balls that never got the memo about gravity…music like a large stack of pancakes yer mom would make for you if she were 80 feet tall and starring in a science fiction movie…eat this son, it’s good for you…music you think you don’t wanna meet in a dark alley until you realize it likes you… and then you become friends…and then it turns into an ex-girlfriend with christopher lee eyes and fangs…and then it’s turns back into music again…but it never lets you off the hook…
rodewald, bibi and i doing the monday offday thing like astronauts on a mission…but rain and muir woods don’t mix… even on offdays… so we’ll go in a few days once the clouds go away…we took bibi to city lights books today…her first visit…i remember the first time i walked in there…too bad vesuvios doesn’t let kids in even with parent…what are they scared of? losing liquor license i guess…understandable…in berlin such problems don’t exist…saw bibi’s godfather jeff merchant play at brainwash later that evening – good show – that song of his that goes “call yourself shadowy in the low light” is the best song anyones ever written…it goes so well with the rain…for the last 2 days i’d been thinking about a forgotten song of mine that i wrote about the bay area…couldn’t remember much of it…not even the title…then tonight at dinner on polk st bibi says to me “that song ‘my damn butterfly’ popped up on my ipod and I’d never heard it so i had to listen to it over and over…” and i thought how weird – that’s the very song i’d been trying to remember…just weird…here i am years after that song was written running around berkeley and oakland and that old song goes “and oakland and berkeley are fine when the sun wants to shine” and we’re talking about that song as the rain comes down like god pissing on polk st…
/s
Monday, November 13, 2006
loosey goosey sunday…two shows…both great fun…happening crowds…whoever said sunday crowds were sleepy must have been asleep…
nice performing with my daughter in the house…the only critic in the world that matters…she digs the show… so we’ve done something wright
and while we’re on the subject of actual things lemme get my blab on regarding the issue of autobiography…
what you saw up there on stage was not by any means a depiction of things as they actually happened to me personally. it’s possible to make autobiography without getting bogged down by actual details…but you knew that, right?
in future posts i’ll explore this whole “fibbing in order to tell the truth” approach to autobiographical fiction. i’ll also write about where the characters came from…but for now just know that…
the charger on my ibook is broken so i can’t write anymore tonight…yet another case for duct tape…
/s
Saturday, November 11, 2006
Meine Damen und Herren
Cast your eyes to The Center of the Universe
Stand up pilgrim and move your hips
In a convex mirror they paint their lips
Come in, Pilgrim, enter this trance
Kommen Sie bitte rein!
They’re naked and they dance
Off with your traveling shoes
So caked in mud
Since we’re out of holy water
Can we wash them in blood?
The sky is teary eyed
And the road is bitter mud
What was blown in by the storm
Is taken out by the flood.
Wednesday, November 8, 2006
between addison and haste
It hit me today
We are a rock band
Taking tea with Theater.
We are its charmingly disheveled guests.
And we, in turn, have reserved
A nice corner table
At Joe’s Pub
For Theater to sit at
She is our well-put-together
Plus one.
And when the curtain goes up
We all become guests and hosts
In and of each other’s worlds.
We are all just visiting.
And the songs we sing will be
The equivalent of whiskey and afternoon tea
As the attention you pay will also be.
And we will sit with you
And you will sit with we
And together we’ll exchange something
Deeper than mere pleasantries
And at the end we’ll both ask ourselves
“Was it as for them
As it was for me?â€
And the next day we’ll have even more people over for whiskey and tea.
/s
Wednesday, November 8, 2006
things have been hectic and i don’t remember anything about sunday’s two shows…so if the nice lady who sent the nice comments about the sunday matinee would allow me i’ll post her comments in an effort to keep the chronological “flow” happening…i await your permission…
/s
Wednesday, November 8, 2006
saturday night went crazy keyboard malfunctions weird ghostly sounds in the house all around so while it makes sense that humans would be moved by the moon why would keyboards be??? that said we dealt with it…spurney came thru like the gunslinging champion music machine we all know him to be…playing these crazy songs on guitar instead of keys and quite frankly i loved the sudden adjustments…the unexpected new can be so beautiful when it’s music…because this show is a concert we have to allow for rock and roll kind of shit to happen…broken strings…busted amps…and girls sitting on their boyfriends shoulders wearing halter tops…(has that ever happened in the theater? it should) and because it is also a play we have to allow for the unexpected entrance of a butler from stage left holding a tray and asking “is this a noel coward play?” and we say “no” and he says “well, would you like a drink anyway?” and we say “indeed, my good man, indeed.”
/s
Saturday, November 4, 2006
friday night…fun crowd…folks came correct and ready to laugh…daniel breaker, our young god of a lead, continues to flow…continues to groove at an ever new level…continues to be the music…sets the madness meter…tonight this play is not so much about being IN the moment as it is about simply BEING the moment…bobbing and weaving with the moment…doing the ali shuffle in flow mo…just making it flow…like mahler…flow…like “look at you and your job”…flow…whoa…like waiting for ghetto…flow…flow’s a cool word, huh?
/s
Saturday, November 4, 2006
played for alotta high school people at thursday matinee…after playing for people anywhere from two to three to four times their age it was quite fun and interesting to see in which places the young adults laughed…and didn’t laugh…at the shows grand finale i asked them if they were ditching…this must have seriously confused all the adults in the crowd who must have been wondering what the hell i was talking about…
we need to do this play in front of more young people…in alot of ways it’s more their play than anyone else’s…
thursday night was a hot show…but i don’t remember anything about it…someone today just said that so i must believe it to be true…
/s