The House Was Full of Love and Then Full of More Love and Hard-Earned Wisdom and Whimsy, So Much Said So Simply - The Chris Mason Book Party

A few years from now when books no longer exist and the only things being read will be descriptions of the daily stool samples of the latest 16 year old pop star or of the drug addiction meltdown of some hack pseudo actor on the i-Pad X along with snuff e-magazines giving detailed photos and brief descriptions of daily murders and the most recent flood, drought and/or earthquake, complete with devastating videos one click away, the drones for the privatized "Removal Works" will be loading me up into the van for obsolete laborers who are not employed by search engines, hospitals, rescue agencies or radiation treatment plants.


And just before they slam the lead-lined door of the vehicle that will take me to the factory that will convert me into soylent green I will have one last tiny bit of courage and will and yell out "People once read books! Even poetry! And not only that, one warm Sunday in March, 2011, a book of poetry was published by a thing called Narrow House. It was written by a man named Chris Mason and not only was he not 18, he was not carried into the show in a giant egg carried by servants. In fact he drove up on his own volition in a kind of battered family type station wagon, his grown talented daughter Elizabeth seated beside him.


"People turned out in great numbers for the event of this publication and hung on the words of his verse. Music was played. The bald one calling himself 'Dierker' played so swift and passionately that his likeness could not be captured on camera except as a demonic blur! Surely there must be a copy of Chris' book Hum Who Hiccup surviving somewhere. Ask Secretary of Defense Justin Sirois. He once ran Narrow House before he renounced the printed word and art. Colonel Qaddafi's all female security force shall avenge not only my death, but the death of all booksellers!"

Above are proud Narrow House publishers holding the fine new book, which contains most if not all of his poetry from the last decade or so, including his dreamt poems of poet friends, "Homeric Hums" and the beautiful spare "Hiccups" themselves. As Jamie Gaughan-Perez held the book up someone yelled out "Lauren Bender, if the book is as good as you say and you are truly so proud of it, pose as if you are hypnotized and being forced to stare at the nude engorged wang of Mel Gibson with a small anvil attached to it". And indeed she did.

Kickstarting the event was young Robert Michael O'Brien, curator of the WORMS readings. I wish I had had a notebook with me to jot down a few quotes that really grabbed me since my retention rate is that of a banana peel, but two of his pieces grabbed me in particular. One was about being pulled over by a cop late at night and the officer is impressed by his love and feeling for life and expresses his own lack of such feeling. It was not all Ice-T hatin' on the cops, just using the uncomfortable situation of being halted on the roadside as a vehicle for getting across the inexpressible.

Another standout was his chant-like piece that included the lines "The body is power/The abandonment of body is power". Which made me think of the Gang of Four's "Our bodies make us worry". What more needs to be said?

Taking the stage of the re-vitalized Red Room of Normal's Books & Records next was an expanded trio version of The Tinklers with Downtown Blood on My Spatz Peyton on ukelele. His slick licks interwove nicely with Charles' slide guitar excursions. Recently the Tinklers have added "Bully of the Town" from the Harry Smith Anthology of Folk Music to their set. I would love for them to take on an extended project of covering that entire groundbreaking collection with various friends sitting in.

Also sitting in on a few Tinklers' songs was Chris' talented daughter Elizabeth. She sang on "Splash Splash" and did an acapella duet of "I'm Sticking With You" with her pops that was truly moving. Long long ago Elizabeth interned at Normal's and when things were slow we would get her to play the hell out of Bartok and Stravinsky on the old Red Room piano. And Elizabeth, like her dad, being both a populist and a consumate artist, would be playing beautiful, complicated classical pieces on the piano while at the same time talking loudly to Courtney about how she wanted to be a cheerleader.

And here be just a slice of the crowd in attendance. Study them well! The swarthy bearded one there, in foreground in white t-shirt - surely he is a threat to homeland security? And the one in the maroon hoodie, next to the one they call "Magus" who resembles a choirboy, surely his dry laconic joking covers for a heartless hatred for pickup trucks, reality shows and the right to keep impoverished people from having health care.

Speaking of choirboy Magus, here he is reading along with Chris on the poem that Chris dreamed of him. I believe this piece is called "I Will Read Every Poem In This Book Except The One for Rupert, Despite His Being Seated Right There in the Front Row Making Doe Eyes At Me". I have to say that the whole reading Chris did was masterful, but this was probably my favorite piece of the day. The two readers really worked well together and the sounds and words resonated like a big old gong on Kung Fu.

