After the Porters Union concluded their PTMYM Electric Ladyland Recording session, Kessel and Kenny Davidsen were talking about a song I had obsessed about as a child. Gilbert O'Sullivan said his parents were alive and well, yet he pulled our heart strings, and it sounded great. You know that song... John Kessel intends to sing it. I liked singing it, with a bounce, singing a final lyric about how I made up the whole thing on the advice of my manager, but hey, it's simply a fine song. And looking back over the years, and whatever else that appears... Congratulations, Mr. O'Sullivan.

Tony showed me Aimster a few months ago and, after losing my hard drive and toying with it as a slave drive, I was Aimster-up-and-running in a matter of seconds. Kim was watching Wiseman's High School. The Simple Simon Song was on the screen and playing off the computer almost concurrently.

The computer plays the great pop song, Alone Again Naturally, good heavens, such a pretty song. Good acoustic guitar solo!

Last night at Arlene Grocery The Stones Beggars Banquet album received a brilliant performance by noted musicologist Tammy Faye Starlight and other members of the Mike Hunt band, including Steve Espinola performing the piano parts of Nicky Hopkins. Ms. Starlight played Mick Jagger, who himself played The Devil in the 1968 recording. The percussion in Sympathy for the Devil developed over time under the supervision of Godard documented in the film of the same title.

The Phenomenon of Leonard Lehrman -- a composer on the fringes of greatness who draws upside-down response from his peers.

His immediate peers fit into two groups that may be defined by niche terms, such an oversimplification being easily objectionable but here are the terms ingrained in my mind and they help to familiarize us, as in volumes of information delivered through shorthand.

People get characterized as Jews, Gays, Episcopals, Catholics, Blacks, Italians, Irish, Midwesterners, et cetera. The first two are highly triggerable, yet here goes because they have a niche element. People characterized thus may actually characterize themselves.

Jewish culture is solid; it may provide the most solid organized lifestyle. It continues to stand the test of time. Christianity, Islam, Rabbi Schnierson Lubivitchers, these are fads arising like weeds in a stone...

And, of course, same sex intercourse has yet to produce offspring... Help me. I'm writing out of ignorance to learn. There are many subjective impressions and by expressing them I hope to arrive at the illusive elusive objective reality.

Some people make a point of being gay. Must I define it? Would that sexuality were so simple. (I ask the same question to those attempting to fit into and live their lives by way of a religious definition.)

I'm currently so far removed from this musical world that I'm ready to conclude this essay.

There is the Eric Gordan biography of Marc Blitzstein. There is Leonard Bernstein's extramarital activities. There is the essay posted at Michaeldouglas.blogspot.com... Do certain lifestyles lend themselves to achieving greatness, and is that greatness of necessity controvesial?

Leonard's muse, for the past 12 years, is the talented singer/actress Helene Williams. She is to him what Lotte Lenya was to Kurt Weil. Leonard graduated from Harvard. He has a childish laugh, almost like he's afraid to laugh out loud for being found to be naughty. There is a willingness to be silly about him, as he deals with powerful subjectmatter, perhaps to difuse it and make it palatable. He does communicate fascinating ideas. Is it because of his music that he does so or is the music incidental to the ideas? I relate to him, and feel that my work is a product of being exposed and involved with his work.

There is iron within him. As he documents injustice through his work, he directs its participants with an iron fist. The terms a kinder, gentler Leonard sound encouraging, and he has become that, mellowing with time. He writes beautiful music and draws attention to other work, particularly the work of Marc Blitzstein. He devotes his life to music and through it to other causes to which he's given his respect and which deserve our attention -- naturalisme, anarchy, the dangers of bras, Emma Goldman, the innocence of Sacco and Vanzetti and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Professor Irwin Corey, The Long Island Music Scene including Joel Mandelbaum, the performing genius of Tom Lehar. I acknowledge him now for completing the opera begun in 1960 by Marc Blitzstein and left incomplete at his death in 1964, entitled Sacco and Vanzetti, which premiered this weekend at Lucille Lortel's White Barn Theatre.

