TEMPTATIONS

I can fly like a bird in the sky,

I can buy most anything that money can buy,

I can turn a river into a raging fire

I can live forever if I so desire,

All of this and more I can do

But I can't get next to you

I Can't Get Next To You, (written by Barrett Strong, performed by The Temptations)

At Christmas with my family, after mega-meal and the endless gift parade, (oh a tie, thank you!), I crashed on the couch in front of the TV, visions of gift cards dancing in my head, and happened upon The Temptations television mini-series. I caught the part where drugs were seeping into the group's repertoire, spouses were being cheated on, and egos were butting heads, as the Motown singing group rose to the heights of fame. This all in about 10 minutes. Ironic in that I was pulling out old Temptations records, in my endless quest for the letter 'T', the past two weekends. I have 4 Temptations records in my pile, the singles, AIN'T TOO PROUD TO BEG, Gordy G-7054, I WISH IT WOULD RAIN, Gordy G-7068, PAPPA WAS A ROLLIN' STONE, Gordy 7121F, and one album THE TEMPTATIONS GREATEST HITS II, Gordy GS954. A Wikipedia search on the group's history left my head spinning as the lengthy entry detailed constant line-up changes, and a steady juggle of the group's producers, writers and musical style, verifying my understanding The Temptations, like most pop groups of the era including The Beatles, were a commodity controlled by executives and creative geniuses, in this case represented by five fine vocalists. The price of fame hits this group hard as there is only one surviving original member, Otis Williams, who still sings with the current line-up. No matter, what fine records they were. Like new cars, they were controlled, polished and tweaked for consumption by the mass public. Soul standard AIN'T TOO PROUD TO BEG (1966) has such a great rock and roll rhythm and infectious beat it was later covered by The Rolling Stones. I WISH IT WOULD RAIN (1968) is one of my favorite soul records of all time with a beautiful run on the piano sounding much like Burt Bacharach's '60s work, and bruised by a technically unpolished clap of thunder. PAPPA WAS A ROLLIN' STONE (1972) is The Temptations masterpiece, an 11 or so minute socially conscious opus that had all America humming a ode to absent fathers. The GREATEST HITS II album covers the psychedelic era of The Temptations (Cloud Nine, Ball of Confusion, Psychedelic Shack), in an effort to tap into the rock market The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper cracked open, (and man, it worked-such fine tech craft on these records), along with hits apparently not big enough to make it on Greatest Hits Volume 1; (I Know) I'm Losing You, I Wish It Would Rain. These Temptations singles all go for about $6 in VERY GOOD condition, the GREATEST HITS II, goes for about $16 in VERY GOOD condition.

END OF DECEMBER 2009

As the new year dawns I attempt to save my blog from total dissolution by embracing my love of pop music and celebrating my merry-go-round of recordings. Alphabetically. Incidentally, my shin keeps vibrating like a cell phone waiting to be answered. Just thought I'd mention it. So anyway, I am on the letter 'T'. It took me over a year to listen to artists that began with the letter 'S', listening to roughly 3 or 4 albums, records, cds, etc. a week. I swooned with Siouxsie, sashayed with Spirit, sensamilioned with smokin' Santana, and snacked with Steely Dan. I am so full of S.

I've accumulated a horde of 45rpm records and this past holiday weekend I listened to one of my favorite blue-eyed soul 45s, 1970's MA BELLE AMIE, by The Tee Set, (Colossus CS 107). Ah, what a record. A cascading organ scaling the earthy vocals backed by an impetuous wedding march beat, from a guy so in love with maybe a prostitute, it hurts, (use a lubricant, dear). Like The Beatles' Michelle, it includes just enough French language lyrics to sniff a neck by. B-side ANGELS COMING IN THE HOLY NIGHT, is the hyper-kinetic honeymoon of said wedding march, with Hans Van Eijck's organ again prominently figured. The Tee Set came out of Delft, Holland and scored an international hit with Ma Belle Amie, reaching #5 on the American charts in early 1970. Fairly much a one-hit-wonder in the U.S., their second single, She Likes Weeds, was a Number 1 hit in The Netherlands, but was banned in the States, as it was believed to be a reference to drug use. Lead singer Peter Tetteroo, co-writer of Ma Belle Amie, died in 2002 from liver cancer. My GOOD copy of MA BELLE AMIE has a market value of about 3 bucks. I mention this only because I love my penny ante marketplace.

