R Bar Show Review
We had what was essentially an open rehearsal at R Bar last night and it’s one of those times where I’m getting good feedback from the people that were there but I honestly don’t know how we did. The arrangement was me on acoustic, Noah Lebenzon on electric guitar and pedals, Paul Brill on laptop and vocals and Eliza Benitez on backing vocals. This was the first time we ever played with Eliza and she did an admirable job.
The setlist was:
1. Broken Bow
2. Dirty White Coats
3. Don’t Look Away
4. St. Marys
5. Hold My Heartache
6. If You See Something
7. There Is A Light
8. Natural Beauty
My favorites wwere Broken Bow as usual, St. Marys and the last part of Natural Beauty. St. Marys was really stripped down and kind of lonely and not nearly as bombastic as the studio version. In fact, not bombastic at all. Just kind of angular and sparse. There Is A Light is the song I just wrote for my grandpa. I like it pretty well. It’s kind of traditional sounding. Natural Beauty is a tune off the first Lipstik record, requested by a longtime fan and friend. Towards the end it kind of devolves into an Irish drinking song or something and there’s lots of “lie-die-da-die-die-dies” etc. and you can imagine yourself with a pint or a stein and Jimmy McNulty at Kavanaugh’s or something.
After the show I took Noah and Paul out for dinner at this Mexican place (in lieu of payment) and we sat and talked and then we stood out on the sidewalk and talked and Noah and Paul were arguing about whether LA or New York have a better and more vibrant music scene. I think we know the answer to that one.
All in all a good night. It’s always nice and weird to play a gig where the stage has two stripper poles welded into it. That’s, I suppose, the experience of playing New York clubs. It takes a village. Or something.
R Bar This Wednesday
Got a small show coming up at 7pm this Wednesday. I’ll be doing a smaller arrangement than normal. Me on acoustic. Paul on laptop. Noah on guitar if he can make it (he just had a baby girl so we’ve got to cut the guy some slack). And maybe a new backup singer if it works out. Regardless, I’ll be there with my acoustic and some downstrokes. I’ll probably try out a few new ideas I’ve been working on and maybe do some interpretations of older tunes.
The setlist will include Dirty White Coats, Hold My Heartache, and If You See Something. Others in the mix will include Erica, One More Time and Honey Eyes from the first Lipstik record, and then Valentine’s Day and then some other ideas including a song I wrote for my grandfather.
R Bar is 218 Bowery between Prince and Spring. Try and swing by.
RIP Leo Seligson
On June 12, my grandfather, Isadore Leo Seligson, died suddenly of a heart attack, while sitting in his car after an afternoon at the pool reading his paperback and, presumably, staring at a few nice looking ladies in their bathing suits. He was 93.
I have been thinking about whether or not to write about him. On the one hand, some part of it feels exploitative (or something). I don’t know. But on the other. He was my friend. He was a wonderful man. Truly. He was different than you or me. I don’t mean some rags to riches story or his incessant drive for fame or power. I mean that a light shone within him and anyone who met him knew it immediately and he showed people and me how to love and how to be something good in this world. So you should know about him. You should remember him and you should know that even in a world full of pain and misery and corrupt institutions and tyranny and quests for power and fame and mindlessness. Even in that world, there are people who are good. Simply good. Honest. Giving. Open minded. Loving.
I am not a geneologist and this is not a formal obituary. So I’ll just share some recollections and thoughts and if it means something that’s fine and if not that’s fine too. But he was here.
Sharing This Experience
The reason I like Twitter is because, like Bob, the world feels a lot less lonely in some ways. It’s the reason I love the Internet. The connection to other humans. That is an emboldening experience and one that instills confidence.
I was shaky. I still am. It’s scary. But the essence of life comes from being out, interacting with humans, having enough confidence to give your personality a whirl and see if it attracts any takers.
Bob’s funny because, like all of us, he wants to have it both ways. He wants to be sensitive and vulnerable and let you in and, at the same time, he wants to be above it all and on top of the mountain, opining and all that.
But you don’t have to read his shit if you don’t want to. So that’s up to you. But I’m on the same tip as him, albeit on a smaller scale. Life is about having the courage to listen to all the doubts in your head about whatever you’re doing and then say, “Fuck it” and do it anyway because what else are you going to do.
We live in public. I have to see that movie. It’s true. I wonder what it means on the level deeper than the sneering ironic, “We’re all such narcissists and pathetic” meme although that could be true but there is something to all this connection.
All these bytes and electrons that are capturing the collective human experience in a way that heretofore has not been possible. So that we may live on although our consciousness may evaporate into the ether or take other forms against which it is unknown whether we’ll have the memories of these moments within us. So this is a record. And we were here once. And I guess that means something or it doesn’t.
Meanwhile, the universe continues to expand and from the sky we are small and to a mouse we are big or a rat and then from a different scale we are giants and then there is the dark matter pushing all of us away from each other into something else.
I wonder if all of this, the Internet, was destiny or a fluke or what. Predestined. Ordained. Human progress and the inevitable result. Or just a happy accident. What other ways could progress have taken us.
We want to be together. In some way shape or form. We want to be together. And accepted.
Circling The Big Domino
Seth makes points that I agree with in his post ‘Circling the Big Domino‘ Now I may agree with them because I don’t have a choice. The “big one” hasn’t yet hit The Flying Change and so it’s not really up to me. But on other other hand, it does feel like the right Zen/Buddha thing to do which is focus on what you can achieve and leave the rest out of your head and accept what you can do and focus your power on a very small point and then slowly grow the circumference of that sphere until its white hot. Also, don’t divide your forces, except if you’re Jackson and you’re up against Hooker and it’s Chancellorsville which is another way of saying, “Just be right” but mostly it’s about working what you can work and getting the reviews and the shows that you can and make the connections and let the flame become a blaze and if it doesn’t at least let it become a nice sized fire and think about the work that you create over the longer term and don’t focus on, to use a crude image, blowing your wad all at once.
But if you line up all the dominos one by one, in the right order, you may just have enough energy to push over the first one. That one, of course, adds momentum so that when you crash into the second one, that one goes too. All the way to the Queen.
If you can do a good thing more than once than you should be doing it and if you can’t than you never really had a chance to begin with.
And the beat goes on.
Transitions
There’s a moment when things begin to change for you as an artist and one of those moments was last Thursday when my friends told me they couldn’t come to my show and still there were people in the audience and while many of these people were fans of the great Paul Brill and other artists some of them were actual legitimate fans of mine. And that was a special feeling to move past the point where my draw is completely dependent on my friends because it means you are doing something that is starting to catch on. Maybe this is obvious to other people but it felt like a transitional moment. One where it doesn’t matter if we went to school together, or got drunk together sometime back somewhen, but really it’s about the fact that you dig the music we’re making and there is no other pretense and no other expectation save for that we won’t suck when we perform.
