CD release party tonight, Paranoid Larry's latest record

CD release party at *6 pm* TONIGHT for a fantastic record I did backing vocals on:

Paranoid Larry & his Imaginary Band: The Struggle For Existence

68 Jay St Bar (at Water St.), DUMBO, Brooklyn. No cover, $10 for the CD. Larry's the one with the most serious beard in the room. Say I sentcha.

Paranoid Larry on Myspace (the current record isn't up there yet)
The Roches sing Paranoid Larry's No Shoes
The record on CD Baby

Kim Deal pedalling.

Happy to be the cat who MEOWed

Amanda Palmer is alive and singing

I've just gotten turned onto the new muxtape and I really think that this chick ROCKS. She sings about having abortions after daterapes but not caring because she's just sent a fanletter off to Oasis and she'll be seeing Blur in September with her ex-best friend Melissa who was molested and so she knew the right clinic to bring her to after the daterape, but who subsequently blabbed about everything to everybody and so they're not talking anymore but it'll probably be alright by September and it's all packed into a 2 minute frenzy and this is feelgood music par excellence.

Really, this is a great selection of songs. There is some wonky 'room atmos' in between songs which might have something to do with David Lynch, I don't know I didn't watch Twin Peaks, but this chick has got guts and energy and her record company has stopped promoting her for having an imperfect figure and singing about difficult female topics and even so she's getting interviewed by the Guardian and I hope she does well.

There's also a great song about it being ok that there isn't love because there's the Dukes of Hazzard and Southern Comfort.

Fun must be recognised in all her forms. Fun must be allowed to make her way uninhibited in the world, regardless of where she chooses to dance. And by fun I do not mean the fun of the murderer or the fun of the rapist or the fun of the mean girl who used to bite me when I was 6 (Jennifer whose brother was Trevor, if I knew their surnames I would write them here but I do not. They were both blonde, that is all the information I have). I mean the fun that makes its way into earnest and dark places and brings light. I feel very strongly about this. This chick was criticised for doing just that, and tv stations said they liked her song but they would not allow it to be played nonetheless. She has written a fantastic blog post about the topic.


Amanda Palmer is my new favourite person.

Get on your earplugs

U2 released their latest song yesterday. Have you heard it? It's like the sound of repackaged bad debt. And this is the stuff they've been doing with Lanois and Eno. After they threw out the stuff they did with Rick Rubin.

This is about as clicheed as Bono's usual rants about being from the workingclass northside suburb of Glasnevin and blah blah blah about kings and greatness.

Timmy Thumbs

This is Timmy Thumbs. I met Timmy Thumbs in august 2003 when he was the resident cat in the tattoo parlour on St. Marks around 1st ave. I was taking pictures of the tattoo artists and generally shooting the shit in this incredible cave of images. Timmy had had some kind of a chequered history, I think. Kind of a rocknroll polydactl.

There were Timmy Thumbs posters on the wall of the waiting room part of the studio, next to an old fullsize pacman machine. Timmy spent a lot of time hanging out on this futon sofa, showing off his crazy paws. I made him a photoshoot.

The dog that ate my dinner

I went to get some dinner, in the student bar of this university that I'm spending my days hanging out in, lately, working on these projects I'm really excited about, these projects I'm busy breathing life into, lately.

So I'm feeling kind of antsy and I go to the student bar to get some food, and all they've got left is this stuff called "chicken goujons" and you know, these badly processed chip things, and I turn from the counter and realise that there are about six hundred eighteen year olds in flouncy dresses and suits, and the chip lady tells me that it's some kind of first year ball. There's nowhere for me to sit and eat my chicken goujons, so I go outside to the outdoor courtyard, and the rain is pelting down on the roof above where I sit, eat, and watch the parade of loud satin and umbrellas, running for cover and madly text messaging.

That's when the pooch shows up. The one pictured. He just showed up, quietly sat at my table, sat and looked at me. His eyes watery, sad looking, old, he looked dirty, neglected, not malnourished. Matter of fact begging. No bullshit about it. No tricks, no fancy stuff, no cuteness, no smooth moves. So I gave him some of my chips, the crispy ones, the ones I don't like. He ate them. I gave him more. I took pictures of the girls in their vehement coloured satin, some with quite elaborately positioned cleavage, some in frou frou meringue style, all with spindly heeled sandals and their toes squidging around in the rain, as they ran across the courtyard, through the downpour.

Later I got to thinking about the Trinity Ball, the satin-fest of my own extreme youth. I never wore satin: went only, I think, to two of them, though it could have been more, and I certainly have many vivid memories from them. To the first one I wore very short scarlet velvet, bought a ticket off someone on the day, having resisted the whole affair for a full year before that. And the second one I worked at, as hospitality chica. That night was notable for being offered a line of cocaine for the first time (aw..) and some London rapper tried to bribe my t-shirt from me (for the t-shirt's sake, I think, not the be-bra'd female underneath it). The Buzzcocks played that year, some reunion gig, I don't know if any of us youngsters really knew who they were. They seemed to have fun, though, and trashed the sound system, middle aged rebels that they were.

