I'm a tyme study man...and I have been parsing the milliseconds/burning the midnight scamp over the last couple weeks since my last entry, lots to report and so little Timetimetimetimetimetimetimetime (cue Lees Freres Chambres right about now)...

Some very very high points--the incomparable Michel Legrand at Birdland on Sunday night, Richard Porton was the only able-bodied soul I could corral (I'm an old cowhand) into forking over 50 bucks plus to see this truly living legendary French soundtrack composer/songwriter/jazzman, whose music I love in the main and was first exposed to at a tender age up in the 'Cuse at a double bill of (get this) Jacques Demy's "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg", coupled with Sidney Lumet's "The Pawnbroker" --talk about day for night!)-- here he was backed by Ron Carter and Lewis Nash and mainly stuck to his greatest hits, whuppin' the pearls with some beautiful embellishments...at the end I fought my way through a bevy of what seemed to consist of mainly French fans and matronly housewives to have a word with the master, I introduced myself with no mention of my musical background, thanked him for a beautiful concert, and told him how much I loved his score for Joseph Losey's "Eva" (1960), just about my favorite film and whose soundtrack was recently reissued http://www.cinemaretro.com/index.php?/archives/379-SOUNDTRACK-REVIEW-MICHEL-LEGRANDS-EVA.html...also Godard's "Bande a Part" (which mention of made him wince, for a second--check the anecdote for May 29th here http://hcl.harvard.edu/hfa/films/2004spring/legrand.html)--after which he looked deep into my eyes, mano a mano, sighed wistfully, "Ahhh, that was so long ago..."--then clasped my hand firmly and said completely non-facetiously "Thank you Monsieur, for the honor of letting me shake your hand!" (yes)...I tipped my hat to this genius of music and strode out onto 44th street with Richard...

on saturday night Gods and Monsters played the best concert ever, in my estimation, at Bowery Poetry Club, the guys were on fire, they never improvised like that before, sound was pristine, everybody was really listening to each other and locked into a deep groove throughout that didn't, Billy Ficca was so rock steady, Ernie Brooks and he held down the bottom end and wouldn't let go, Jason Candler and Joe Hendel absolutely soared on both sides of me on their horns, Joe's keyboards astonishingly Manzarek-like in parts...and I had 3 divas in tow: Aishlin Harrison served up a beautiful rendition of "It's So Easy" in a duet with me on acoustic guitar; Felice Rosser was a surprise guest and bigmama'ed her way shimmying across the stage in paroxysms of ecstasy on a vocalese scat through our version of Abdullah Ibrahim's "Bra Joe Kilimanjaro"...Danny Fields, Steve Paul, Jerry Roche, and my pals the Polish Consul General Krzystof Kasprzyk and the fabulous Monika Fabijanksa from the Polish Cultural Office made a surprise pop-in. Krzys knows an impressive amount of rock and roll history and is a great guy, Monika programs some of the best cultural offerings to be found in NYC on a weekly basis (check out the upcoming KIeslowski retrospective on CUNY TV, which she helped put together)...

and the final surprise of the evening, the ne plus ultra of the night, was an appearance by Ninet, the first winner of the Israeli version of "Pop Idol" 5 years ago, a huge star over there (check out her MySpace page at http://www.myspace.com/tayebninet)
and a big fan of my songs with Jeff Buckley--her manager Rotem Vahnich contacted me last summer about hooking up to do some songs with her, and she'd flown to New York to meet me after playing in LA, I had dinner with her and her entourage at Prime Grill, an excellent kosher steakhouse/sushi joint (!) on last Thursday night directly after attending Giorgio Gomelsky's birthday party in his loft (where he screened a rare print of "Thau in Love"--great underground music biz spook starring my pals David Johansen and Alan Vega--as well as the incomparable, eponymous Marty Thau), Ninet looked stunning with recently shorn hair which she had tinted a beautiful shade of purple the next day, I did 3 hour rehearsal with her on Friday concentrating mainly on one of my as yet unreleased Jeff Buckley collaborations (the epic "No One Must Find You Here")--and she was so brilliant on it I invited her to sing it with me on Saturday night...and thus we closed our set with me bringing her on in all her purple finery, and we duet-ed, and she was really amazing!! Brought the very full house down in fact...

The next day we went into Philip Glass's Looking Glass Studios to cut a demo of this song with the lovely Ichiho Nishiki engineering...and it was something else...we're working up a fully orchestrated arrangement for Ninet's next album, and she's is going to post it soon on her MySpace site-- so check for that!...Ninet will be performing next with me in Paris at the Hard Rock Cafe on June 3rd as part of the annual French Tribute to Jeff Buckley, alongside many other fantastic singers (including my old friend Elli Medeiros, the Uruguayan/Parisien French icon and face of the first French punk band The Stinky Toys, who later scored a massive hit over there with her song "Toi Mon Toit", check this archival clip of me and Gods and Monsters jamming with Elli at my 20th retrospective show at the Knitting Factory in NYC here http://youtube.com/watch?v=YDgp90eIYAE

