I Could Tell You But....

I could tell you about the lady who came up to me in the middle of a song the other night with a kazoo in her hand. Displayed prominently and upright, she smiled with a grace befitting her 70+ years. I start vamping and ask over the mic, "Are you asking me if you can play that now?" She says "When you're on your break..." I shake my head no, and she gives me a horrified look. "Why not?" she asks. "Well," I say still vamping, "we could discuss this now in the middle of the song and make all these people wait and listen in to our conversation, or I could finish the song. Which do you think?" She doesn't answer, and I say, "Yes, I think finishing the song is best."

I could tell you about the exhaustion once the summer gigs stopped last week. And then magically started up again, pounding my immune system into a pulp.

I could tell you about the great movies I've watched, unable to move when not playing: Walk The Line, Wristcutters, Control, Wall-E, The Royal Tenenbaums (not great, but Gene Hackman is very good)...

I could tell you about how I'm trying to organize my office right now.

I could tell you, but....

The Clapping Lady!

Legend has it that the Clapping Lady roams the South Jersey shore...inspiring musicians and audiences everywhere by being the first one to clap. Legend also has it that she can light a fire in a room just by clapping. Nobody knows when she will arrive or where she will end up. Or who her mysterious companions are.

Well, I'm here to tell you that the legend is true. The Clapping Lady exists, and I have seen her. She has Clapped for me.

So I wrote her a song:

Jah loves you Clapping Lady
Jah smile on your heart
Jah loves you Clapping Lady
as you clap the room apart

We love the Clapping Lady
she keeps it real and sane and fun
we love the Clapping Lady
She make the music come

Now Is The Time (the time is now) hey hey rock and roll

I am going to blog regularly, dammit! My buddy Ed (Hamell On Trial) blogs all the time and while I don't have nearly the insane stories he has (I mean, I used to do drugs but when I was getting a B.A. in Stimulants he was going for the triple Ph.D in Everything) I still have awesome gig stories.

Like tonight. I showed up for the gig, moved all the gear inside to the usual place, was coming back in when the manager says "Sorry, you're playing outside." OK, no problem, it's pretty nice out, there is only 1 person outside and about 30 people inside, but I am fine with that. The manager is a great guy, and he even helps me move my gear. That is pretty much unheard of in my world.

The crowd at the start of the 1st set appears to be Latina, about 6 ladies, conversing in Spanish and it is unclear to me whether they speak English. What to play, what to play, not warmed up for La Bamba, what to play, wish I knew Chan-Chan from Buena Vista Social Club...I play Jack Johnson, Bob Dylan's "Standing in the Doorway" (such a great song), and some of my other usual warm-up material. An older couple sits down, and the patio starts to fill up. People!

Nobody is clapping though. This is pretty normal for happy hour restaurant gigs. No one wants to be the first one to clap, and people are eating. It is always helpful to bring your own 1st set clapper. Maybe I will start bribing someone! Free CD for the first one to clap. Also falls psychologically into the realm of "people don't like it unless other people say it's good". My experience is that most folks are this way.

One woman (in her 70s) claps after I play "Sitting, Waiting, Wishing" (J.Johnson). She has an arm brace on her left arm. She says, "I feel bad no one's clapping for you!" I use the opportunity to guilt the table next to her into clapping ("See what you did? You made this injured lady clap her hands..."). This works ok, though the couple at this adjacent table appear to be smiling at some kind of inside joke through the whole set. I am not sure if they like my music or think I am stupid. I am paranoid (my usual response to no response).

A couple shows up in 2 motorized wheelchairs. The woman parks her wheelchair next to my PA and gets up and walks into the restaurant. Then they come out again and stand in the middle of the patio looking confused for about 5 minutes until the waitress finally takes the dirty plate off the open table next to me. It is all I can do not to scream "Will somebody help these people? For God's sake, he's in a wheelchair!!!" during the 5 minutes. They are now next to me and enjoying the music.

I take a break, adjourn to the car for hot dogs and brief conversation with the wife and little girl. Teryn asks me what happened to Chequers, my Dalmatian from when I was 5 to 7 years old. She is curious because she is playing with my old doll Furga who she has renamed Theresa. Probably because Furga isn't a name, it was the name on the box i.e. the company that made the doll. I was proud of being able to read it so there you go. Yes, I had a doll. I am a sensitive male child of the 70s. Furga especially enjoys her new name. Chequers chewed one of Furga's feet way back when. Chequers also bit 3 of my little friends and had to be put to sleep at age 2 by NY State Law. Dalmatians are not good dogs for kids, despite what Disney says about having as many as you can stuff in a room. Poor old Chequers. Linda and I tell Teryn that Daddy was little a long time ago and doggies don't live as long as people. Nuff said.