Back in the Stables courtyard, the pooch kept looking at me. He wasn't aggressive, but it was intense. I gave him more chips, then some chicken, then decided to buy him some kind of food in the shop. So off I went, and found a can of sardines, and got looked at sadly by the boy behind the counter with the large auburn eyes, and went out again in the rain, looking for sad pooch amongst the legs of the suited boys and the satinned girls, but sad pooch had disappeared. I felt wretched.

Reminded me of a horribly mangey, very sick and suspicious, terrified and starving dog I met in New Orleans one hot august evening. I followed him into some midtown ghettoes trying to give him some can of dog food I had bought in a petrol station. He didn't want it, kept running from me, suspicious of what I was up to. Followed him all the way to Basin street, or Perdido, some street once full of hookers, now famous from a song that came from that seething time in the life of that city. He fucked off, finally, after giving chase to me in a small park, and I walked back through those ghettoes, with street dudes sleeping on benches, and tears pouring down my face, all the way to the St. Charles streetcar, feeling a place in my heart that was sucking from the inside.

Sometimes your help is not wanted and that is hard.

A boy tried to say something witty and friendly to me last night. I responded with ueber-caginess. He apologised for freaking me out. I responded with polite ueber-caginess. Oh I prefer when life is not so serious.

These tiny stories are important. Important to tell, sometimes. I don't know why.

How it rolled, through the AGES

So I'm youtubing bob dylan "like a rolling stone"
sixties seventies eighties nineties to last year

He never again hit that straight off the blocks peak that was so living in him in the mid sixties
the band's bobdylanband sound was just so good, innocent and shambolic, spacious...
http://youtube.com/watch?v=xO0gSJGJ7Fs

but he definitely evolved
cept that he seems to be singing the same song with different lyrics in the same way, belting some country rock mantra over and over, in the seventies at least
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Q9-FbvTJJLM
blood on the tracks to slow train coming, sounds like that the whole way through, to me, tho you can smell his sweat on slow train coming.

then there's this, unfortunate
http://youtube.com/watch?v=JVzRUFa5g04

or when he actually became his rolling stoner herself
http://youtube.com/watch?v=zZrdMPbfcSg

but for the SINISTER side of fame, here's an object lesson
http://youtube.com/watch?v=v5kAUw_euvo

until he's phoning it in, literally, and he's become a different species altogether
http://youtube.com/watch?v=gz9aXBnVkew

and just to round the whole thing into ultima-rockstar land, probably the last stop on the rolling stone train (the first stop was so much more interesting, probably like a shot of speed at doctor robert's), there's this
http://youtube.com/watch?v=URF0FNqTjhI

For the love of Iggy

Didya ever hear the story of China Girl? Iggy Pop wrote it with David Bowie, when they both lived in a black-painted ten room apartment in Berlin. Have you ever heard Iggy's version of it? It's about as FUCKEDUP a rocknroll song as has ever been writ and taped. Naked.

So Iggy spent all his money on getting FUCKEDUP and was being made bankrupt, when Bowie decided to record China Girl for his Lets Dance record, so that Iggy would get half the royalties and get his shit together a bit.

That's love, I think.

But I'm listening closely to Lust for Life right now, and I think I've just heard him singing about hypnotising chickens.

From the mean streets of Manhattan to the Limerick Hilton

I love watching footage of Manhattan from the seventies. Back in the time when Manhattan had neighbourhoods, when it was LIVING. Even when it's just a movie, but shot on the streets. Have you seen a movie called Cool Breeze? Some minor blaxploitation movie, sort of Shaft-like, set on the wild west streets and formica diners of newyorkcityland when they were wild and the men wore tight blue jeans and slang was jiving. And when the lay of the land was being carved up between black brothers and Irish cops. Jesus, the history of the Irish in America is AMAZINGLY interesting to me. Anyway, this movie is fabulous. Classic Irish brute v Nigguh brute battles in wartorn new york city, when Sistah Giuliani wasn't even an evil glint in a poof-fro'd pimp's eye.

Got sorted out last night by Polly Harvey and Lenny Bruce. I no longer feel alone in the world. Oh, and an interview with an Irish novelist called Anne Enright, who is just clearly a ROCKA. I want to read her books now. Or chat with her. Something. Felt like I was losing my soul yesterday. My sense of humour drained away like the colour from my cheeks. My cough is getting stronger. It feels like something pretty big is making its way into the world through my heaving chest.

