Monthly Archives: September 2008

Locomotion

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Ugh. So muggy out. And constant rain rain rain. It’s actually tropical storm Hannah which so far killed over 100 people in Haiti. Today was also the day that the B-52’s were doing a free show in Cranford NJ.

The original flyer said that in case of rain the show would be moved to Kean University where my niece Corrinne goes to school, but checking the website today, the promoters stated they they have taken provisions and the stage will be weather proofed and the show will go on as scheduled, outside.

It’s just as well that we didn’t go, Bill and I had planned to go with Chaz, because the rain has been steady and sometimes blowing sideways and it promised to be muddy and not much fun. Last night Bill and I hung out.

Bill was rather subdued. He was told at work that he will probably have to change his schedule. Right now he’s flexible as a part timer working 37 hours a week. But their not happy with that and want him to go full time.

That would close the window that he currently has which allows him to go on interviews and go sees for his acting career as well as allowing him to run down to his mother’s apartment should something go wrong. So he was understandably bummed.

All I could do was suggest that he try to forget about it for now, get a good nights sleep and see how he feels about it tomorrow. Some advice that I should probably heed. He listened and went to bed after a few laughs courtesy of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

I stayed up and watched Bill Maher who had Dan Savage on so that was pretty good. Michael Steele is not the same Michael Steele from the Bangles. The one on Bill Maher’s show last night was a real jerk. Of course he towed the republican line until it became so much static.

Slept like a log last night, Bill was up and working on a script when I got out of bed. Went out and ran errands, needed some more Stevia and got the bagels and the papers. Then proceeded to watch the rain come falling down.

Just got back from visiting Julio and Stine and Alexander two floors down. Haven’t seen the peanut in over a month and he’s now 15 pound and 25 inches. And quite active too. He can now focus and he’s always looking around.

And he can turn over by himself now, and can also support his head on his own. Still adorable, quite the little man. Gurgle and goo goo is his vocabulary so far, and if he’s anything like Julio, he’ll never shut up. But the space monkey is adorable and everything is good physically with him.

Right now Carole King is on Public Television. She’s nice. I met her at Right Track, where I wrote about last night. How can anyone not like Carole King? If only for the songs that she’s written.

Well thats about it now. Too sticky and hummus here.

Late addition:
from John Ridley/Huffington Post
cut n’ paste
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-ridley/the-guide-to-the-conserva_b_124368.html

Telling Lies

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Last night Tricky played a show at Irving Plaza. I told Roda about it, and he set about trying to get on the guest list. Yesterday he called and let me know. Unfortunately I had to be in early this morning so I could not go. I told him around noon. I found out a little before that, that one of our subtenants was having a meeting early enough for the need for me to be in and help out.

Roda understood the need to make some dosh, and I wished him a good evening. Around 10:00 I get some texts from Roda. CD info on Tricky’s latest, and the fact he had just taken a consonant or perhaps a vowel. I’m supportive and slightly envious and wish him a good time and an ecstatic trip.

A half hour later I get a phone call, a blast of overloaded digital white noise from Irving Plaza. It lasted 44 seconds before the line went out. Roda did get backstage and spoke with Tricky and mentioned Central Park from a few years ago. (Written as The Ghost in You last month) They wound up hanging out, Roda even going to the after party at a club nearby. Roda didn’t get home until 3:00AM. Yikes.

I went to bed after watching Cotton Hill’s bland speech. I have to say that Sarah Palin’s screeching was more rousing for those republicans. Most attack dogs do command attention after all. But once again I only listened slightly to McCrazy, paid more attention to an early birthday present from Annemarie and Co., John Lennon Rock ‘n’ Roll.

His covers record, which came out in 1975 and the last record before retirement. Of course it has a history. Lawsuits, Morris Levy and Phil Spector and May Pang, John and Apple/Capitol Records, contracts, car crashes, missing tapes. It’s all in there. It did ok, made the top ten in the US charts. It was said that he had run out of material, hence it being a covers album, but at the time it was a fashion to do fifties and sixties songs, like David Bowie did with Pin Ups.

Speaking of the Dame, I watched a YouTube clip of David on the Dick Cavett Show from 1975. Young Americans, Luther Vandross, David Sanborn. I had that as a cassette. Only liked the title song and Fame. Young Americans opened the tape and Fame ended it.

I guess I played those 2 songs so much that the rest of the tape was reverse, leaving me able to only play those two songs. I didn’t much like Bowie then except for those songs. The ‘cool’ kids liked Bowie and they were all smoking pot at age 12. I wasn’t ‘cool’, not for another 8 years.

I starting liking him when he started to lose some popularity with Low. He was getting too far out there and that’s where I got it. Still wasn’t too fond of Ziggy et al. I saw him on Broadway in The Elephant Man though in 1980 I believe.

Had 1st row seats and of course he was mesmerizing. The people behind us gave him flowers at the end of the show and he thought they were from me and my friends and thanked us so graciously.

A lot of years pass and I find myself working at Right Track Recording on west 48th Street. David is one of our clients. He was super nice and extremely personable. Just one of the guys, sitting across from my desk chatting about whatever it was like we were mates. I did feel a little bit like Karen Lynn Gorney from Saturday Night Fever.

Then I saw him a few weeks later at Madison Square Garden. I had never seen Bowie live and of course he was amazing though he shared the stage with Lou Reed, Robert Smith, Billy Corgan and Dave Grohl among others.

It was a birthday celebration with the guests covering a Bowie song and then duets with the Dame. A wonderful evening but not really a David Bowie show I guess. A special event nonetheless.

The next time I saw him at the studio, I had changed my perception of him. He wasn’t David Bowie anymore. After seeing him live, I saw him as DAVID BOWIE. It was an odd thing that I had to get over, since being star struck is a no no in the recording studio world.

He thought enough of me to autograph an advance cassette of the record he was working on, Earthling, which of course is one of my favorite Bowie records. Actually he gave me his copy of the cassette, then took it back saying that he ought to autograph it for me. Awfully nice. Asking for autographs is also frowned upon by the way.

Still have it, in fact if I turn my head, it’s within eyesight. He finished Earthling soon after that. He did ask my opinion since he heard I was a DJ, who would I recommend from the DJ world to remix a track or two? I drew a blank and told him I would get back to him in a few.

I called Rand and asked him since he was wise in the world of remixes. He threw out a few names, Josh Wink and a few others. I went back to David and told him who might be good and he basically didn’t like most of the names. I gave up.

It wasn’t until maybe a month later, did I realize that I could have probably suggested myself. He wasn’t going to ask me, but perhaps thought I might have the edge, the nerve, the cojones to promote myself.
But no, I didn’t.

D’oh.

Sniffy Dame(video pulled by EMI)