paradise redux

let's continue with the john prine show.

i promised some celebrity cameos, here's the first- before i went in to the show i decided i better get some tissues and cough drops ( i was two days into a nasty cold) so i walked down the street and stocked up on same. so now i'm walking back and i pass the entrance to the director's guild of america and who is walking out the door? marty scorsese! there he is! teeny tiny little guy looking quite dapper in his camel hair top coat. talking to some pals and walking to a car waiting to pick him up. so i ran over and said "marty! i just bought the new york , new york 30th anniversary dvd- i love that movie! people really need to rediscover that film!".........no. i didn't do that, i just looked at him and in my head said "oooo marty" and kept walking

a number of years ago i was walking down 5th ave. and i saw the director robert benton, so i started following him and after a few blocks i thought "what the hell am i doing?" and walked away. but for about 4 minutes benton had a stalker.

back to carnegie hall: prine opens with the song "spanish pipedream" the chorus of which asks the listener to throw away your tv , newspaper, move to the country, eat peaches and find jesus on your own. it is met with roars of approval.

after that he deadpans a great line , "i guess you found the place alright" **

and the night continued on with lots of wonderful music, great stories and odd little moments, during two different songs he ad libbed a line or two and got lost and needed to vamp a bit until he found his way back. much to the audience's delight.

One of the duets he did with iris dement was a song he wrote for a movie he was in directed by billy bob thornton. the song is in spite of ourselves and he expressed his amusement (and bemusement) that people come up to him and tell him that this was there wedding song. perhaps i should point out that iris' opening lines in the song are "he ain't been laid in a month of sundays/ i caught him once and he was sniffin' my undies"

his songs sound simple and matter of fact but he has a great ability to mix the epic and the everyday with the weird and it all works. when you get a chance listen to the song "the missing years" which is the story of where jesus was for the 18 years before he turned 30. in a 4 minute song jesus is born and lives in rome, london, invents the beatles, plays with the stones, gets married, talks to god and on and on. amazing stuff

now for the inside the show celebrity- mikey! from american chopper, one of my favorite shows, love it. but let me say this, mikey is a dick! it breaks my heart to say it, but there it is. he and three or four other people show up a half an hour into the show and the whole time he's talking and getting up and down and changing his seat and basically being a nuisance. and of course the curse of celebrity (especially tv celebrity) is that not only are you a dick but you are "mikey, that guy from that motorcycle show, dick" needless to say he and crew left early as well. but it wasn't over because he came back 5 minutes later to try and find the john prine souvenir fly swatter that he lost. after a few minutes of down on all fours searching , he found it.

(the other thought that went thru my head was "mikey couldn't get any better seats than these crappy one's i'm sittin' in?" fame ain't it a bitch.


** a reference to the old joke- how do you get to carnegie hall?

paradise

last saturday night i went into manhattan to see the great john prine. wonderful show- he played for three hours! three hours! to put this is perspective it is john on vocals and guitar, ------guitar solos and harmony vocals, and --------bass. and on this night the country singer songwriter iris dement came out and sang 4 or 5 duets with john.

now prine is a wonderful singer but steve perry he ain't. he has a great conversational singing voice, at one point during the night he commented that he can sing in two keys and the song he had started wasn't in either of them. he also battled throat cancer a few years back which obviously affected his voice. to my mind though he's a much better singer today than he was when he started but, by the end of the night his voice was starting to show the strain.

I saw him in albany two summers ago and he had an opening act so his set was a mere two hours long and his voice was strong throughout.

saturdays show was at carnegie hall and it had been a few years (and more than a few pounds) since i had been there. i was in the balcony, which in fancy concert hall talk means five stories up. by stairs. which means that as you continue your climb, the stairways are strewn with the bodies of the old and out of shape. the only thing keeping you moving up is vanity"please don't let me be one of those guys"

then when i arrive at the balcony i essentially have to walk down an entire flight to reach my seat.at carnegie hall, like at the older broadway houses, leg room and seat room are non existent. thank god i had an aisle! i had to chase some old hippie out of my seat. he tried to persuade me that he should sit there because he got there first. i don't remember what i said but judging by his expression and the speed with which he moved i suspect i was a bit abrupt.

( a slight digression: i spent a few days in woodstock this past spring and decided that it is a thin line that separates an old hippie from a nasty street bum. I say this with no judgement or animosity-just a keen sense of observation)

i will continue this tomorrow perhaps- there are some celebrities that will make cameo appearances, both inside and outside the show!

let me finish by saying if you are not familiar with john prine you should give him a listen. I suggest you check out his first album ,john prine, although his voice is very different the songwriting is inspirational. listen and be amazed (and humbled) that sam stone, hello in there, paradise, and angel from montgomery are all on one record.