And speaking of that long gone loved show that would be most likely torturously bad today if I were to view an episode, what to make of this bald master, Grasshopper? Here is reed king John Dierker playing with the energetic dynamic improv trio Microkingdom, along with drummer Will Redman and guitarist Marc Miller. Dierker's passionate face while playing is so difficult to capture on camera that he made a five figure deal with both MAC and Windows where you have to pay for a special APP that will present him clearly. And clearly I cannot afford that.

All in all, a great day. Beautiful words read well conveying strong messages of caring and hope. Goofy music of love and concern for all people and nature. And the underloved cash register of Normal's was embraced by wallet food!

But if all this wasn't magic enough, when the show was over and no one was left in the store other than me and Anthony, Anthony told me that none other than Kima Greggs (Sonja Sohn) of The Wire popped in the store looking for a book during the show! Luckily I didn't notice her or I would have left everyone with a bad taste in their mouth for the event by breaking down into some kind of Jerry Lewis spazz out. Truly her presence was a sign that we were all on the right path!

Cheers to Chris Mason for creating writing from both the head and heart that will withstand the horrors of time and to Narrow House for containing so much of it so well within a beautiful object once known as "book".

A Shattered Wig Night Oasis - 1/29/10

Courtney McCullough of the Lockhorns with artist
and 14 Karat Cabaret overlord genius Laure Drogoul.


Goodloe Byron, author of The Abstract and
Revisions Of, reading from his forthcoming free
book, The Wraith.


Blaster Al Ackerman with Geff Stewart and Beth Dinsick

Geff "Soft Serve" Stewart getting spiritual with it.

Courtney doing Lockhorns solo.

Poets Tom DiVenti and Chris Toll.

Actor, model, dancer, writer, Billy Bob Thornton look-

alike John Eaton on the left with artist and musician

Scott Larson.

Amanda Copeland of Sea Couch.

Dan Dorsey of Sea Couch and one of the Pasadena

music mafia. How the hell so many good musicians came

out of that hellhole in the same generation is a mystery

on the scale of "Village of the Damned".

Tears of joy and gratitude for John Dierker and his work.

Redbird getting up to some pre-set snugglin'.

Amanda Pollock of Redbird, formerly of Velvet Mafia and Cloaca.

Now I never served in Falluja or Nam or been a native in those places living sleepless in fear avoiding death by lead or fire volleys, thank God, nor have I served in the Red Cross during one of the many incidents that wipes countless humans off the Earth like a half asleep waitress wiping a coffee spattered lunch counter, nor have I shivered through nights of hypothermia in a small embankment up on an impassable mountain crag, but goddamned I'm freaking tired. And I never say "freaking". "Fucking" just seems so un-blog-like.

Four months of brain and soul penetration by a mortgage company to prove I am of standard enough fleshly issue to own a house, and a great great house it is with singing hardwood floors and jaunty one year old roof, followed by two weeks of muling two apartment loads of books and records has my yarbles and my lower lip dragging the pavement. Please, kind sir, a week of no moving, no work drama/collapse and no friends dying so I can get my dull on and spend all seven of those sweet days floating away on our new woolly mammoth of a couch reading book after book that I just packed and unpacked. Such sweet marvels, many that I'd forgotten!

That said, in the middle of this oddly domestic period of bliss mixed with crippling stiffness landed a Shattered Wig Night of Extreme Warmth and Grandeur. Not only did an old friend and former Baltimore rock star/provocateur/stream of consciousness wizard/wearer of supremely unique hubble jubble clothing Amanda Pollock descend from the Great North to play with her new duo Redbird, but Lockhorn songwriter and singer and old old friend of Normal's and Shattered Wig, Courtney McCullough, got flown in for his 50th birthday by his wife and mother.

My giddy feelings of love for Courtney and all the other acts on the bill this night could fill more Harlequin romances than your Aunt Padonia Road contains in her dumbwaiter. We got a huge crowd also, despite part of Saratoga St. being iced over by a broken water main and a huge huge show at the G Spot.

The night ended for me with a Time Machine moment when I was waiting for Courtney to arrive back from closing up the Mount Royal Tavern after the show so he could break in our new couch. We had attempted to find a bed at IKEA in time for his arrival, but we both were so fuddled from fatigue and IKEA's maddening mix and match overlit showrooms that we bolted after woofing down their cafeteria carbo-load wares (saving two of the rubbery "Swedish" meatballs for Max in napkins in my coat pocket).