Teenage Fanclub

My Teenage Fanclub CD-EP, 1992, rare though it may be is worth about 3 dollars. If the lukewarm, amateur pop band from Tom Hanks' film, That Thing You Do progressed to a bigger bullet on the charts instead of the one-hit wonder depicted, it may have sounded a lot like Teenage Fanclub from Scotland. Modest playing of juvenile pop junk, as adolescent as teen musicians with guitar an amp and a drum practicing in a garage with no more than a 6-pack of Coca-Cola to infuse the atmosphere. Kurt Cobain cited them as a major influence, but they're more like The Archies in real life than Nirvana. This four song CD single boasts disposable music with titles like B-SIDE, and FILLER, the latter being a short and tight drum and guitar infused rock and roller ending with an unremarkable roll on the drums, the former a dreary but magnetic Christmas song throwaway you might find on the b-side of a Sonny and Cher or Beach Boys 45 rpm circa 1966. WHAT YOU DO TO ME is the lead song and has much in common; catchy hook, cheery guitar strumming, with the title song from Hanks' film.

Japanese punk recorded live in the studio directly onto 4-track sounds as crude as the dullest needle on the oldest phonograph. Japan's TEENGENERATE, "Get Action!", Crypt CD-048, 1994, strikes that raw primal nerve I experienced when I first heard punk music coming out of England in the 1970s. Fast and furious punk, (is that a tongue in their cheek?), with the only absence of musical expertise being the lo-fi shadowy technology, which gives the sound a live and liberated blast. With member names like Fink, Fifi, Sammy, Suck and original drummer Shoe, TEENGENERATE seems on the verge of comedy, but this is serious punk with a serious smirk. The out of print "Get Action" CD has a market value of about 5 bucks.

LATE SUMMER

I love to feel the rain in the summertime,

I love to feel the rain on my face - The Alarm

A blog is like a sliver in your finger. You can't ignore it and it's painful to confront.

I saw Elvis Costello at The Chautauqua Institution Amphitheatre a couple of Saturdays ago. He played with the Sugarcanes in promotion of Costello's latest, SECRET, PROFANE, & SUGARCANE, a bluegrass influenced album that finds him a master of American folk narrative. The show was extraordinary, a drum-less set of fiddle, bass, accordion, mandolin, and electric guitar, with a huge selection of songs off the new album, and an equal amount of classic Costello with a bluegrass spin, including several off his first album, the rockabilly spirited MY AIM IS TRUE, which lent itself well to the down-home but electrified music of the evening. "Blame It on Cain", and "Allison" seemed born to bluegrass, and there was a bit of a roar when he played, "(The Angels Want To Wear My) Red Shoes". The absolute highlights were, "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace Love and Understanding", from ARMED FORCES, and "Hidden Shame" from the new album, a mournful ballad about a boy who murders his best friend, sounding a bit like Springsteen's NEBRASKA. Damned though, if there weren't at least two songs the entire crowd seemed to recognize that I had never heard.

I did some theatre work this late summer with Hamburg Theatre Under The Stars' inaugural production of PICNIC. We played four shows over the Labor Day weekend, in the village park on an existing stage with an inclined wooden roof. The village and the producers, (Jon & Greg Premier Events), did well promoting the production and we had over 2,000 audiences members over the 4-day run. Free admission surely helped. I got to wag my tail in a role I had a lot of fun with. The Mayor of Hamburg visited rehearsals regularly, as he was assuring the production was a success, in an effort to boost Hamburg's walking district of shops, restaurants and bars. At the post-production cast party he came up to me and said he had a story to tell me. It seems during rehearsals, he received a call from a concerned resident, reporting a suspicious man lurking around the cast and stage. The caller was convinced the stranger was stalking the production and possibly a cast member. So the mayor checked out the report and well, there I am, in the back of the park, long before my entrance in Act II, pacing and talking to myself while rehearsing my lines.

No ordinary sage-1st!
Roycroft Mag. circa 1908 -1st!




Book of Roses - 3rd

I hastily entered five items in The Chautauqua County Fair and came home with five ribbons, three blues, a red and a yellow.

Best Coleus-fierce competition! Collection of Movie Sheet Music -2nd!

I want to clutch the green grass and hold onto summer.

HIGH SUMMER

I may jump out the door drenched in sun-screen, with a beach ball and a towel, a plastic inflated water toy around my waist, rubber flip-flops, and make like Frankie and Annette down to the beach, and shiver in the chilled air, just to remind myself this cold rainy season is indeed summer.

I hereby proclaim the summer as not being splendid. I know I'm in a bit of a rut when I check Facebook daily. When I choose Turner Classic Movies over The Italian Festival. When I seriously consider Twitter-ing.