When I get back the manager approaches me, as the skies are looking ominous. He leaves it up to me whether or not to head inside right now. The sky is literally half-blue and half-grey. I pick the wrong half and say no, I'll stay out until it clouds over more. About 15 minutes later the sky opens with no warning and both managers and I scramble to get guitar, PA, cables, songbooks, and the rest inside. Big wet puddle. Guitar finish got some rain marks, but besides an odd crackling noise later from my stereo guit-cable, everything is ok. I spend the next hour drying everything off, including me. Thank God I carry a towel! I read my Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, thank you very much.

As I am winding my cables and making my damp little way back and forth from the door to the "stage", Birkenstocks squishing on my feet like two little wet sponges, I am reminding myself how grateful I am to do what I do, that I am not working at a desk, and there is nobody whipping me to move faster, do more, etc. I walk back and forth probably about 20 times like Slow-Poke Rodriguez from the old Warner Bros. cartoons. That most likely all my equipment is ok, I will dry, and always go inside when given the opportunity. Not everything in the world is my fault, even though I also had two checks bounce this morning because of my own stupidity in not transferring money over. So, life is good in Wetville.

At 6:30, the gear is re-set up, I am still relatively damp but the gear is toweled off and I have a request to play "Mr. Jones" by Counting Crows, which I do somewhat loudly (feeling feisty). Goes over great. My latest offer of "pay what you want" for CDs at the gig is proving to be very successful (with the average CD monies recouped working out to $5/unit), and I sell out during the set (5 CDs). Two college girls are singing along. People are clapping and it's fun. I even have to send people to my website to buy more CDs because I ran out. Good problem to have! Never expected the pay-what-you-want to be so successful. Some pay $3. Some pay $20. It balances out, and as opposed to selling nothing, I am now moving like 5 - 10 of these things a gig. Whoo hoo!

Gig ends, manager apologizes for the rain (totally unnecessary, they are awesome, and she got drenched helping me move stuff in), and I am packing up. The two girls left the CD they bought on the bar - they were WASTED when they left - and I end up reselling it to the guy who is playing after me. His name is Tug. It's his first solo gig - ever? or maybe just in a long time? - we chat and he is complimentary and asks questions about how many gigs do I do, etc. I am the veteran knight, rolling up my sleeves and showing battle wounds ("Here's where the Dragon of Sea Isle tried to bite my leg off, I ate his liver with a side of fava beans, etc"). On the way home, I listen to Sting's "Why Should I Cry For You?" over and over. The production on that song really bites the big one, there is WAY too much going on, all sorts of stupid Peter Gabriel pale imitation noises and endless early 90s synth sounds that were really leftover from the 80s, outdated even at the time - but it is one of his best tunes by far I think. The lyric is so dense and lonely ("Dark angels follow me/over a godless sea/mountains of endless falling/for all my days remaining"). That whole record (Soul Cages) is about his father dying. So TO ME on one level WSICFY is about how he will always be lost without him, he'll never recover, and really Dad has moved on to a better place so I am crying for myself and on the other level is like "You were never there for me, I have never had a real father, and why should I cry for you you bastard milkman (yes Sting's daddy was a milkman)". Joni Mitchell said that Sting was the child she and James Taylor never had. This song especially to me shows that mix.

I am thinking it is time to release a covers record or maybe a series of tracks by a few artists. This one, "Moon Over Bourbon St." and maybe one other would be the Sting one. Love him or hate him (and frankly after Soul Cages with the exception of "Fields of Gold" it is all crap), he has a kickass voice and can write a great tune when he is not looking in the mirror being amazed by being Sting. Maybe Fields of Gold, which is a beautiful, non-pretentious folk song about how grateful Sting feels for his wife and family. I might like the album of lute music, who knows. All the punks who read this (maybe the one LOL) will be rolling their eyes when I talk Sting. But punk can be equally as pretentious and most of them frankly don't have any of the chops. I know, being punk, that they "don't care"...thus the musician/non-musician war rages on and I leap between in the middle like Michael Jackson in the Beat It video ("it doesn't matter who's wrong or right").

But that is another blog for another day. Going to bed before 5 AM - Schwing! Oh and btw I am also co-writing an Internet TV show which is going to be funny, strange, and a must-see...also launching Guitar in 5 Minutes lessons for beginners...

So. How was your day, dear?

Life of the Party

Hello to you wherever you are, good peoples! Performance-wise, this is the busiest summer of my life. The last two weeks I played 15 shows. Gearing up for a meager 6 show week starting tomorrow, but you never know what can come down the pike...

