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I’m really really late to the party on this one. Maybe because the only versions of these songs that I’ve heard had so much gaudy, transexual camp on them that it glazed over the cold, hard, vile, scabrous truth to this complex and brutal music.

We did a party at Shanghai Mermaid this weekend and the theme was Weimar Germany. There was one outstanding song that began to point the way for me into this treacherous, macabre and generally thrilling music. The performers name was Lady Rizo and the song that stabbed me was “Pirate Jenny” from “Threepenny Opera.” Basically, the song is a revenge fantasy. A prostitute in a hotel concocts a vision of a pirate ship that will not only save her from her wretched condition and the brutality of how she is treated, but will also ask for her judgement on when to kill each of her persecutors. By the end of the song, no one is spared and she leaves the town on the pirate ship herself. To take the whole thing to the next dramatic level, in most performances the song is sung by a different character to make fun of Jenny for being such a pathetic, powerless looser!!

Lady Rizo gave an epic and drawn out version a la Nina Simone rendition.

Today, I began to study Weill and Brecht a bit and found many different versions of this song. The one I am posting here is probably the closest to the song’s original intent as it is performed by Weill’s wife, Lotte Lenya. It is brisk and cold and mean and ultimately horrible. I love it.

Rizo’s version was much more drawn out and in English. A side note and a tip of the hat to a great performer: Lady Rizo had a recalcitrant crowd whipped into submission from the first seconds of her set and continued to spellbind and amaze. To perform a song as unpleasant and murderous as this, with so much text as well (!!) and hold everyone’s attention is a feat of entertainment that I yearn to achieve. I was impressed.

Welcome to day 18 of our month 28 day Blog-A-Thon. We’ve been bringing you highlights of drink recipes, flaming saxophones, concert reviews, and a back-stage passto our Tin Pan world. Happy to have you with us.

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This week at Googie’s Part three of our continuing series on our residency at this well-trafficked venue. A truly wonderful thing happened again at Googie’s on Friday night. We invited the wonderful Clem Waldmann play our second set with us. I know you are at least a little familiar with our music and presentation. We put a lot of work into getting some tight arrangements that have some sudden and dazzling twists and turns, hairpin mood shifts, and expressive use of tempo. Having a drummer sit in with us is fraught with peril. Either they will just miss certain changes or they will railroad the beat into something that suits their style but isn’t the groove or feeling that the rest of the band is going for.

Enter Clem Waldmann. This guy’s playing was so joyous and seamless. The bass drum wasn’t too persistent. The shuffle was impeccable. The accents were in the right places. The groove was buoyant and light when needed and thick and swampy when required. He didn’t not miss a single cue, transition or feel! Frankly, and this is going to sound strange, Stefan and I FORGOT THAT HE WAS EVEN THERE. It was such a good accompaniment and so obviously supportive of what was going on that it allowed us to focus all our attention on being in the moment and maintaining the connection with the audience. It’s hard to tell a story when you’re looking over shoulder trying to accomodate the new guy. In this case is was the opposite. Even with the very first few sounds he made, he just built confident gesture and agreement on to every moment of the music. Every once in a while he would add something delicious and fun and I would remember that we had this whole extra layer to what we were doing. It’s like when you’re walking, after the first few steps you really don’t have to think about your feet. It’s only when things get shaky would you need to concern yourself with balance. Clem was as solid as possible in that regard.

Stefan said so to Clem right after the gig while we were still on stage.

“I forgot you were there.” The truly terrific part is that Clem understood the HUGE compliment in this comment and rejoiced in it.

He clutched is hands and pumped them over his head with a huge smile like he just won a prize. Clifton reports that over at the Blue Man Group theater (where they have worked together for a few years already) Clem told another drummer how excited he was to receive that feedback and they both high-fived about it!

I think that might be the sign of a drummer that I want to be working with. They place a very high value on time-keeping, solidity, confidence, and taste and are confident enough to not be so concerned with being noticed for flashy playing. Clem, you nailed. Thanks! Listen for Clem on our next record. We start recording in March.

