“Yourself Presents” is an amazing public-access cable show produced by Howard and Diane Anshell that has been on FOREVER. I think it’s produced out in the deep wilds of East County San Diego, where hippies hunker down beyond the military-industrial complex. It makes me happy to know that the show continues on until this day.
I’d love to be on a clipper ship out at sea with these guys. Playing the flute, jamming some sweet reggae riffs, drinking honey wine and frollicking like mermaids and hobbits among the gay waves. The drummer would definitely be strapped into a life preserver before our ship set sail and then we’d be free and easy on the ocean breezy.
Hemp Sails by the “Yourself Presents” Band–LIVE in studio
I’ve written my first cover story for the Bohemian. It’s a 3,000 word piece on the disenrollments going on all over California, but focuses specially on recent ones among the Dry Creek Pomo Band here in Sonoma County. It was a fascinating topic and one that deserves attention.
Driving back from Bodega Bay with mom and the dog, chock-full of fish and chips and sunshine and every song on the cheesy local radio station sounds so good.
From June 1 2009 New Yorker profile of artist Bruce Nauman by Calvin Tomkins:
His studio process, then and now, was to read and think until an idea took hold of him. He reread Wittgenstein’s “Philosophical Investigations,” and John Cage’s writings on chance and contingency, both of which he had discovered in college, and he devoured Samuel Beckett’s novels and plays. “I was trying to understand what art is and what artists do, “he told me, “and a lot of that, for me, seemed to involve watching and waiting to see what would happen. When I’m desperate enough just to do anything, even if it seems completely stupid, it’s such a relief.” In those days, he hoped that sooner or later he’d figure out how to make art without such a struggle, but it never happened.
I imagine the objective of this lesson was “how to get totally Grishnackhfied in under two minutes with only an acoustic guitar and some cheap white face make-up.”
For those that don’t know, Count Grishnackh was the notorious member of a famed Norweigian black metal band who went to jail for murdering a member of a rival band after burning down a church.
Went to the city again to see a performance of “The In Betweens,” a production by independent company Dark Porch Theater. My companions made fun of me, but it was thrilling to be sitting in a theater again, as they said “hearing the creak of the floor boards, smelling the greasepaint from the stage make-up.” I was a proud theater geek in high school, a preoccupation that has been replaced over the years by music, work and writing, but Friday night’s performance reminded me that live theater has an entertainment and inspiration value all it’s own.
The first act takes place in a Victorian parlor, where a group of wealthy society people have gathered to be led into a seance by a Professor M, self-described spiritualist and member of Helena Blavatsky’s Theosophical Society. Professor M turns out to be a bit of a quack, but not so the Pandora’s Box that he has sold the the wealthy oil baron who hosts the seance.
When the box is opened by three curious servants, we were treated, after intermission, to scenes like this one:
Servants and Butler transformed into fabulist nymphs and pan of course, in a pastoral inbetween world, where nobody rules, society’s rules are thrown out and a live band courts the audience from stage right. I liked the Tom Waits-esque songs, and even the musical theater, Annie-styled voices of some of the lady singers. It plays at Exit Theater in San Francisco until May 30.
Saturday, got a last minute invite to see a free symphony performance by the American Philharmonic Sonoma County, an all-volunteer non-profit orchestra. I’d never been to the sympony before so the experience was wholly exciting all the way through. I expected an older crowd, but it was mixed. Nice to see teenagers dressed in vans and turqoise t-shirts, next to chubby restless kids, next to thirty-something couples, next to grey-haired grandmothers. At times I was itched to stand up, run around, couldn’t handle one more fluttering flute solo, but at the very end, as Suite from Daphnis et Chloe by Ravel built to a towering, feverish climax, I realized that this was more metal then any metal I’d ever heard. Pan appeared as he aids Daphnis in the rescue of Chloe who has been abducted by pirates. My blood was pumping, and it seems as though my mind was lifting and swirling towards the rafters with the music. I can’t wait to go again.