Feeling disconnected a bit from songwriting - honestly it can get boring in these long corporate gigs playing my own songs because a) only occasionally does someone really listen to them so it is just for my own practice or vanity and b) frankly, my original music up to this point is the exact opposite of "The Party" (of which it seems I am constantly the host). I am not putting down my songs! Many of you enjoy them and I am very glad about that. I just want to write new ones and I need more settings that are appropriate for playing them. Both of which I am working on. UStream concerts! and new tunes.

But the singing and rhythmic guitaring is feeling better than ever. Just got this machine called an interferential stimulator (heh heh heh) which I will be using to calm my tired strap muscle behind the left shoulder blade.

So much to do on this my one day off. I am accountant/entrepreneur/husband/father/son/friend/hired musician all at one time. But I wanted to post and say Hi. So Hi. :-)

Funny gig story. Made $90 extra letting this old man sing 4 songs along with me. He was nearsighted and couldn't read the words so his wife and daughter-in-law were helping him. I will be honest and say that I really hate being a human karaoke machine for anyone except friends. For friends, I will play the guitar and you can sing your favorite song. For strangers, it's $20. Which these "people" were willing to pay. They cleared out half the bar (which the staff, lord love em, did not hate me for). They had the time of their lives. The funny part is that the blond daughter-in-law drank so many martinis so quickly that she passed out face first on the bar and had to be carried out fireman-style by the son. End of evening.

I type this and I feel shitty. I want people to have a good time. I hate it when they leave mad because I won't let them sing. Or stay and sulk because I told them they couldn't. I don't want to be that person. I want to be the fun "life of the party", the guy who sings that song you haven't heard in years and gets you up shaking your booty for the first real taste of FREEDOM you've had in weeks.

My friend Kimya Dawson lets all sorts of fans come up and sing with her at her shows. However it is different - I am not playing my own music (if it were my songs, you could all have mics and sing along), most of her fans aren't stinking drunk (EVERYBODY I deal with is drunk), and many of her fans are children. I let a child with a congenital heart defect sing a Christina Aguilera song a cappella. The mother thanked me weeping. And then later, when the mother tried to push her way to the mic to sing the chorus of "Africa" with me, she got angry that I told her no and stormed off.

I HATE THAT. I hate the whole situation. It's not fair to the people who pay me to play to inflict these crappy drunken idiots on their ears, let alone the staff. It's not fair to always have to be the one who kills the buzz and ruins someone's night. Let alone, and I KNOW I am alone in thinking and saying this, but PLAYING COVERS IS AN ART and however arrogant it may be, I think of myself as an ARTIST. Most people you see doing it phone it in, but I try to muster up as much passion and commitment as I can and really freakin nail it to the wall with my own style. Right now I do it for the money and for a chance to play all the time, but some of my covers are brilliant pieces of art. So don't come pee on my art, beeyotch!

The main reason though that I don't let people sing is that anybody can be a human karaoke machine but not many people can do what I do. Sing for hours and hours with soul and conviction and excellent musical taste. lol go me. It is so rude to presume that somebody playing their guitar with their equipment is their for your personal pleasure. But I have been dealing with this same situation almost every night for a month. And people react the same way, they all get mad.

Here I am frothing at the mouth at 1 AM. I think I'm going to start to get creative in my responses:

"Can I sing a song" "I don't know, can you?"
"My friend wants to sing" "And I'd like to bang your friend's girlfriend, think you can make that happen?"
"My dad's an excellent singer." "Really? Tell you what I'll do. I'll leave my guitar on stage and go out to my car for the next 3 hours. Your dad can sing whatever he wants. Let me know when you're done, and break whatever you want, it's insured."

and if a pushy customer comes up to the stage:

"Ladies and gentleman, here he/she is: Miss/Mr. Jersey Shore Herpes 2009!!! Give it up!!!"

Yes. I am tired with WAY too much to do. Cheerio.

The Aesthetics of Michael Jackson

When I was in college, I took a course on Eugene O'Neill - "Eugene O'Neill and The Cultural Construction of a Psychological Self" with Professor Joel Pfister (the P is silent, Witchie). In this class we "deconstructed" O'Neill like good postmodernist 90s college students, breaking down his plays by their points of view on race, class, and gender. So basically being that I went to the school that was the setting for the movie PCU (see here - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110759/), the opinion of most of the class was that O'Neill was a racist, sexist, classist idiot whose plays never should have seen the light of day.