My brother is part owner of a horse racing stable and one of his horses, Minister's Appeal, is spending his summer 40 minutes away from me racing at the track in Presque Isle, Pennsylvania. So a caravan of family and friends drive down every few weeks and gamble our money, hit the slots, and the buffet, and generally leave defeated but spirited. Minister's Appeal managed at least one third place finish so far this summer. The horse is like a member of the family, and when he finished third, we hooped and hollered, and slapped high-fives, and behaved just short of popping a champagne bottle and filling glasses. Any passer-byes would have thought we hit the jackpot, or were having a collective nervous breakdown.



























My new landlord is a ghost hunter. He is the son of my previous landlord who died recently. I groaned when he asked me if I still sell records on eBay, because he has some records he's thinking of selling and he'll split the profits with me. I'm like, poor misguided fool. I was forced to explain vinyl records, in and of themselves, are of little value and only a small handful are significantly desired. I get this from people. They think because a record or book is old it is therefore valuable. Old books and records may be rare, but they are rarely valuable. He's like, well I think what I got is pretty collectible, and he hands me a mint copy of The Beatles' White Album in pure white color vinyl with the accompanying pristine poster, (He unfortunately didn't have the four pin-up pics that also came with this edition of the album). He says he only played it once when it first came out just to tape it. I played it and it is beautiful. Now I'm like, fighting saliva drippings, can I see the rest of your record collection?



























In exchanging emails, his was suggestive of ghost-hunting, and I found out he is a committed ghost chaser, and an expert in evp, (electronic voice phenomena), with a fantastic web page.





I read LIFE OF PI by Yann Martel, a wonderful book about a god-loving boy from India who finds himself aboard a lifeboat in the middle of the ocean with a wild Bengal tiger. Think Moby Dick meets Curious George. It was perfect summer reading.





























Some years ago a friend asked me to give him a ride to The Chautauqua County Fair. He had some things he wanted to enter into competition. I'm thinking, is he going to put a live goat in my back seat? Maybe a prize winning potato? The world's largest squash? Instead he packed my back seat with boxes and boxes of assorted stuff; old war posters, a collection of beer bottles, a Catholic bronze holy water container, ... delectable, precious junk. He was entering them into competition as antiques and collectibles in The Chautauqua County Fair. I didn't know you could enter anything but pigs and such in the county fair. When the fair was over I gave him a ride to pick up his junk, ...um, entries, and he walked off with all these blue, red and yellow ribbons and a modest bank check for his efforts.



Hell, I got junk. I have a signed leather-bound first edition of a Joyce Carol Oates novel. I have my father's old fishing poles. I have old bottles I unearthed out of my garden. I have an attic of things I've collected over the years. Am I to understand someone would pay me for possessing these things, things that mostly, I couldn't pay someone to take from me?



So there I am the following year, picking up my blue, red and yellow ribbons, and of course, the bank check, for my winning entries. Me and my friend Karl, have a friendly competition every year, finding ourselves competing in some of the same hundreds of categories. He doesn't realize deep in my heart, I'd kill to win. In no time, my Remington western print won 'the blue' in the Print category, ( his second place commemorative 1812 war poster paled in comparison). My 1915 nursery rhyme book blew the others out of the water in the Antique Children's Book category. My Jackson 5 Greatest Hits Picture Disc LP dominated and simply frowned upon the others in the Item from The Seventies category ...

















Apache Ambush by Frederick Remington. 'The Blue'!

And now I have a box in the attic somewhere full of blue, red and yellow ribbons. And I'm a county fair buff. You can find me watching the pig competition muttering to myself that pig number three was clearly the better pig. Standing outside a locked barn asking security when the tractor museum opens. I go to the quaint and innocent Chautauqua County Fair harness horse race every year, and the first year I went, dumb cluck that I am, I asked a Norman Rockwell-ish group of horse people where one bets on the harness race. I learned one does not bet on the county fair harness race. I thought they were going to drag me somewhere and lynch me.

I had county fair fever. I became very competitive. I was scouring my apartment for anything that might produce a blue ribbon. I was envying the farmers with their prized sheep, cows and corn, truly worthy of the great county fair ribbons. Ridiculous thoughts like, do I dare try and bake a blueberry pie? How do you go about raising rabbits? Is the cereal bowl I'm eating from made before 1940, and if so, is there a Best Cereal Bowl category? No, but there is a Buffalo China category which that very cereal bowl won a blue ribbon!

The red and yellow ribbons, (2nd and 3rd Place) were nice but the blue was the gold. One year the judges gave me only an honorable mention for an entry. I could have scowled in their faces, "ARE YOU KIDDING ME? That is a one-of-a-kind Roy Rogers comic book with allegedly Trigger's hoof print on the back cover!".

