you can always go-- "Downtown"!...an excellent zip-code, a wunnerful weltenschaung, a spectacular new movie produced written and starring Joey Dedio, a canny bi-coastal thespian and running buddy of my onetime protege Vin Diesel, which premiered last night at the Apollo Theater with a free screening...and a gritty, searing no-holds-barred account of homeless people surviving on the mean streets of Manhattan it was, excellent cast sparkling through the on-screen schmutz throughout, particularly lovely young Latina actress Flora Martinez and former gamine veteran French trooper Genevieve Bujold...last time I was up at the Apollo was many many moons ago to see the Beastie Boys get boo'ed off the stage (triggered by Mike D's ill-advised comment/falsetto'ed JB impression: "The Apollo Theater!!! Ah feel jus' like James Brown!!...Please Please Please Pleeeeeeez!") --which caused a shit-storm of scorn and mass obloquy to rain down on the Boys' heads from the unamused patrons of colour there, Beastie Boyos bolting off the stage shortly thereafter...

Downtown on the Bowery Friday night Gods and Monsters played our collective heart out with a white-hot set sparked by the last-minute surprise appearance of Jerry Harrison, who was in town taking his daughter round to look at colleges...Ernie rustled up a keyboard for Jerry to play from Jonathan Kane at the eleventh hour-- and we slam-dunked maybe the best most intense and powerful set as ever we played as a 5 piece. with Jerry laughing and loose, on message and on fire, we premiered quite a few new songs as well and I will tell you that the set ranked up there as one of the top 5 greatest Gods and Monsters hits since I started the group in 1989...the walls of the Bowery Poetry Club shook, the stage threatened to give way, Jason Billy and Ernie and I were inspired to new heights of instrumental madness and derring-do with Jerry there to goad us on--and hey you can check a clip of us live performing our new anthem "Swamp Thing" on Youtube, which you can view here at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5uZVD50SWc
--taken from our forthcoming new live at CMJ CD/DVD which Jerry is putting the finishing touches to with a 5.1 surround sound mix, show was ilmed last November at the Bowery Poetry Club--the new disc should be out in the fall, stay tuned...

Other fun stuff: had a delicious dinner up at my pal the Czech UN Ambassador Martin Palous' luxurious townhouse last week, pretty incroyable upper Eastside domicile replete with swimming pool, sauna, mirrored bathrooms galore (apparently a swinging 70's former Japanese brothel bought by the shrewd Czech govt. for a song some years ago and refurbished)--and a day later went uptown to the east 80's for a Czech fashion show at the Bohemian National Hall, a benefit for Unicef, where fetching semi-nude multi-hued models of colour strutted their stuff draped in diaphanous eleganza to ominous doomy electronica in the elegant desuetude of the old Hall itself, and where back in a side room homemade dolls were on sale the proceeds of which were going to Unicef, I purchased a fetching doll called "Eve" complete with dreadlocks and curly pubic hair (not the real deal, of course, but as they used to say about Beatlemania, "an incredible facsimile"--wooly bully, indeed!--those naughty Czech designers!).The Czech National Theater is the Bohemian National Home starting this weekend and I plan to be there...

Bye for now!

xxLove

Gary

PS The great Czech madman, poet, and Plastic People lyricist Egon Bondy, whom I wrote about back in October (check the entry titled "Bondy...Egon Bondy") just passed away, there was an excellent obit in the Times which you can read at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/books/15bondy.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

and Sopranos fans, please check out Virginia Heffernan's blog at http://screens.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/woke-up-this-morning/

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Posted By Gary Lucas to Gary Lucas at 4/18/2007 11:00:00 AM