We had to write a final paper for the class with a thesis statement drawn from our own perspective on O'Neill. It was my opinion that O'Neill still was a "good" playwright - not necessarily Strange Interlude or The Iceman Cometh (yawn-a-roo) - but Long Day's Journey was compelling along with many others and frankly he was a pretty durn good writer whose plays have stood the test of time. I found a quote from Bertolt Brecht about the aesthetics of drama. Boiled down, the essence was that Brecht believed that drama has its own aesthetic - meaning, that the quality of a play being "good" is completely separate from all other criteria. You could have a well-written, well-acted, well-lit, well-designed play that was totally morally abhorrent. Just because the subject matter is repugnant doesn't mean necessarily that the actors, the dramatic moments, or the set design sucked.

I was not popular in this class. People thought I was a Nazi. But I got an A minus on the paper because the professor agreed I had a compelling argument and Brecht backed me up. Schwing!

Anyway, I see a similar thing going on with Michael Jackson. People seem to be in two camps: either St. Michael is dead and they are weeping and gnashing their teeth, or they are saying "I'm so glad that child rapist is dead". I guess this blog (which I totally have NO TIME for LOL and shouldn't be typing right now) is aimed more at those who think that the children of the world are now safe and thank goodness the molester has been eradicated.

You can say what you like about his personal life and the horrible stories and court cases that came out of Neverland. Michael Jackson was a major talent. 70s and 80s music would have been completely different without his influence. Not to mention on those zippers on those leather jackets :-) He sang, wrote, and performed major pop music that always took what was happening right then and moved it ahead a few notches. Quincy Jones helped focus his records with laser-sharp precision.

Phil Spector is in jail for the rest of his life for murder. Does that invalidate "Pretty Little Angel Eyes?"

OJ Simpson is also a psychopathic killer (thankfully imprisoned). Should they take his football records off the books?

I admit, it's hard to sing these people's praises in any way. I guess all I want to say to those who say "Ding dong the rapist is dead" is that this world is far more confusing and nuanced that that - that it is good to remember the good about people no matter who they are even if it's difficult, because when all we do is rejoice when someone dies is become a little more psycho ourselves.

And if you're thinking about being my baby, it don't matter if you're black or white :-) and yes, ding dong, the rapist IS dead.

Somewhere I have a video of myself dancing around to Billie Jean at age 15 with a winter glove on my hand. If I find it, I WILL post it.

Introducing...The Chris Huff Sock Monkey!!!

Made by the fabulous Amy Dutsch (of Mama's Little Monkeys and Huffmusic Promotions) -

Go here to see it.

Oh, ok. Here's a sneak preview:









Definitely the coolest piece of Huff merchandise yet created. Fun for the whole family! Pose me like you have always wanted (some suggestions I have had recently are with my leg over my head singing "A Lovely Bunch of Coconuts") .

Dig the new pimped-out blog! This is the work of none other than Amy Dutsch, Huffmusic intern and sock monkey creator extraordinaire (among other things). www.mamaslittlemonkeys.com I'm very grateful and indebted to her for seeing where the slack is and taking it up.

Many people have asked me to tell them "every detail" of the Joss Whedon speech I heard, so while the event is still fresh in mind I'll fill you in. Who is Joss Whedon, you might ask? Some sort of GURU? A local GOD? Perhaps he invented the Internet? Pray tell, do speak of this man with the interesting jumbled name...

All are true. Joss Whedon (for the uninitiated) is a TV/film creator (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Dollhouse, Firefly, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog which can be watched here), film director (Buffy, Serenity), and former film major at Wesleyan University in CT, class of 1987 (I am also a former film major, class of 93). The event was held at my alma mater as part of a larger seminar on TV/film/pop culture; I have only been back 3 times in 15 years. So TIME WARP! 3 of my former classmates are actually film professors there as well! Great to see them, and a great time...anyway....yes, I am getting to Joss...hold your pointy teeth there, Spike....

The man himself reminds me of a self-deprecating young Orson Welles with better one-liners. He was unshaven and dressed California-style with a white blazer, looking very much the disheveled auteur. Though tired from multiple plane flights in 2 days, he was extremely entertaining, spoke for about 2 hrs, and at the end stayed and signed all the Buffy stuff that people brought. What a mensch! Highlights:

• His description of the current state of media: "The old studios, companies, and old ways are collapsing, and the new thing - the blog internet podcast beast - has not yet fully formed. But the courtship has begun, they are dating, and soon they are going have to sex. Which is very very frightening because they are not the same species. " Most accurate take on "what's going on" in the entertainment industry that I have heard yet!


