Peeking into the rock

We went to The Attic downtown (we took the car even though it's only a few blocks because it was raining really hard)to see the New Orleans Klezmer All Stars. The show was supposed to start at seven, but the intersection of New Orleans and Santa Cruz cultures was just too much for any sort of schedule to support and the sound check didn't start until 7:30. I guess The Attic's sound system is a little off because there was this low-level white noise until the band decided to do without mics except for the standup bass. That's okay, because klezmer is loud. These guys were lots of fun and the music was really wonderful but nobody seemed to want to dance, least of all the nice fellow. Some young woman led one dance but after that it seemed like I was the only one who wanted to and I can't be the first one on the floor, I really can't, I get like trembly thinking about it. And anyway I got an asthma attack (coughing) just from the first time, which was disappointing. After that I sort of wiggled around and swayed and tapped my feet and fingers because you can't not respond physically to klezmer, even if there's some reason you're not actually dancing. The electric guitarist was in a triumphant mood because he has recently realized that the old argument about whether it is even possible to play klezmer on an electric guitar has become obsolete and he won. He said that he learned his craft from the musicians that the purists hold up as the only true klezmer musicians and they encouraged him to do what he does, so there.

I bought a CD -- "Fresh Out the Past with the tune "Coney Island Whitefish" on it and, well, you know the rest of that sentence. No daddy to play it for, no daddy to introduce to the electric guitarist so they could have a rousing conversation about klezmer and what is folk music and all. I tried to get the sample music links to work but their setup doesn't believe that I have cookies enabled and I just can't get anything to happen. But maybe you can: otherwise, trust me that "Coney Island Whitefish" is a beautiful piece.

Before the band got there we saw our friend Darryl Ferucci who is probably one of his generation's most brilliant artists (he's a half-step younger than us: I knew him as the small stepchild of my film teacher when I was first at the University. Later on, he, like several other guys including his younger brother Aaron, spent a while living in our horrible back shed -- not our idea, but when a guy says "hey, can I make a little room in your back shed?" and he's your friend and he insists he doesn't mind that it's a horrible old shed infested with carpenter bees and ivy, you just don't turn him down. Or we didn't. Anyway, besides being a brilliant artist, Darryl is one of the sweetest guys in the whole world and it's always a pleasure to run into him. What he was doing there was tending to his art exhibit which was up on the walls there (The Attic is a cafe, performance space, and exhibit space -- art wank's paradise, right? I like the place and I think Emma loves it). The show he had going there is "Shot Up" which is a bunch of shot-up car doors he hauled up from the Nevada desert. Actually, he says, he shot some of them up himself to enhance the show. He also stripped the interior parts of the doors so that light can shine through them and did some metalwork on them. They're really very interesting. He says he's in the MFA program at UCSC, but the show isn't related to his MFA work, which all has something to do with gamelan. Gamelan is a popular subject at UCSC. If you go look at his website you'll see a picture of him with guns, looking very Western indeed. (my next post will reference Westernness also, hang on).