Tag Archives: Tricky

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)

Away From The Numbers

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Oh what a day it has been. It’s been a Wednesday that’s for sure. But first, last night. Watched Olbermann. Rachel Maddow was on and it was announced she’ll have her own show following Olbermann. It doesn’t have a name yet, but will start after the conventions. That should be a good week starting with Rachel Maddow and ending with the B-52’s in Union NJ that Saturday.

After Olbermann, Bill came home from choir practice. He went to bed soon after that and I watched Enchanted on cable. It was ok, just as I expected. A half step behind funny. It wasn’t offensive and had some laughs. I wasn’t the demographic it was geared towards but I can see how the pre-teen girls loved it.

Saw very little of the Olympics, just enough to pass the time before the usual bad news at 11:00. Went to sleep before the sports report which was fine by me. Bill was out a little before 6:00 and I was out of bed a little after. No Casey again on the bus, listened to Tricky as I walked across town, stopping by to see West Indian Tony and got myself an egg sandwich.

Tricky is playing Irving Plaza in a few weeks, but I’m in no rush to see him. Saw him a few times back in the day, but I was interested in him then, now- not so much. Roda wants to go and is trying to get free tickets. If it’s a freebie I’ll go, but paying cash seems doubtful.

It was a beautiful morning and promised to be a beautiful day. Lot’s of good looking men on the streets today. We have some empty office space and I have been assigned to find people to fill the vacant spaces. I’ve posted online with Craigslist but so far no takers for a 13 x 11 office for $3300.00. The cheapest office is $1750.00.

I found out that someone was coming by to check out the space, a friend of a friend of the managing director. The visitor expressed some sort of interest but needed to hear from a partner about it and said he’d get back to me next week. I was told not to say this, but to say that. Don’t mention this, but it’s ok to mention that, things like that. Whether or not it went well remains to be seen. I guess I’ll find out about that next week.

I’ve also been trying to tidy up the petty cash for the bookkeeper. It’s been under control but as I added things up it was off by a few dollars. I decided to do everything over again, writing in a new ledger. That turned out to be a mistake and despite my careful adding and subtracting the balance was now off by $37.00.

That’s when I went to the well of despair. Just absolute zero self confidence. It wasn’t from not eating because I had a salad and when the blues hit I had a banana. I went out for a walk just to get away from the numbers. Had a cigar in Dag Hammarskjold Park by the United Nations. Sat next to another gent smoking a cigar. He called it the cigar section as the two of us sat there puffing and reading the papers.

Came back to the office after that, not feeling that much better. A woman in one of the offices in my office, Trudy mentioned that I carry myself in a certain way and when I speak people take notice of what I have to say. That helped me out a bit but still I had this petty cash problem to reconcile.

I decided to go back to the original ledger since that was off by only a few dollars and after adding and subtracting many more times, I found that I didn’t add up a certain item which was $36.00. It seemed I spent so much time looking at these figures that I couldn’t see them anymore.

Couldn’t see the forest, too many trees.

It’s all better now and a tremendous weight lifted off my shoulders. Had to stay late though for some phone technician was coming in to check the lines. Left the office at 6:00 and walked to the Path train rather than wait on the long lines for the bus back to Hoboken.

Enjoyed another Padron on the way and listened to the playlist of songs that Juan played while I was touring the Versailles in my mind.

Feeling good now, and glad to be able to say that I got through it all on my own. Bill tried helping but he was on a head set and his words of com fort cam ou t a bi t garb led.

Here’s some pics from a few minutes ago.