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Another first to note at this gig. The deliciously talented Katie Hasty sang a few songs with us on this gig. She managed to sing the material without falling into the obvious tropes of female jazz singing that we tend to avoid. She brought all her personality, wit and sauce into the mix. Her stage presence made standing next to her a joy. It was really fun. She tore it up. More please.

Some members of the audience were commenting after the show that Tin Pan is a pretty male, testosterone-driven experience. We all are gruff and going for it with boatloads of Yang energy. Katie’s presence on stage (even for justa few songs) helped members of the audience feel more comfortable and assured by balancing out the vibe. It also drew a sharper contrast making for a more compelling show. And there you have it. Thanks for the feedback.

And while we’re talking aesthetics: Clem reflected after the gig that he felt like Baby Hands and I come off like trained musicians who have too much sauce to sound like school and just want to rock-out. Clifton and Zoo on the other hand come across as rockers who somehow wound up with an acoustic guitar or a clarinet in their hands and are making the best of it.

Nishant: Transitions are the greatest necessity for growth. I’m trying to convince my p€^~s…

Joe: Looming death is inspirational. Perhaps the greatest antidote to procrastination.

The Hunter: Amusing? Oh! A musing!!!

Ivy: Why do I keep attracting gay men?

Clifton: I bought bitters today. Will inform tomorrow…

Shena: wij zitten hier dikke garnalen te eten en ze zijn heerlijk lekker.

Clifton: all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration; there is no death; we are all one conciousness experienceing life subjectively; it is but a dream & we are the immagination of ourselves…

Jesse: oysters. A big plate of oysters. A large varried plate of delicious oysters and then a whole ‘nother plate of oysters.

Lydia: pie crust. There’s a lot of water so you use the vodka instead of water cause it’s colder.

Pete: my moms says it’s because of the gluten. It becomes pasty.

Jose: I has the jumbalaya.

Bruce: [wanders away drunkenly]

Minnow: you guys have soul, man.

It is now day number 9 of our 28 day, post-every-day-on-the-blog blogathon blogstravaganza from blogistan. The photo: a lovely shot of Pete by our new friend from Denmark, Miss Mary

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This week at Googie’s Part two of our continuing saga of our regular Friday night engagement This show was well attended right from the get go. Thank you so much for heeding my call to come early. I can only suggest that again as now I want to make sure you get a seat right in the front. Why do I care about you so much? Let me count the ways.

When you come to a show, you are there to hear the band. You are into into having a good time and you want to be entertained. You bring your friends so they can have a good time. You enjoy sipping beverages and laughing and shrieking when Stefan knocks over the chairs or jumps up into someone’s laugh while wearing a top hat and tails. Blues music makes you want to dance so you dance. All these things and more: You are so wonderful to look at as we sing to you from the stage. You smell fabulous.

Enough pandering. Here’s the reason I’m writing about today: If you don’t sit in the front some drunken sorority girls from the bar downstairs will come up and sit right in front and talk for THE ENTIRE TIME WE’RE ON STAGE. Oh my god, is this frustrating. I’m in a tricky spot because I know that it sucks to be embarrassed and called out from the stage and yet I need to be able to correct the situation. We tried subtle hints but I will need to be direct in the future. This aggression will not stand. This is the last show I will allow to be compromised in this way!

Here’s what I want to say to them: “Ladies, I know you are having a good time and maybe be enjoying the music too. But for the love of God, and for the sake of me and I think for the sake of everyone else here, just please be more discrete. This is a room for listening and you may be disturbing everyone else. Listen, I don’t use a microphone in this room because I don’t need to. It sounds better, it is more immediate, more passionate, and more intimate. You can’t be talking at full volume right in front of my face when I’m singing a song. Talk to us! Holler at us! Laugh at us! Engage us! But don’t distract the attention of everyone to your business. The business is on stage. If you would trust us with your attention for more than 5 seconds, I assure you, you will be enthralled, entertained, and moved. Maybe you don’t know that this is what you are doing but you are making my job much harder. I am here to entertain and you are making it very very difficult.”