I'm writing this in the Hilton. A little girl and a little boy have just passed where I'm sitting in the lobby. They are about eight years old. The little girl is in charge. She says to the little boy: "This I have to show you, just this and one more thing. This is my secret passage." And she shows him, and the little boy says, "cool". And then they have a very involved conversation in the secret passage. He asks her all sorts of questions about it. He seems to be particularly interested in the geography of the area, and the logistics of how to drive a car through it. She is more than adept to show him around, and orientate him. She sings as she shows. Then they have a conversation about the night he spent in Ennis, and she does a little step dancing.

And then off they go so she can show him the one more thing.

The jetlag roadshow rolls on

The jetlag show is the longest running musical in town, this week. This morning I awoke at 3.30 am, so now I'm on Moscow time, or something. I'm having all sorts of strange combinations of feelings, today, too. A little earlier it was despondent and fine. I've just been experiencing loss of faith in good things. It's such a pity when that happens.

A cringe ricocheted through the afternoon like a bullet of lightning.

I saw an excellent band last weekend. They're called Fly Ashtray, they're from the Bronx and they've been together for years. They make a gorgeous fat harmonic rocknroll sound. A love vibe composed of the orgasm bits of classic 70's rocknroll, mixed together with a little avant garde kick to the left, and delivered with a kind of expanded punk soul. And I've got to mention them, because they've just emailed me to say they're going to fill up my iPod with free cds. And they rock. Truly.

Anyone got a joke?

I am in the mood for rock and baby, I am in the mood for roll

I'm a-going dancin tonight! I don't feel good for much this weekend except dancing, having fun and hanging out on my fire escape.

Have a great weekend..


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnY1hlI-olw&mode=related&search=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6Mw6b1T50U&mode=related&search=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zP1TC21QsnA&mode=related&search=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzKiqk2iynY

that rocknroll feeling, which is not the same as that microsoft feeling

Last week was happily a rocknroll kind of week, what with the arctic monkeys in central park on wednesday, barband singing in chinatown on thursday, the brooklyn country music festival at southpaw on friday and uh, Shakespeare in the Park on saturday. Well you know, rocknroll is a feeling, my friends.

I would post the review I wrote of the arctics gig, but my microsoft word test drive has just expired today and it won't even open any of the documents I've written in it.

So this is a bit of a bollocks moment. If anyone has any suggestions as to how I can avoid paying microsoft four hundred bucks for access to the documents I wrote in word (and I have been writing like a pig in muck, ladies and gentlemen), please email me at herecomeslucy AT gmail DOT com.

Thanks.

Queen of the Rock, Queen of the Roll

I saw a beautiful photograph today.

It was taken in CBGB's in 1975. Patti Smith is wearing a sleeveless Ronny Wood t-shirt and she's holding court, grooving, dancing. And Bob Dylan is standing beside her, watching her at the centre of things, with a huge warm smile of pure delight, looking healthy and bearded, his hands clasped together tightly at his chest. It is entirely unlike any photograph of the man that I have ever seen. Of course neither of them seem aware of the camera. And even if they were, it was probably taken by a friend.

I'm still thinking about this image. I can hear his laugh, her drawl.

Toll the bell

I met Bob last weekend on avenue A, it was a nice surprise to see someone from the old days there. I haven't seen Greywolf since I got here.

Greywolf is an old Cherokee man, mixed with New York city blood and filth and piss and liquor. He lived in Alphabet city around Tompkins Square park for years, he was there back in the eighties, when everything was different around the neighbourhood.

I've heard stories of nightly gunshots, drug-gang snipers on the rooves of buildings, ready to pick off any cops who wandered past avenue A. Stories of fires being lit in storefronts, of fire on the streets, of transvestite prostitutes, of colour and of dilapidation. And cheap rent. And artists renting. A different time.

Greywolf had a flute he used to play on Avenue A. It was six hundred years old, he told me, passed down through the generations to him. He also told me of having composed the music for some Disney movie, and of having toured with Santana. I've heard some crazyassed stories on the streets of Manhattan, really nothing is unbelievable here.

Greywolf lived on the street in all weathers. I don't know what he did in the winter, but his home was avenue A, and Tompkins square park. And that's where he sat every night, half naked, and welcoming, and always up for a chat.

Greywolf has disappeared.

I've heard a story he's living in the projects on avenue d, but that was from Francis the Irish cowboy Texan, who may or may not know what the hell he's talking about.

Bob is a neighbourhood alphabet city photographer, been living there for thirty odd years, basically his whole adult life, used to have a storefront and just saw the neighbourhood get chipped away at gradually, over the years. There seem to be some mournful stories in Bob's face, all about gentrification and hard times and the neighbourhood changing.

