This is a wonderful/quazy video by my old friend Rex Benincasa. It reminds me of Sun Ra and its conspiratorial so it goes in and out of meaning and picks up perfecting, I think, the humor and deadly seriousness of why conspiracy theory in our time is really not, I dont think, theoretical but a kind of playing field not only of consciousness but of art. Rex and I met more than 30 years ago when I was living in Hells Kitchen and I really wanted musicians to play along with for the songs I had written on the piano that took up most of the space in the living room I shared with Richard before he ran away to be with the horses who ran at River Downs. The living room had no heat the winter I put an ad in the Village Voice for a drummer, a sax player and a bass player to come audition one snowy winter afternoon. Rex walked in completely funny but also completely serious and was a terrific drummer, and there was a great sax player named Lee and a bass player we had to keep replacing because we could never find a good one. We were called David Michael Clarke (my birth name) and the Finally Band and we played some clubs: Lewis Friedmans S.N.A.F.U. with the Robert Mapplethorp photographs of flowers on the walls (Friedman had been part owner of Reno Sweeneys and this was going to be his first solo venture), Tramps, Erics on the Upper East Side. Towards the end, when drinking and the behavior that goes along with too much drinking brought on a reputation and the band disbanded, I was playing to less and less people until the night of only two people in the audience: an old girlfriend and the guy I was currently dating. Id had it. I knew it was time to put the music away. But it \was a great departure/distraction -- something I did well after certain sundowns, when New York dares you to pack it in and go home. I could write lyrics, though because I knew poetry already and I listened really closely to people like Laura Nyro and the minimalists. But I didnt know the keyboard well enough and it always seemed to be exactly the same size as I was and I knew that in order for me to ever be a good player it would have to be bigger than the sky.
Posted on: Sat, 04 Oct 2014 04:41:33 +0000
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