• His detailed history of the Buffy franchise and how the first film and series came to be. He describes himself as being born with a silver script in his mouth; his father's agent read his first script (he is also touted as the first 3rd generation TV writer - both Dad and Grandpa were in the biz). His main inspiration came from a title he read while working in a video store: Revenge of the Bimbos which, according to him, was very disappointing because the bimbos didn't do much of anything, let alone get revenge on anyone. But his main aspiration was to create something that would go straight-to-video and look great on a shelf - "Hm...that's looks strange...let's watch it...". Obviously things became much much more successful...
  


• His new perspective as a studio head (gained from the Dr. Horrible experience) summed up by his reaction to a fan's comment on another one of his works that "they would never buy the T-Shirt". The studio head inside him screamed in pain! lol - this was part of a larger issue he discussed:
  


• The renewal of Dollhouse (his current show on FOX) which in his mind has everything to do with the network's recent discovery that his stuff sells better years later and his brand sells in multiple revenue streams (syndication, DVD, merchandise including action figures, comic books, and T-Shirts). Dollhouse is one of the lowest rated shows ever to be renewed for a second season. He quipped, "So, instead of my vacation, I literally start work again on Monday. Oh well!" His last network show, Firefly, only ran for 7 episodes (10 made), but the DVDs sold well enough to get a feature film out of the show (Serenity). FOX has very much come around in this respect.
  


• He holds the Wesleyan Film Dept. as particularly its founder Jeanine Basinger (our mutual professor) in extremely high regard (as we all do). Jeanine has written numerous books - which you can find here; I recommend The It's A Wonderful Life book). The underlying theme of the weekend was the balance between creativity and commerce and the importance of balancing personal vision with a specific idea of who the audience is. "It took me basically until now," he said, "to realize that my vision of a beautiful teenage girl on the outside of society who can kill vampires is actually my avatar, the representation of who I am inside." He elaborated in how his vision of film and belief in film genre came from his classes with Jeanine ("Every film class I took became my life. When I took "Musicals", everyone would sing and dance around me. When I took "Film Noir", the world was full of shadows and everybody was against me, including my girlfriend. When I took "Westerns", there were enemies way off in the distance, and suddenly I had a mission to save those who could not help themselves.")
  


• He loves every part of the process. When he is writing a script, he will envision the tag line, the poster, the trailer, every piece of the marketing out of the love for the entire process. "Of course, the marketing dept. at the studio didn't follow a single one of my ideas," he laughed. He is not averse to merchandising either (one of the first questions the studio asked him when he pitched Dollhouse was "Can we make dolls"?).


• Joss described his view on the current state ("the fall of Rome") of the major studios and their adherence to adaptation, remake, and sequels. According to him, for the 3 years before Dollhouse he made a living selling scripts to studios that then never got made. One of his scripts was rejected outright by a studio exec who said "I just don't see this having a sequel." His view on this is that studios have become so conservative due to the industry-wide shrinkage that they are relying on existing characters so that the audience doesn't have to meet anyone new. As examples, he said he disliked Wolverine ("Why was that movie made?") but loved Star Trek. Despite loving Star Trek, he did use it as an example of the "new philosophy" - "look, here's Chekhov, we all love him, look here's Scotty, we all love him" etc. Which lead to....


• The Buffy remake. The rights to Buffy are controlled by the Kazuis ("as well they should be," he says, "they put the money up for the first movie. However, pretty much anyone can make a Buffy movie except me.") He wishes them luck in making their movie, but doesn't want to be a part of the new one as he is more interested in telling new stories than being part of retelling an old one or being part of the current Hollywood fixation on old characters.
  


• He summed up by re-emphasizing the need for a personal vision in art balanced with audience awareness. "Tell your story," he declaimed, "what it is that is uniquely yours. But tell it to someone, not at someone." He then took questions from the audience, most of which were fairly forgettable but included his amusing banter. There was one person who asked a very specific, geeked-out question about Episode 10 of his Buffy comic book series and he knew EXACTLY what the person was talking about (I assume he goes to conventions from time to time and is prepared for everything lol)


• Funny last remembrance: The Buffy videogame included him as a character you could play. He enjoyed taking and executing such vocal directions as "OK, now say what you would say when you kill Willow". However, his favorite line was cut from the final game. When asked to say what he would say when killing Tara, he said "Oh, I'm going to get a lot of letters about this one."
  

It was a great privilege to see this inspiring, original voice in TV/film close up, even if he was unwashed and somewhat slightly dazed. Perhaps I should say ESPECIALLY because he was unwashed and ssd. I look forward to seeing and hearing more from him in the future. Also highly recommend watching everything he's ever done.

And what of music, you might ask? More on that next time...some exciting stuff in the works...but now to sleep perchance to dream...(taking the garbage first)