He stands out there on Avenue A on mild evenings, hanging out and meeting people. It's like an elaborate mourning ritual, marking the passing of this incredibly colourful neighbourhood of New York city, the stomping ground of his youth. Mostly he's just hanging out, talking the talk of avenue A. It was good to see him again. I hope to see him this weekend, if I'm in alphabet city.

It's a popular topic in that part of NYC right now. Huge changes have happened in what is now called the East Village over the past 20 years since the Tompkins square riots, where the homeless derelicts and junkies and hippies and hangabouts on Tompkins square had their Stonewall moment and laid a tent over a part of the park and declared it their home in rebellion against the increased pressure from the police to up sticks and remove their filthy selves from the neighbourhood. There were riots for days. That was 20 years ago.

In the past year, a number of landmark Lower East Side clubs have closed. Sin-e is gone, Tonic is gone, CBGB's is gone, amazingly, a big hoarding all around it and a block of condos on the way up. It's really quite obnoxious what's happening to areas like the LES and Williamsburg/Greenpoint lately. The lower east side has become a kind of hip theme park, and the place the bankers pour into on the weekends, ordering $300 bottles of liquor and drinking until dawn.

The LES is so fucking over and it's a terrible pity. And in that sense, in that sort of Laurie Anderson or Velvet Underground or Blondie-CBGB's or Bowery or Washington Square Park or even MacDougal Street in the fifties and early sixties sort of way, in that downtown sort of way, New York IS over.

New York is brimming over with endless variations of life, and that reality is what I resonate to, what my body rhymes with every minute I'm here and feeling like a reservoir of devotion to her. It's the diversity of life, it's the living strangeness of it all, the endless opportunities, the thousands and thousands of strange strands of life happening and weaving across each other's paths with so little human warmth and kindness and yet a kind of white heat pulsing through it all every minute of every day.

But it's probably not a place to find a community of artists who couldn't be arsed with earning a living and don't have to care much about that, either, but work their arses off on their work, for the sheer love of it. There's a sense here that if you're not making a lot of money, that you're lazy. That if you're not selling what you do, that you're not successful. That's the set-up. It's pernicious. But very interesting.

I can't tell you how important the business of money is, here. Like nowhere else I have ever been or felt. Fortunes and potential fortunes are dealt in every day. Dreams, hopes and expectations are of dollars and fame and prestige and status. Wealth is the Shangri-la, the dance, the game, the hunt and the kill.

So the creative nutters and experimenters have been eased and kicked out, in large part. I mean the people who aren't just trying to create some sort of hip new underground market brand. It's a different place, you know those were different times. It is what it is, and what it is is thrilling and beautiful in its own peculiar condominiumized sort of way. Hail hail nyc, toll the bell for the changing neighbourhoods.

Greywolf is off the streets.

Music from a farther room

There's a musician living a couple of blocks down my street. I've passed him in his ground floor practice room a couple of times now, once playing percussion in the dark, and just this evening he was practising piano with the light on. I'd love to call out to him to play with me, but he's practising and I don't want to disturb him. But you know, my route to the subway has changed. It's the same distance, but these days I go right down my street to get to it.

Last night at Times square 2 train uptown platform, a dude stood playing a keyboard that was strapped around him like a guitar, and singing his heart out. I was busy dancing with my iPod along the downtown platform, when I saw him. An announcement came that the next downtown 2 train was coming in 10 minutes, so I skipped across to the uptown platform and listened a bit, danced a bit. People were listening and getting all earnest and then dropping in small change. I used to get that in the street in Copenhagen, too. People standing and listening for a full song, then doin the jingle jangle with some loose coppers. This is New York city, folks! Give a dollar at least, for Christ's sake. Keep your quarters for the laundry machine.

I'm singing in a bar in Chinatown on Thursday, just a back-up spot, singing some three part harmonies.. but it should be some good rocknroll fun! The band's called The Mercenaries, and the gig's at 9.30 in Bar 169, at 169 East Broadway. That's the F to East Broadway. See you there!

You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain

too much love drives a woman insane
i lost my will
oh what a thrill
goodness gracious great balls of fire

So I haven't been blogging much since I kicked it off... but I've been busy! All sorts of New York and computer-based concerns are whizzin' round my brain, sugar.

Speaking of sugar pies and fruit flies and all things nice and sowprisin' baby doll, it looks like I'm heading for New Orleans Louisiana within the next couple of weeks. I've got to say I'm really feeling quite apprehensive about this trip.

I mean, when I met Nola for the first time, it took four days but I fell in love. I slipped inside Nola's sheets and danced. She moved me. We grooved to each other's beat. I loved inside her, played inside her, cried inside her, was amazed inside her, I learned streetsmarts inside her, I met a black man called Elvis who played guitar inside her, I rode her streetcars dripping wet from the aftermath of some hurricane winds inside her, I listened inside her, I met Miss Rose inside her.

I do not expect to find this Nola when I return.