One year, on a whim, on the day I was to enter my stuff, I took a flowering plant out of my crude and simple garden which is out the door of my apartment, and I asked it, are you worth a blue ribbon? It was a purple shamrock which happened to bloom beautifully that year. With my eye on the prize I entered it into the more traditional category of of horticulture. On opening day I went to the fair to check my entries, (read: count my blue ribbons), and my flower was adorned with a gold medal, three ribbons of blue, red and yellow and a banner streamed across it - BEST OF SHOW. I won the frickin' Academy Award of county fair ribbons!!!

I'm jaded, man. I reached the pinnacle. I am an urban cowboy. I'm doing the Rocky punch at the top of the stairs at City Hall. There wasn't a farmer in all of Chautauqua County with a better rose than my shamrock.

So I merely started to mention this Saturday is the day I enter my stuff in the fair. I'm actually finally depleted of blue ribbon quality stuff to enter. I have some sage in the garden which looks like common sage to me, but what do I know about blue ribbon quality sage? I'll enter my few meager offerings if for no other reason than to see which farmer has the best goat. I get a free fair pass just for entering. I'll hook up with Karl and hopefully we'll find ourselves standing in line at the close of the fair, picking up our checks for the winning entries. Several competitors refuse the check and donate it back to the fair, but not me and Karl. We snatch those checks up and hit the beer tent, and boast nostalgia of blue ribbon victory.

As I'm writing this I got a call that I have a role in a play I auditioned for. I don't know if that ends the summer or begins it.

THE ARTIE AWARDS 2009

I went to the 19th Annual Artie Awards at The Town Ballroom in Buffalo on Monday night somewhat reluctantly, being a little sore at The Arties Committee for ignoring my off-stage voice/stage manager position in DUSTY SPRINGFIELD, WITH YOU, this season. Do they have any idea what it's like to read a script in the dark, manipulate sound and lights, and speak into a microphone, all at the same time? Not to mention remaining alert to any theatrical catastrophe that might occur; staying mindful of terrorism; glaring at the audience as someones' cell phone goes off; reaching for a kleenix with one hand on the sound board and the other on the light board as I'm about to sneeze into the microphone? Where's the nomination for Outstanding All-Around Guy? What the hell is wrong with those people?

Mary Loftus, center, with friends prior to receivieng The Artie

I took three pics with my camera, one an accidental but not inappropriate snap of a half-filled cocktail glass, before the batteries died and the new batteries I brought were the wrong damn batteries. Fortunately, one of the pics were of four time nominated, and soon to be 2009 Artie winner Mary Loftus, for her supporting role in THE BEAUTY QUEEN OF LEENANE.

There was a memorial segment just like in The Academy Awards, where we clap for dead people as their faces are projected on a screen. I hate that. How is it that one dead person can get a bigger applause than another dead person?

Over cocktails, I'm shaking hands with Richard Lambert, Executive Director of The New Phoenix Theatre, accepting an offer to stage manage a production this fall at his theatre. I'm thinking, Jesus, it's just like being at Cannes.

Another champ-ale, my funky friend?

(Best Actor Nominee Richard Lambert with his brother whose name I've forgotten)

Glitz, glamor and Buffalo buffoonery. Cat-calls between the audience and the stage on a first name basis were commonplace.

Host Norm Sham asked award recipient Mary Loftus, as she handled the microphone and put her mouth close to it, "When have you had it so good, Mary?". She quipped, "yesterday".

Some short and gracious acceptance speeches. No long-winded ones.

Outstanding and most enchanted musical performance from the nominated musicals came from the cast of Theatre of Youth's GO DOG GO.

More than once I heard the network TV familiar, "so and so couldn't be here tonight and he's asked me to accept this award on his behalf...". So and so was probably not filming in Spain.

For ten bucks admittance at the door, this show was a real deal. Artvoice should promote it more heavily in other media, as an entertainment in itself. I wonder the chances of having it broadcast on local television.

A complete listing of the 2009 Artie Award winners can be found here.

TOO ABSURD!

Subversive Theatre asked me to play elevator man for patrons of their TOO ABSURD! production, consisting of two 'Theatre of The Absurd" plays on Friday night. I transport audience who can't surmount the three flights of cold hard stairs, on a freight elevator to Subversive's home space on the third floor of The Great Arrow Building, a mostly empty, sprawling industrial complex that once housed The Pierce Arrow Corporation, a manufacturer of luxury cars circa 1910. The building now provides cocooned space to theatre, (Alt Theatre is also in residence there), and sparsely set offices.