I'm noticing Little Oscar's postings include people's favorite albums AND THEIR REASONS for inclusion.

Jeff Lewis’s “Indie Fortune Cookie” because of its wide variety of pop folk styles. It is purely performance, since it originated on cassette tape, and that's the format in which I heard it. The only thing done to produce it was to play it. It includes Jackson's hilarious "Man With the Golden Arm," it has Second Avenue, the Chelsea Hotel, The song about the little reptiles, this is just off the top of my head. It's incredibly engaging. By the way, another miracle album of this simple pure performance recording calaber is Major Matt Mason's Me Me Me.

By the way, these are favorite albums. There are tracks or moments on albums that far surpass, however, the entire albums listed are favorites. For example, Jeff Lewis' album can be listened to in its entirety.

Espinola/Wolf’s “Lifeaphobia” This has quite a bit more work done to create the sonic experience. Every song is great and the spoken word elements are great. It's entirely musical and shows how good Beck's albums could be (The only "Beck" album I know, and love, is Mellow Gold, and it reminds me of this one). Lifeaphobia contains an interesting balance between the two writers. Steve Espinola has a talent one might find out of control. He does a big bopper performance that shows how entertaining such a style of singing can be. All his songs are unbelievably good, and they are tempered by the introspective Mr. Wolf, whose memorable line is, I'm an old man now in this town.

Zappa’s Mother’s “Only in it for the Money” See, this is an example of an entertaining album from beginning to end. Zappa's moments on other albums are unsurpassable musical breakthroughs. Waka Jawaka, Uncle Meat, 200 Motels, even the hilarious Live at the Fillmore.
"Only in It" has Billy the Mountain and Magdalena and other stuff I can't remember. The packaging was very appealing. Billy the Mountain is a compendium of pop music of the moment.

Bowie’s “Man Who Sold the World” Again, many moments in Bowie's albums far surpass this one, but in its entirety it is quite outrageous and direct. The spoken wod opening to the Diamand Dogs album, with the Rogers and Hart riff, is an incredible favorite. In fact, that album has beautiful sounds through and through.
Man Who Sold the World has Shook Me Cold and Width of a Circle and the one that's becoming a standard cover. By the way, the album cover went through phases, with Bowie lounging ala Hunky Dory, the one that remains, but I like the cartoon one of the Texan that tried to take a shot at him.

Stones’ “Beggar’s Banquet” also has a great substitute cover to the silly toilet scrawls.

Chubby Checker’s “Let’s Limbo Some More” (the album with “Birdland”)
Gina Bacchauer’s “Scriabin Prelude’s/Brahm’s Waltzes”
Mostel’s “Fiddler on the Roof” (first soundtrack of Bock/Harnick Score)
Genesis’ “Selling England by the Pound”
Dylan’s “Desire”

We're going to Michigan, land of the lakes, where people know their state like the back of their hand because that's what it resembles, the left hand. Actually, you need to use the right hand, palm up, in order to illustrate (with the left two fingers) the Northern penninsula. So what's going on over there? How crowded can it be? Kim grew up there. Her family lived there for generations. It's so US American and yet so independent from New York. Even California consists of transplants from New York, plus it has a familiar coast mentality even if that's where the sun sets, so to speak

We learned a lot more about a state we visitted during our last trip, Louisiana, in a film that was almost the equivalent of a satire on the gulf oil subject, Robert Flaherty's last film, Louisiana Story. Naturally beautiful, even when the oil riggers set up their Christmas tree. They hit a steam hole, some 12 thousand feet underground, and manage to bypass it after spilling up gaseous fumes. The peace of the bayou, returns, after the riggers leave but a contortion of pipes, creating a natural fuel station for ships that pass... no meters to measure the removal of the "natural resource." Virgil Thompson provided the score for the film. Flaherty's final direction was for the naturalistic Nanook-like cast to KEEP SMILING, whatever you do, because that rig is nasty. Well, we've been down there and now, well, that's all their is on the Mississippi Delta. You won't be meeting any acadian swamp dwellers he met in 1948, only their children, working on the oil rigs... Oh Evangeline! What a gulf coast. What a hotbed of Western Civilization!