The night before on Friday Caroline and Richard and I traipsed up the French Embassy on 5th Avenue and 78th Street for a gala party honoring the Film Society of Lincoln Center's annual "Rendez-vous with French Cinema" festival which is on now, the erudite FSOL director (and a big Captain Beefheart fan!) Richard Pena was there, along with honorees including director Claude LeLouch (I have long wanted to record my version of France's Lai's exquisite theme to "Un Homme et Une Femme", arranged for acoustic guitar and voice), the radiant Sandrine Bonnaire, who was so terrific in Agnes Varda's "Vagabond (Sans toi ni loi)" (Sandrine spoke at a screening of her spell-binding documentary about her autistic sister, "Sabine", last night at the Alliance Francaise here, which hosted by the Alliance's delightful film curator Marie Losier--who also was at the French embassy party), and my old Yale friend the erudite film scholar, author ("Indelible Shadows: Film and the Holocaust"), television host (for IFC, at the Cannes Film Festival), and director of Columbia University's undergraduate film program, Annette Insdorf--Annette and I go waaaaay back to my very first appearance in Europe, playing the lead guitar in Leonard Bernstein's "Mass" in Vienna with the Yale Symphony Orchestra in 1973, she was one of the featured singers and hoofers in the production and did a star turn on Lenny and Steven Schwartz's "God Said 'Let There Be Light'"...I recently dug up a video copy of the broadcast courtesy of my friend Klauz Totzler of ORF (Austrian National TV), who found it in their archives, and transferred it to DVD for me--and I immediately gave a copy to Annette (Tony Award winning costume designer William Ivy Long is next on the list)...btw,Klaus did an interview with me about my 30's Chinese Pop album "The Edge of Heaven" (possibly my most popular album to date) a couple of years ago for ORF in Vienna in their new modern art museum, submitted for your approval here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8kpUHLNjok

Last Wednesday night I had the pleasure of taping 5 solo acoustic numbers for the legendary Steve Paul's newest venture, the internet podcast channel DowntownTV.com, for their show "The Latest Show on Earth", hosted by my young protege and bandmate (and babe magnet) Joe Hendel--it's a smart, witty, charming and shambolic show airing at midnight 4-5 nights a week, whose inaugural programs boasted appearances by Stephen Merritt, Andrew WK, one of the guys from the Moldy Peaches--all soon to be archived on their website. Check it out, Joe is a really talented host, raconteur, and musician, and the show is hot, fresh and finding it's sea-legs fast...

Lastly, I want to alert y'all to the upcoming NYC debut appearance of my old friend the superbly gifted Yael Naim, a French-Israeli chanteuse who lives in Paris, and who seems to have seduced the whole world with her song "New Soul", which is currently the #1 iTunes download (and also the theme of Apple's Macbook Air campaign, which hasn't hurt matters at all)...

I first met Yael in the late 90's in the company of her friend Anne Warin, both of whom were starring in the long running French musical "Les Dix Commandments"...and we hit it off straight away, Yael is a genuine, friendly and extremely warm and generous soul (not to mention possessing a voice that can induce frissons effortlessly)...

On 9/11, I was midway through a European solo tour, and was staying in Paris for a few days engaged in promoting my 30's Chinese pop album, which had just been released in France...that night a circle of many of my closest French friends came over to my hotel in Montmartre, where we stayed up for hours watching CNN and the endless footage of the twin towers coming down, we were crying and commiserating with each other, I was also a bit frantic also as I'd been unable to get through to talk to Caroline as the phones were down to New York-- thank God I eventually reached her mother in London, who had spoken to her shortly after the first tower had collapsed, so I knew she was okay...anyway Yael helped really soothe me and calm me down that night, I will never forget that of course, we bonded very deeply...

and a couple years ago I visited her in her flat in paris when I was playing at the Sunset Jazz Club, she was working on an early version of her current hit album (on tot Ou tard in France, released March 14th on Atlantic here--http://www.yaelweb.com/), and played some steel guitar on a few tracks...I thought the music and songs she had played me, which she had recorded all by herself on a digital recorder in her flat-was some of the most beautiful music I'd ever heard, I came back raving about her new music to everyone I could--but these things take time, alas...and I'm so glad that finally, Yael's time is now :-)

She is making her NYC debut at the Bowery Ballroom here on March 15th, and Caroline (who loves her music very much also) and I will be there to cheer her on...

Off to Toronto tomorrow to play the Canadian Music Week 2008 with "The Golem" at the old art deco Royal Yorke Theatre on Thursday, and to participate in a panel on Guitar Heros and Game Theory with McGill University's Sandy Pearlman (Blue Oyster Cult and Clash producer) and Dan Levitin ("This is Your Brain on Music"--great book!)...

then off to Portugal to play with my pals the spiffy Dead Combo (http://www.myspace.com/deadcombo), at a blues festival in Coimbra curated by Paulo Furtado, Portuguese cult artist supreme the Legendary Tiger Man (http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=83907387)
whom I formed a mutual admiration society with in Brussels last summer playing a festival with DJ Cosmo (our new Wild Rumpus single "Purple Somersault" is about to drop any day now as a 12 inch vinyl release on her Bitches Brew label)...also doing an instore at the Lisbon FNAC in the company of Portuguese music journalist Rui Silva to promoter his new book about The Doors, "Contigo Torno-Me Real" (You Make Me Real), Edicoes Frontamento, for which I was interviewed talking about Jim Morrison and the group and their inspiration to me and Jeff Buckley, also my adventures trying to find Jim's grave at Pere Lachaise in Paris while I was staying with Elli Medeiros which I related in a previous blog somewhere (find it, amigos)...

As Duke Elliington remarked-

I love you madly!

xxGary

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Posted By Gary Lucas to Gary Lucas at 3/01/2008 10:44:00 AM