I let Courtney in about 2:30 or so and he walked in holding Amanda's moon boots and looking sheepish. I was transported back 15 years or so except I should have been in Courtney's place. Asking him what was up he pointed down the shadowy street (lined with all our new unknown neighbors) to a graying ragtag post-bar time party headed our way.

Hopefully this show struck for others as it did me old roads and loves and the new and upcoming. But like watching "To Sir With Love" the first time and losing it when Lulu has her moment, this night was so tender it hurt.

The Spirit of Christmeastermass Wins Out Over Two Feet of Snow (Give or Take a Porn Star's Willie)

This year's Christmeastermass was only for the hardcore true believers of The Religion of No Religion. The day before, Baltimore was met with gusty winds and 12 or 14 hours of straight snow. Grown men and women wept while children sledded over their prone forms. Sunday, the day of the show/gathering, the sun was out bright and strong at 8:30. Ask not how I know!!! My very own eyes pried open at such hour. It was then I discovered that cats and dogs indeed spoke human words while we are not conscious. But what they say is not fit for conversation among even the most syph-ridden pirates!

All our honored performers boldly made it through the challenging weather except for the normally god-like John Dierker who is getting on in years and was not able to resist the thought of an afternoon spent snowed inside sipping hot toddies and spinning old Bing Crosby 78s. We are sure he eventually put on some form of unforgettable performance, it was just not for our eyes.

As usual, this day of the year is the best time to catch flinty spirit master Higgs. He is always very relaxed, loving what his fellow performers are putting down and contemplating what this magic forest called The Bible means by "baby" and by "Jesus".

My nephew Sir Softserve of the gilded lizard fingers, kept me on edge until the last minute and I had thought he was no longer of the Faith. Somehow he appeared during the opening Higgs set and towering near him was a giantess with long tangled vanilla roots. She weighed but one stone and when turned sideways you could see clear through to the back wall of Normal's where the giant painting of Liberace done by Bob Hieronymous still shimmers as if the oils had just been daubed that morning.

A question heard often that day was "Are these eggrolls vegetarian?" I still do not know the answer.

Daniel and his musical guests were all attuned to a vibration of goodwill and equal quest, but I have to say that perhaps Dr. Susan Alcorn blasted the largest hole through the public consciousness that snowy Sunday afternoon. She started out on her splendid pedal steel machine in an almost Hawaiian mode, very soft, almost tentative, and then little tufts of booster rockets kept almost imperceptibly taking her to higher and higher lofts of abstraction until she somehow mysteriously and heart breakingly came around/into a version of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas". I don't think it was just me that heard the deep yearning, joy, nostalgia, pain, loss and redemption dripping from that song dealing with the ambiguous idea of "holiday".

Throughout Herr Asa's set I kept noticing the monstrous Metal of Early Man effects pedal, kind of GI Joe from the '60s kelly green that he was using. It turns out to be an actual Soviet Union guitar effects pedal for that extra alien crunch. I also couldn't help but notice his winking and enchantment with the glowing sprite Amanda in the front row, one of the two humans known as "Baltimore's Goodwill Ambassadors".

What a day! Followed by feverish packing and heading off for The Deep South to meet the Woman Who Birthed The Love of My Life (and to also hit some record stores and Waffle Houses). I will miss Professor Higgs as he wanders across the globe in his hippy van enchanting youngsters with his Indian influenced gnostic trickster songs. Many's the day he drove out the lurking gloom of a grifter or psychic vampire from the hallowed halls of Normal's.

An Extra Special Shattered Wig Night of Extreme Grandeur & Warmth - Friday, Jan. 29th

Shattered Wig Night Of Extreme Grandeur & Warmth -1/29/10


Redbird
John Dierker
Sea Couch

Goodloe Byron
Al Ackerman

With very special guest floating about in the crowd brandishing a cocktail: Courtney McCullough



Could it be nearly the end of whatever this last decade was called? The Oughts? The Naughts? How it flew by, taking with it most of my head hair and a lot of what was left of my belief in the goodness of humanity or faith that we can beat all the weird new viruses and microbes and booger bears and religious extremist wack jobs.

But then again the Harry Smith Anthology of Folk Music just get reissued on vinyl as did Roscoe Holcomb's "High Lonesome Sound" and The i.e. Series Reader has been published after much anticipation, so I guess there's still some spin left on the over-heated gumball of Earth, even if the polar bears are already being slated to go out next after the art of civilized debate.