Kim is always up to something interesting, and the other film she pulled out of the library, which I know for Negulusco, the director, Astaire, the entertainer, and for Caron, the truly talented stand-in for the underaged ingenue, Kim pulled out for its status as a literary adaptation of a book, an epistolary book, told in letters by a young lady to her, yes that's right, Daddy Long Legs.... And to all you Spiders from Mars, remember, The Female of the Species is More Deadly Than the Male.

Pursuant to Little Oscar’s pleasantly brain-stimulating request, my favorite albums are

Jeff Lewis’s “Indie Fortune Cookie”
Espinola/Wolf’s “Lifeaphobia”
Zappa’s Mother’s “Only in it for the Money”
Bowie’s “Man Who Sold the World”
Stones’ “Beggar’s Banquet”
Chubby Checker’s “Let’s Limbo Some More” (the album with “Birdland”)
Gina Bacchauer’s “Scriabin Prelude’s/Brahm’s Waltzes”
Mostel’s “Fiddler on the Roof” (first soundtrack of Bock/Harnick Score)
Genesis’ “Selling England by the Pound”
Dylan’s “Desire”

Other favorites from the twentieth century’s Eighth decade:
Yes’s “Close to the Edge”
Emerson Lake and Palmer’s “Tarkus”
Jethro Tull’s “War Child”
King Crimson’s “Red”
The first recording of Sondheim’s “Follies”
William Finn’s “March of the Falsettos”

I saw the tape of Sunday's Pro-Choice on MH set. As a band we were out of control. We had a strong audience response to the first song which was quite a charge, and after that we were banging away pretty persistently. As for the park event piano dropping glitch -- Pete the Piano Killer, said Joie -- I returned the piano to Drew Blood today. It works. Drew resucitated his keyboard, as he has so many times before. That's a great keyboard, even if, or is it because, it weighs 90 pounds.

After catching the end of Lenny Malatov's set, I went to Jordan Pfister's apartment to watch the tapes of our recent shows, which is a good rule of thumb more honored in the breach.

The piano fell during the park event only when I concluded the second song. It fell at the last chord. Honestly, I bow and when I first saw the tape I thought my head or my elbow hit it. It was falling after I lifted my hands, before I began leaning. It could have just as easily fallen two chords before the end. Amen.

Next, Jordan pulled out a Cafe Bustello fundraiser tape from 1988. He had a friend who played there with, oh, what's her name. Heather? She is a wonderful performer and she doesn't need me to plug her here, she's doing very well and has much compassionate enlightenment to offer us. It's Heather Woodbury. Amazing writer performer.

The fundraiser event was at Cuando, which I now know is not spelled Quando, a place I know because I was victim to a most successful vandalization in front of it and I suspected the squatters there of providing the hiding place for all the equipment taken from my car.

Cuando is across from La MaMa La Galleria and the tape makes it look like a major auditorium.

One of the featured performers introduced by Jennifer Blowdryer was Lach. This is Lach in 1988. Long haired, slender, very attractive, handsome, intelligent, unbelievably magnetic and defiant. A cross between Bowie and Nicholson, but unique as well. It's unquestionably him, the same person who performs and hosts the weekly antihoots today. He sang two songs, including his version of Femme Fatale. That tape was a blast of light on the darkeningly disappearing past. We have continuity!

I'm still suffering from pro-choice on mental health interruptus. We only played four songs from the performance on Sunday! It has created a strong incentive to book another show. Joe Bendik played with us and he's already called Hens and Jordan to play with him. Maybe we can book one big night to officially release the PConMH CD. One of the audience members who bought the CD on Sunday told me to get it into Kim's Video in case he reviews it.

Kim's Video was originally a Dry Cleaner that began renting VHS tapes. Meanwhile, the North West Corner of 2nd Avenue and St Marks (E.8th St) was a movie theatre. There I saw Evil Dead. Suddenly Kim's was an underground video store on the second floor by what was once this movie theatre, and foreign obscure films became available there. What a gallery that second floor was! Now it's moved up nearer Third Avenue. That's the big store with three flights at least, and it also carries underground music. There are other locations, one conveniently across from Sidewalk. There is also a Kim's Dry Cleaner (These are on Avenue A). Remember when all the corner deli's suddenly became operated by a Miss Kim?