Upon boarding the ancient steel and wood freight elevator, that looks like a certain death trap, but glides with the gentleness of a paper airplane, I always yell to the mostly elderly riders, "GOING UP!", to absolutely on one's amusement. Indeed, when the steel gated frame locks us in with a crash, and the heavy wooden doors are slammed shut, and suddenly I can't get the damn thing to go up or down, the look on the concerned faces seem to say, next stop hell.

I stayed for the show. The theatre space was trashed with old newspapers discarded on the floor under and around the seats of the audience. I don't know why, except to say it was absurd. The subsequent plays seemed to have nothing in common with old newspapers.

The first play, absurdist dramatist Eugene Ionesco's "The Lesson", directed by Drew McCabe, finds a maniacal academic professor, (James Wild), badgering a pupil, (Jessica Wegzryn), into submission under the guise of tutoring. The lesson taught involves simple arithmetic, a breeze for the excited and hopeful student, and subtraction, to which she is inept. It evolves into a lesson on sub-languages of Spanish. The play is fun and thought provokingly tragic, and not illogical in it's portrait of an intellectual dominance over the illiterate. Wild paces and stalks the stage like a schizophrenic caged leopard on meds, and Wegzryn's harried student suffers an empathetic breakdown under the weight of a math equation. Both actors take this absurdist play and dance merrily around the logic of Darwin's theory of survival.

"On The Sea", by Polish writer, Slawomir Mrozek, directed here by Mark Tattenbaum, certainly inspired Monty Python's Flying Circus' classic sketch of cannibalistic sailors at sea, ("I wish you'd all quit bickering and eat ME!"). The fun reference to Python is in cold contrast to a notoriety in writer Mrozek's life. In 1953, during the reign of Stalinism in Poland, Mrozek participated in the signing of a letter to Polish authorities, groundlessly accusing three Catholic priests of treason. The priests were condemned to death but never executed.

The director of the first production of "On The Sea", in Poland in 1961, was in attendance at this performance. Three men, a fat one, (Kurt Erb, not nearly fat), a thin one, (Matt Nerber), and a medium one, (David Utter), as listed in the program, are adrift at sea without food and determine their only means of survival is for one of them to be eaten by the others. They draw lots, stage a democratic election, and finally two conspire to eat the third. The play is a lighter absurdity than it's predecessor, with the medium man daintily setting a makeshift dinner table, ("Does the little fork go on the right or left?"), and the unfortunate object of dinner scrambling to find a way out of his predicament, ("I am poisoned,...I have an infected liver,...one leg is shorter than the other"). They are briefly joined by two women, a post woman, (Jennabeth Stockman), and a maid, (Kelsey Arlen), who swim aboard to report news from land, ("You have a message on your cell phone"), certainly an update of the original script. The play was odd and funny, beginning with a ridiculous ukelele strummed Hawaiian novelty song, sung quite well by the three men, and ending with the proclamation of individual rights by the soon to be eaten dinner guest.

Both plays offer not a frustrating wonderment, but insightful, albeit absurd comments on the privileged gentry eating alive the common man.

SUBVERSIVE SHORTS

I went to a play but I didn't stay for Act 2.

Why not?

The program said, Act 2, same as Act 1.




Subversive Theatre got a bad rap from The Buffalo News in a review for their production of SUBVERSIVE SHORTS 2009. I saw the final installation of this collection of short plays from around the country at the closing performance Sunday night, a four and a half hour marathon, where all 10 plays were presented. The plays were previously presented as two seperate performances on alternating evenings. I could only stay for seven of the plays, and what I saw certainly contradicts the dismal one and a half star rating offered from The News. Some broad humor, some subtle nuance, a sprinkle of dark politics, a dash of intrigue and some truly dramatic and edgy moments were all thrown into this pot of political stew, resulting in a most satisfying evening of new theatre. Heather Fangsrud gives a fine and moving solo performance as the daughter of a Vietnam War veteran, professing her father's psychological injuries in SOUTHPAW STANCE, and Donald Capers and Jacqueline Jordan bring a hopeful glow to the war minded absurdity of NORMAL IS A COUNTRY, about the recovery of a recently disabled vet.





So I went to a play but I couldn't stay for Act 2.

Why not?

The program said, Act 2, two weeks later, and I didn't have that much time.


The Arties nominations have been announced and I'm glad that the two plays I served as stage manager for at The New Phoenix received Best Actor and Actress nods for Lorraine O'Donnell in DUSTY SPRINGFIELD, WITH YOU, and Richard Lambert in BLACKBIRD. DUSTY SPRINGFIELD, WITH YOU, penned by Richard Lambert, also received a nomination for Best New Play.

Daggers in your teeth, everybody.