How did I get on this, dear reader or two. Maybe it's because I just came from visiting an old friend in the ICU, a wonderfully strange old friend who just happened to be the guy who introduced me to my beloved, where I saw him without consciousness or words stuck to more tubes than I've ever seen in one place. The fact that we had to put on astronaut gear before we could even see him lent an extra otherworldly helplessness and removal from what we know as life. This after hearing the gifted guitarist Jack Rose died at 38 from a heart attack last week. We wish our friend well and all of us each one struggling with this sometimes cold and eery world.

The good and gooder news is the lineup for the next Shattered Wig Night that just happens to also be a bit of a birthday party for former Baltimore bon vivant, musician and Normal's employee, Courtney McCullough. He has just hit the half century mark and his wife Sabra and mother, Sri Rebecca the Desert Vixen, bought him a plane ticket back to Harm City from New Mexico so he could catch this show. I will take this moment to brag that I got lucky and was able to get Brett Sparks of the transcendent Handsome Family to play at Courtney's true birthday party at the Press Club in Albuquerque. There is a small, tiny chance I may be able to land the Family here when they come through Baltimore in the Spring.


As luck would have it, two days before finding out Courtney would be here, I had gotten a call from Amanda Pollock, another Baltimore legend who ran back in the '90s, looking for a booking. Amanda is an incredible vocalist, kind of in the soul folk category, who has done time with The Barnyard Playboys, The Velvet Mafia, Cloaca and many others, but also has always been mainly a solo vocalist with her own guitar accompaniment. She has a new duo in New York called Redbird and I'm excited to hear what she's been up to the last year besides writing twisted memoirs for her writing class.

Also performing is another great duo, this one local - Sea Couch, consisting of Dan Dorsey on banjo ukulele and regular uke and his fiance Amanda Copeland (she of the brightest smile) on banjo. Both warble pleasingly. Dan has the most clean picking style I've heard lately. He also plays in The Same Damn Thing and was in the Pasadena supergroup The Jumping Off Point and Other Moments of Grace. He also did this show's flyer, pictured above, saving me from another one of my tacky '80s School cut and pastes.

Knowing that Courtney would be in town for this special event, I had to muscle his favorite musician, John Dierker, into playing. Solo. Naked soul up against the wall of Oblivian demanding answers.

Our visiting reader this show is a novelist I've been wanting to book for a while, Goodloe Byron, author of The Abstract and Revisions Of. The Abstract truly reminds me at times of Flann O'Brien and Phil Dick, which is some fine company. Plus Goodloe is an interesting 21st Century Lamont Cranston kind of presence so I'm curious to hear him hold forth.

And of course it wouldn't truly count as Shattered Wig Night without Blaster Al. He's been on a particularly good roll of late, despite his recent mugging right on the front porch where he and I live with the reclusive millionaire Shuggie Berndt. The streets of this town are starting to really feel sinsiter again. Times are beyond hard. Rigor mortis stiff to the point of twisting.

At the 14 Karat Cabaret. Doors open at 9pm and the cover charge is a whopping $6 since we're top heavy with performers, aged ones, ones that have various monkeys to keep in silk smoking jackets.

The Swede Abides

Last Friday, December 4th, I had the honor of reading a few mumbly words at the gala opening of Scott Larson's new art show - "Failed Rescue".


As usual Scott nailed the modern human condition on its steroid pumped head while also mixing in some nice abstract Philip Guston-like lumps. Beautiful spirit of whimsical menace. Impossible machines/growths veering along somehow at breakneck speed through constricted/obstructed paths - an electric feeling of being alive for the hell of it.

I would marry Scott Larson's sensibility. Play it Bettye Swann lps on Sunday morning when we are both feeling coy, gentle and muzzy. Then sometime around 1:00 when the Saturday night wears off and the cough syrup kicks in, slap on some Etta James wax and get all sloppy over it like the last Salvation Army suit on the day before Thanksgiving.


Baltimore is a land of enchanted folks adrift or half-slumbering beneath protective rocks while mayors carry out their junior mafia activities and the murder rate climbs. Scott is one of our under sung heroes and like many a Baltimore artist/performer, he also manages to work 50 or 60 hours a week at his day job and raise two gypsy children he picked up in a dice game down South long long ago.


The evening was closed by Sir John Dierker's group Il Culo. Hammering funk that included a Fela cover to warm folks up for the weekend of The Baltimore Afrobeat Society shows coming up.
Drop your spatula, throw your kindle into a loan processor's bathtub, take all your investments and run to the Metro Gallery and love up in all ways on the demented eye candy of Scott Swede Larson.