There are no mosquitos around, and again I have a cold. Aha! There's spraying going on in these parts.

Other contributing factors to a feeling of illness which is going away as I type -- the full body swedish massage I had at The Penninsula Spa yesterday.
The membership coordinator, a pleasantly handsome fellow named Dennis, recommends the Champagne facial.

One of the fellows there took my shoes and returned them with a beautiful shine. These are super shoes by "Havana Joe" and before he restored them, they looked dry and beaten. Now they leave a black mark upon whatever they touch.

One of the guys in the steam room, referring to it, said to another guy, "You put one of these in your place?"

I sarcastically thought, yeah, sure.

He said, Yeah, sure, but not as big as this.

"How big?"

"Actually about as big is this. We had to drop the ceilings."

"You can't have the ceilings too high."

"No, the steam rises."

One of them was spraying.

I thought, give me that, and said, "What makes the menthol?" No ingredients listed, just a warning: Flammable. "What is this stuff?"

He shrugged.

My skin was soft from the oils.

"My corpse is ready for its close-up Mr. Demille!"

The Sidewalk Cafe faces the Pyramid Club. Anti-hootenany faces Drums and Bass. Spencer said he played the Pyramid and picked up strange vibrations. When else did he feel them? I went in there, having run into my old friend and former roommate, Kenny Nowell, who was going there following a look into sidewalk. He was researching music for a play. He and Justine Lambert run the Looking Glass Theatre. The guy at the pyramid gate stopped me, asking for ID. I said, after providing him with it, "I was here back when William Burroughs was dancing with Beat Rodeo!" The 8 dollar admission really stopped me. Anyway, the lyricless music sounded ok. Beats and Bass, Bass and Drum, Drums and Bass! And some high industrial construction clanking, clanging in independent counterpoint.

Hi, We saw the Yankees Tuesday, Kim, Linda, Kenny and I, and here's why they won. One of the Detroit Tigers caught the fly, yer out, and tossed it to someone closer to the plates and oops, that guy fumbled, dropped it, and hey, bases loaded, might as well bring in some homers. Two runs for the yankees and they only won by one, 'cause one of the tigers hit a homer to the far right field (change pitchers,) then one of the tigers just hits a home run down the center about as far as it has ever been hit, nearly 475 feet. (CHANGE PITCHERS!)

I was excited that I would maybe say hello to my old friend Eddie Layton but I had no idea from where his organ emanates. In fact, crowd control is the major issue and once the game is over, no one lingers.

Eddie Layton was friends with one of my friends, Eddie Dimaio, immortalized in that early Cinema VII film, The Ruins, circa 1969. It was ten years later that the two Eddies became friends. I visited him in his climate controlled apartment three times. I wonder if he still has that amazing miniature train set?

I was self-abused as a child and I've decided to sue the city for not sending me a social worker, even though it happened long ago because infancy tolls the statute of limitations and my infancy extends into my forties. I actually did file a claim against NYC today but that's because 90 days ago the thin front wheel of my childhood racing bike slipped into a grating of parallel bars, sending me face first into the metal faster than I could put out my hands, smashing my teeth and splitting my lip. Yes, I was riding on the sidewalk and once again I really should commence a lawsuit against myself.

Twelfth Night directed by Chad Stutz required tremendous cooperation of thirty people, 15 in the cast and 15 behind the scenes, plus the live band of 2-5 people... One can't blame the cast for hamming a bit.

Malvolio suffers the delusions of any successful masturbator, he belives himself! He makes reference to the practice in his line about playing with some rare jewel.

See what happens when you see something twice. What else did I write... I like the line that THE SEA CAN DIGEST AS MUCH. That's for sure. The Pacific, a big stomach. The great assimilator. But what hour is this? Time for CAKES AND ALE.