I assure you the diatribe in my head is much more vitriolic and contains imaginative uses of what is commonly considered to be foul language.

So, I need your help. How would you handle the situation? What would you do if there was a table of talky drunk girls talking over your performance? Please comment below.

Thanks.

Day 3 of our 28 day blogathon

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Got a call from an intrepid young journalist from ABC news. She’s hungry, she’s got a cam recorder and she’s got some great ideas. I picture her as a Lois Lane type. We haven’t met yet but she seems like a pretty interesting person. Here’s the thing, people that are interested are interesting.

Her idea: make a series of short films about fascinating New York City people that work every day to make New York City the colorful vibrant place that it is. So far she has interviewed three subjects. The first was a court room sketch artist who has had the thrill of making drawing of the most notorious criminals around. Imagine what its like to make the official court room rendering of John Gotti and Bernie Madoff. Another subject is a woman auto-mechanic from Queens. The third are two Mormon Evangelists. You know the type. They are wearing crisp white shirts and ties and have name tags and a copy of John Smith’s bible. I’ve always wanted to talk to them to find out how the hell they are enjoying our fair city.

Tin Pan is next on the list… We’re meeting next Wednesday for an interview and she’s been filming us, following us around in cognito, when we are at street hits and I know for a fact she will be at our Googie’s show this Friday.

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FYI: I have some practice shaking off evangelists and bible thumpers. If you want some tips or wanna hear some outrageous stories let me know…

We’re starting an experiment here on the Tin Pan Blog. Starting today, we will be upping the ante a little bit and posting every day rain or shine. Now, necessity is the Mother of Invention so expect to see some random stuff. Ideally it will all relate to our world of music but I’m frankly not quite sure. Trust in our creativity. It will be worth your loyalty.

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Last night at Googie’s
I made it up the stairs leading up from the Living Room, parted the curtain and entered Googie’s little lounge up there. I did an immediate 180 and went right back outside. The vibe in there made me want to laugh and cry at the same time and that would have startled and offended. I had seen an archetype: the quintessential rough gig. On stage: a folk-singer doing his own material and some covers from Kings of Leon. In the crowd: exactly four people. The dude’s mom and dad and the sound guy and the waitress. The two latter individuals were cowering in the corner heads buried in their iPhones and intermittently chortling.

Once I had composed myself I returned to the room and sat down with the hopes of, at the least, encouraging this poor kid a little bit and secondly constructing a set list. This was our opening act. Horrors.

The first thing you want to do in a situation like this is just wipe the suck out of the room. In this case it was really some infectious suck. Not that he was such a bad player or singer it was just such a desperate environment in there with this kid entertaining his mom and dad. When he was finishing about ten minutes later, Baby Hands, Hyde, and Zoo had shown up. Each of them had uncontrollably rolled their eyes when they came in the room. It was involuntary, like when you smell a furiously bad smell. That face you make when you might say, “Whoa . . . oh, man”

Just as he was finishing, two women showed up. A sweet, gentle, asian lady had brought her mom to see us. I didn’t recognize her but I could tell she could recognize me. I was hoping that it wasn’t one of our potential wedding clients that I had invited down. I knew two such interests had said they were coming. There was so much suck in the room that I was embarrassed to say hi. To make matters worse the waitress had given up on the night. She had probably made exactly $2 off of the last set and didn’t really feel like being to hospitable to us. I couldn’t blame her.

We set up and then contemplated doing a New Orleans parade thing up from the bar up the stairs but it seemed like more trouble than it was worth. Hell with it. Let’s just start. Again, 4 people in the room besides us: sound guy, waitress, asian woman, asian woman’s mom. I addressed the folks that had come to see us directly, “Hi… err . . . this show is just for you! How awesome is that! A private show.” The girl beamed at us. The mom clearly did not speak a word of English.

