A RESPONSE TO LITTLE OSCAR'S FAVORITE CONCERTS REQUEST FROM JUNE, 2001
Yes, thanks to Blogger I've become unstuck at the keyboard. Here's what I sent him:


I saw Phil Oches drunk on the Alice Tully stage.

I saw Genesis after Peter Gabriel Left.

The Talking Heads Forest Hills Concerts were good. I saw them at Wollman's Skate Rink with B52s opening. The big suit was somehow the closest thing I saw to a rock performer's fred astaire homage.

Elvis Costello was usually good. I saw him at Jones Beach and got to meet him back stage thanks to my sister.

Peter Allen, Bette Midler, it was always easy to walk in on their shows.

Hendricks opened for Monkees at Forest Hills, I was there...

S&G at Forest Hills after Bridge Over release, almost as big as
Beatles at Forest Hills.
Hey, we were outside listening to the ambient yells and fragments of music.

A lady took me to The Ritz, was that Studio 54 at some point? We saw, good heavens, the girl I loved from a wonderama saturday daytime gig, Edie Brikell.

Then I went to Jones Beach to see her open for the talented guy from the eagles.

She's my favorite.

My other favorite show was Debbie Harry's solo gig at The World....

Uh, we saw David Bowie at the Garden doing his "Stage/Station to Station" show surrounded by the models, was it a highschool gymnasium, we splurged on 30dollar tickets which put us in the 14th row. What were all those people doing up there behind us?

Roy took me to see Prince from the second row. Talented. Radio City used to host concerts of interesting performers. Susan took me to see Dylan there with the Saturday Night LIve Band from across the street. Stevie Wonder there was beatific, truly adored by the women on stage with him, deservedly so, he's a god.

I love performances by The Voyces, Steve Espinola, Kenny Davidsen, Drew Blood, John Kessel, Tony Hightower, Lach and The Secrets, Paleface, Lenny Malatov, Dina Dean, The Heller Project/Syndrome/Boys Wonders, Pine Box, Bendik, Lunchin, more...

Oh, those Zappa Palladium Halloween shows. The thin crawling cloud of weed smoke wafting into our nostrils. Rare moments, same as on the albums, but those are my favorite musical moments to be reexperienced ad infinitum.

Opening night, Wise Sophia opened well with Patsy in the lead. She went out an author but came back A STAR! It's always a special occasion when she takes to the stage. Throat illness prevented Regina Spektor from accepting a gift of greatness from posterity. Afterwards I dropped off my stuff at home and walked over to a friend's apartment to relax and watch barbarella (I'm being uncharacteristically discrete here, and will readily stop given the green light)

The Barbarella film lightly stimulated without quite opening a minefield of obsession from my childhood.

My dear friend has a beautiful pre-war apartment on a tree lined block, and on the way I saw that it had been speckled with stapled cardboard poster paper that mounts on street signs, quite prominently announcing a new snoop big doody dog seedeee (It read "P. Diddly, the Bad Boy Family, the Saga Continues." I prefer The Beatnuts) so publicists clearly respect the block enough to make announcements worthy of Irving Place where the concert venues for these things usually is.

There was also a man sitting on the sidewalk against the building wall head hunched over into his knees, a plastic bag of kodacolor jigsaw puzzles by his side.

That block has tendencies that the police of the Guilianni administration do not tolerate and have not for nearly eight years.

The behind the scene drama continues as the perfectly cast lead, Regina Spector, suffers from a throat infection. At first I thought it was unbelievable flakiness but Lach said she cancelled her Sidewalk shows and asked him for a good throat doctor. Apparently she is suffering from a serious, oh it's there. Then my song for Ben, the flatulant farmer, turns out to be in the show, bringing its minutes up to forty, furthermore, a slide projector I acquired when Mary Robinson moved to Georgia, oh, I've mentioned her in another context, she has a memorable appearance most readily characterized by mixing carly simon with a young shirley maclane... Well, I actually bought it from her after she left it, hell that was in 1982..., well, it's almost time to replace the bulb.. we're using the projector in the show to show the slides of the marionettes... they were beautiful, well, to add to the oddity of this lead's sickness is the loss of the puppets, left in a taxi a week before they were realized to be missing, now that's a priority issue because these beautiful creations of such craft and talent are nothing compared to the thing that any male and female of similar gene pool and minimal or even minus minimal intelligence can produce. Lose the dolls, because the important thing is the real thing, the baby. Don't lose the organic creation (...out the baby with the bathwater), let go of the craft. I didn't leave the baby in the taxi, I left the, well, everything in proportion, and me, no children, well, my friends and family have my love. My creations, what are they against the organic forms. Art. Making the dolls, making the babies, it's all there in Coppelia, should you wish to further meditate on the subject. Anyway, the future awaits us, It's OPENING NIGHT!

I am still trying to find this blogger... It's supposed to be, yes, on the Cinema VII website, the place I go to find out about the projects and to find great pictures of beautiful people....

Just back from the Grace Revell Fogarty musical, Wise Sophia, rehearsal. It was at the Musical Theatre Works space by the Public Theatre, a very nice atmosphere. I hadn't slept much so I feel rather alert, being active all day on the Pro-Choice on Mental Health Project. Artists Spadafora and Hillis created splendid renderings for stimulating eyes during the audial contemplation of the recordings... Fred Spadafora and I ate at the Cheese Sandwich Shop on Ludlow, then Joe Bendik added his outrageous electric guitar leads to Wall Flowers (I've been calling it Wall Flour to distinguish from the other great wall flower songs of Gabriel and Dylan... are there others?). Thereafter I met Kim who felt better after a nice risotto soup and off we went to rehearsal. Kim has an amazing performance to offer Wise Sophia audiences and I may even have a number as Ben, her bitter and unredeemable husband. The lead, Regina Spektor, did not attend so first we heard Sharon Fogarty sing better than I'd ever heard her, and she's already amazing, then Patsy herself showed up, what a riot because her foghorn voice is utterly commanding. By the way, Regina has another amazing voice. They'll presumably all be in one room soon, that's Manhattan Theatre Source, 177 MacDougal Street, from Tuesday thru Saturday. Then there's Grey Revell, three great CDs, songwriter performer, portraying our narrator, and married to Patsy, that's quite a doubling of creative talent (coalescing in children, such as their first, Julian). Grey has a beautiful voice and it's always exciting to work with him (He plays Tomas in The Last Dodo film). Brad Thomas as the King, Linus Gelber as Sophie's Father, Kimberly Mossel as Ben's wife, and of course most important in the Rashamon version of how the world revolves around the observations of each of us, Ben, by ME.

I'm printing the new CD, Pro-Choice on Mental Health, to sell at the Wise Sophia concession stand. Kim made Patsy labels to put on her own CD indicating parental warnings, in contrast with the child accessible entertainment provided in her Wise Sophia. So visit the concession stand, we may even have copies of The Last Dodo soundtrack...

The Pro-Choice CD is sounding very good, thank you Joe Bendik, and I hear that The Wise Sophia CD is a must, but the show itself will make that CD a must-have.