Hey, what's going on here? For one thing VH1 is running a Stevie Nicks Piano Recital version of Rhiannon, the Gaelic Goddess, but more specifically, as this little entry makes its way down the page, where did those little links up there come from??? "Archive," "Email," Tony Hightower's been working here. He told me to get up (he's a control freak) and what a pleasure to see him take the controls. Therefore, I can only imagine what he did (you can actually edit your blogger's html!), and thanks are in order. He's off to his performance at The Rising Cafe, where the sun also rises, in Brooklyn!

Now that we have cable and have given ourselves over to the Warner Brothers... Check out public access. Four stations in Manhattan, 53 67 63 67 are those them, wait, I have the guide page which they slipped in with the $120 bill. 34, 56, 57 and 67. Damn, I missed Dave's Place which is on every other Friday at 7:30. Oh well, next time, next time, August 3rd, tune in for when Peter Dizozza talks about Prepare to Meet Your Maker.

So I get up, he takes the controls, he experiments and discovers the way. I become the slave; he the master. Great idea, hire a facilitator!

And for the results, thanks, Tony!

With some much going on, what am I looking forward to, aside from secession? Work... I look forward to the opportunity and to having the tools. What do I do when the catelogue is done?

I'm realizing, after seeing the Jonathan Larson show on turning thirty, that the 90's have a lost element to them. I have material created then that requires being retrieved. That also means it reincarnates. The other problem, I suppose it is one, is that I honestly don't have those heightened states of being today, and when I do, I'm in no position to say so. So I go back and retrieve the heightened awareness of the past.

Bring on something new, to which I, the objective observer, say yes.

The real mysteries of eight occur in musical repetition, trance inducing figures with fluctuations and additions or subtractions in the pattern to gather momentum, like the vamps in Jonathan Larson's new musical, tick tick boom, he who learned to keep continuum under the conversational voices from his mentor, Sondheim, (who learned it from Babbit, no, from Glass, who gradually mutates the vamp), its origins found in rock and roll's boogie woogie bass line. What am I talking about, right? And another thing, if you want to write for theatre you've got to write lists, because your audience is comprised of materialists. A list of questions, a list of attainments. of miscommunications, of acquirements, and keep a vamp going underneath to conceal the sameness of the chord progression. Get to work. And congratulations to Stephen Oremus and, always annonymously in the background, Steve Skinner. Tick tick boom boom at the Jane Street Theatre.

The gas tank demolition proceeded on schedule. We saw it from the roof of 14 Meadow Street.

Brooklyn Union Gas, following the lead of New York Telephone/Nynex/Verizon, has renamed itself something completely innocuous in an attempt to transform itself beyond its purpose and origins (acronyms also do nicely), and improve the language with a new word like Kleenex, or Xerox, all rights reserved. THE NEW WORD IS KEYSPAN. Please explain how our children will understand that. It opens the utility market to free trade. BUG was the only gas source for Brooklyn stoves, now we have a choice between KeySpan, or some other fly-by-night company. Anyway, this one, really the one and only one whatever we call it, dynamited its gas tanks, and did so very well; within 10 seconds the two of them, 42 stories high, GONE. Oh, the Breslin article reminds me that BUG dismantled by hand the tanks in Elmhurst, Queens, implication: Who cares about Greenpoint? (and my father grew up there.)

Bob Mahoney is Keyspan's Spokesperson. 23 acres have opened in Brooklyn.

We were there thanks to Jackson, Jack Lewis, brother of Jeff Lightning Lewis and member of the excellent band, DP stole my Tea.

Coincidentally, Fred Spadafora and I scheduled shooting Pro-Choice on Mental Health Promo photos for this morning.

It's also the day of the summer 2001 anti-folk fest brunch, July 15th.

Yesterday, to master the Pro-Choice on Mental Health CD, Alex Abrash and David Baker analogued the tracks, running them through a 24 track mixing board onto 2 inch 3M tape, then back to CD. We went from digital to analogue to digital. The operative CD initials are DAD. One of the machines which they thought very important goes by the name, Nieves.

The Wise Sophia run at Manhattan Theatre Source concluded yesterday.

Here's an article about David Baker: http://www.acousticsounds.com/affiliates/news/baker.html

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.