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Music, Music, Music

On January 31, 2010, I was honored to participate in a unique gig celebrating the 30th anniversary of Big City Orchestra. When you put on a BCO record, you just never know what you're going to get. Assaultive noise, atonal drone, twisted pop? Could be any or all of them.

That's partly because BCO has always been a loose collective of experienced musicians and dedicated amateurs (and when I say "dedicated amateurs" I mean people dedicated to remaining amateur), led by the mysterious Eno-esque figure, dAS. The anniversary gig brought together members from throughout the group's history recombined and reassembled into one-night-only aggregations. I was be a member, along with Ninah and Jonathan, of the "house band." We played a couple tunes on our own and also backed each of the other aggregations for a song.

Oh, and of course there were puppets, too. It was a hoot.

In late 2009, I played rhythm guitar and percussion, as well as singing backing vocals, for the tribute band, Ziggy Love. Our mission was simple: to recreate The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars in a live setting. We don't dress up or try to capture the look of the band, just play the album arrangements as well as we can, while still trying to keep the excitement and spontaneity of a live show. There's YouTube video of our first gig, of course, which we played at the Uptown in Oakland. We don't have any upcoming gigs scheduled.

Took my little keyboard and old PC laptop to Chakra Chimp Research Kitchens way back on Wednesday, June 17th last year for episode #75 of UB Radio Salon. Had a great time with daS & Ninah, and we did a pretty good show, if I do say so myself. You can download it from the UB pages at the Internet Archive. You can savor more of my contributions to the UB Radio Salon by listening to such classic episodes as #44, #59, #64, #78 and #81. My latest appearance was on #95, Guitars and Race Cars.

2009 was a banner year for our uke & vocals duo. We opened for Jonathan Segel and Victor Krummenacher at Red Hill Books in Bernal Heights. There was our wildly successful book singing with Betsy Franco, June 28th at Kepler's Books in Menlo Park. That's where we debuted Cat Haiku 2.

Then there was the August 30, 2009 book singing in the wilds of Clayton, just outside Concord. We were accompanied on the journey to the far East Bay by our neice, Lolo, who kindly shot some video footage I still have yet to view. We played to about a dozen kids. Clayton Books was a sweet little store, and of course I didn't come home empty-handed. One of my piles of books got three hardcovers taller, with Coetzee's Disgrace, Saul Bellow's classic, Humboldt's Gift, and Say You're One of Them a book of short stories by Nigerian author, Uwen Akpam.

The Diminishing Pile of Books Project

Speaking of piles of books, aren't I supposed to be spending my spare time trying to read some of the books I bought last Fall in New York City? Why, yes I am supposed to be doing that.

I enjoyed a lazy, rainy Sunday this past weekend, doing that day's Merle Reagle crossword puzzle and then reading about half of John Elder Robison's memoir, Look Me in the Eye.

I bought The Rest is Noise in Emeryville, last year. By definition, it is not part of the pile of books from NYC. Too bad, because it's what I just finished reading. Hey, the author is the music critic of The New Yorker, that's close enough. I enjoyed the book, with its compact and breezy descriptions of musicians, manifestos and milieus. The website, with its sound samples and even YouTube links (John Cage performing "Water Walk" on "What's My Line" is a highlight) is well worth checking out.

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