The dismount of this story is short and sweet. By the end of the first song there were 10 people in the room. By the end of the second song there were 30 and one song after that the room was at capacity with every chair filled and about 20 people standing in the back. I have no idea how this happened exactly but thank heavens. Both our wedding folks showed up and were pleased as punch, the waitress had to run up and down those stairs to keep up so I guess at least she made some money. After our first set, we took a break and no one left, and we finished strong around midnight to a full house.

We’re there every Friday this month and with crowds like that they’ll probably keep us on for a bit… just please come early.

See you tomorrow on the blog…

I learned a trick many years ago: Do things differently and intensely and it makes an impact. Generally, I am a light, social kind of dude. I go out of my way to say hi to everyone and shake hands or even hug all the cats in the band before we start a performance. At the very least, I’ll connect with everyone even on some superficial level and get a sense of comfort with everyone. It’s fun to experiment with other ways of being…

I was living in Ithaca and playing with a trio: drums, sax and trumpet. We had a a regular thing at a pretty cool club. My favorite part of it was playing with a great drummer named Brian Wilson. (Since he’s been getting more and more acclaim and showing up on all kinds of international posters he has changed his name to Wille B.) Anyway, I just showed up one night and kept my head down and didn’t say a word to anyone. Not even a glance. I kept all my energy to myself determined to communicate only through musical interaction on stage. The result was a burning intensity from all the players. We came out of the gate with an extreme focus and a real desire to listen to each other and interact.

My trip to Belleville last night was a big drag. The L train took me to a dead-end transfer – no G train. The resultant shuttle bus took me a really long time and then I had to catch the F. This happens to everyone in New York at some point. Whatever. I had a coffee in my hands and my horn and my backpack. And then the bus is so hot that I have to take my jacket off and its turning into a schlepp of epic proportions. Headphones were my salvation and I was rocking out to some heavy King Crimson and eventually a double shot of James Brown. “Papa Don’t Take No Mess.” I sure don’t.

I got to the club late and kept my headphones on. Didn’t look at nobody. Went right to the stage. Took the horn out. Put my jacket away. Stared at the floor until Hyde and Hands joined me on the stage. They started into the riff from Smokestack Lightening and I started into some lyrics I made up on the spot around “Bad Bad Whiskey” It was some good spontaneous music. Tin Pan rarely does anything free improv anyway, so this was an unrestricted treat. The fact that I hadn’t even said hi to anyone yet made the outburst of my voice and lyrics a much bigger statement. Gravitas, ladies and gentlemen, is only purchased through life’s tougher experiences and I’m not talking about a lame bus trip.

Gravitas = magnetism. Somehow, even though it was a Sunday when many were watching the Grammy’s the little room filled on up with folks that had heard about us and brought their friends. It was our first real “show” at Belleville. The house was full enough to make for the environment we had dreamed about for that space.

I think that Thursdays in February will be easier to make this environment happen again and again.

To depart with an encouraging thought. A friendly gentleman introduced himself to us and said that he used to work for A&M records back in the day. He said that we reminded him of Nora Jones, not in the style or sound, but in the sense that she had been working in tiny, under-rated rooms for some time. When she released her record she was expecting to sell about 2000 and she wound up selling 20,000,000. This man affirmed that we were on that level of quality and impact.

A few months ago The Mighty Tin Pan sauntered ever so casually through the elegant, hanging curtains of the illusive, secretive, and sexy POETRY BROTHEL.

As The Madame & Tennesse Pink conducted the affairs of the poets & John’s, The Mighty Tin Pan was providing the soundtrack to the verbs, metaphors, personifications, & alliterations spilling from behind the closed doors.

There to capture all of the proceedings in the totality of their Pagan Splendor was the gifted eye of Janine Saunders and RADAR…

For this and many more exciting delights of Tin Pan video titillation visit The Tin Pan Video Network…

After a few months and enough rainy or cold days in a row, we finally got around to editing the footage from our Pete’s Candy Store show of August 31st. Tell us what you think…