Downtime Doings

We’re Still Loafing

Tue, 6 Apr 2010 13:53:50 -0700

If you thought you might have missed something, I can assure you it wasn’t us. Well yeah, our vocalist popped up at the first Boston Red Sox baseball game of the year, singing you-know-what, and we could be heard in the background. But we weren’t really there—we were home enjoying it like the rest of you. I thought we never sounded better. We also play some poker now and then, and perhaps a bit of golf. In the photo above, I’m trying to figure out how my ball got so close to the hole. Must have been the work of a squirrel.

Time to Admit It

Sat, 11 Apr 2009 15:22:36 -0700

Downtime has definitely returned. Sitting in our cramped, spread-deprived dressing room at Staples Center (above) waiting to be called to the stage for our Performance at the Grammys, way back in February, was the last time our bunch of neer-do-wells assembled in the same room, and will be the last time for a long time, as usual. If you can parse the preceding sentence, move to the head of the class.
Everyone has now wandered off into their own worlds, living their own lives, rejoining their own families, pursuing their own goals, and allowing the 2008 tour to fade into their own memory banks, new pages in a very lengthy scrapbook, one which dates, for most of us, back to 1975.
Therefore, I no longer have any excuse not to fire up the Downtime Doings section of this site for those of you who stumble upon it. As usual, there will be very little of importance here, but that shouldn’t surprise veterans of this little community.

Downtime Begets Uptime

Sat, 24 May 2008 01:34:19 -0700

Okay, NOW we’re on tour!
It’s a little hard to pinpoint at what point downtime ended and uptime began. Was it January, when some of us hit the NAMM show in Anaheim to check out various bits of new gear?
Was it in February, when we began rehearsing, sorting out our bag o' tricks, fortifying our chops, taking baby steps into our new environment, and preparing to pack our bags and get out where the people are? Or was it at the beginning of May, when the Jimmy Kimmel show taping gave us the first opportunity to show our stuff in front of live humans? Or a few weeks later when we flew to England for a massive round of television appointments? Or earlier this week, when we arrived in the Netherlands for one last spasm of rehearsal before the first show of the actual tour? Or was it tonight, when the humans get to join the party?
Maybe there wasn't a real mark of demarcation for uptime, since it takes a far amount of time for your friendly, neighborhood Muzoid to begin the unfathomable triennial transformation from grizzled pensioner into rock 'n' roll god, sort of.
But by now it's clear: our downtime has wound down. Or wound up. Or at least it has completed winding in some direction, or should that be wending? In other words, what I'm trying to say is that it's here and it’s now.
The folks in Yurrp get the first crack at us. Not only is this nice for them, it helps keep us humble by reminding us just how little our puny Amurkin dollars are worth in the lands of pounds and Euros.
When our current continent is out of the way, we'll set out once again to take America to America. In the meantime, I'm happy to be back to writing Diamondville Doings. I'm going to ditch the old Typepad blog location which housed it in 2005 and just keep it right here on the Diamondville site, which will hopefully be a little less confusing. And you'll get regular updates, hotel broadband willing.
The old Doings pages will remain at the old address for a while, in case you want to view or grab any or them.
Welcome aboard.

Too Many RIPs for one Rap

Sun, 30 Dec 2007 12:04:59 -0800

It's time to look back on 2007, and not a minute too soon.
I'm guessing that there will never be a remake of the film "My Favorite Year" about 2007. For me and mine, this was a year to be put away on the shelf as quickly as possible while we move forward into a great and glorious 2008, a year which is in the enviable position (shared by the president we will soon elect) of having an easy act to follow, but a mess to clean up.
I began this little, unnoticed blog back in March by noting the passings of our long-time managerial person, Sal Bonafede; and, earlier, our long-time wardrobe creator Bill Whitten. It’s probably not the best policy to begin a humorous journal with a couple of obituaries, or to end the year the same way, but you take what you’re given.
This summer I lost my brother, the talented one in our family, which was a deep cut into my world, and I've ruminated about that a lot over this year. Through Joe, I got to know the writer Harlan Ellison. Joe and Harlan collaborated a few times over the years, and Harlan respected Joe so much that his goodwill rubbed off on Joe's younger brother. Harlan and I spoke about Joe a lot, and he was helpful to me during this time, as were the folks who frequent his web page, which I still peruse frequently.
And now, dammit, as the year ends, I'm beginning to see, in the papers and on the web, the tally of all the others we lost during 2007. So many of those names are of people with I encountered in various ways over the years that I feel obligated to contribute at least a brief comment about some of them, too:
• Michael Brecker—a great saxophone player who (along with his trumpeter brother Randy) had a group called Mrs. Seaman's Sound Band, a highly-regarded "weird" music group in Bloomington Indiana in the late 1960s, when I was treading the same turf with my band, The Masters of Deceit. We seemed to be the yin and yang of psychedelia/jazz at that moment, and It seems as if we should have known each other, but I don't think we ever met.
• Merv Griffin—Back in 1968, when I was in New York recording with The Masters of Deceit, I was set to have dinner with a Hoosier friend named Roger Pemberton, a saxophonist in Merv's show’s band. Roger suggested I come early and see the show, and left a ticket for me. Thus I found myself in the audience when Merv decided to do a bit about audience members who resembled celebrities. At the time, I'm not ashamed to say, I had a great deal of hair between my hat and my collar. Somehow, Merv spotted me and said, "This guy looks just like AL HIRT!" After his moment of Merv mirth, he asked how long it took me to grow my beard, so I gave him my standard answer at the time: "I shave every morning at 9 and it's like this by 5," which got a big laugh. At that point Merv turned a bit hostile, asking "Are you a HIPPIE?" I don’t think Merv was fond of hippies.
I replied, "Well, I'm self-employed if that's what you mean." Another laugh, a bit more tension, this time broken by one of his guests—an actor whose name I don't recall—who piped up "So am I!" The next panelist said "So am I!" So did the next. At this point everybody looked at last person remaining on the couch: Merv's second banana Arthur Treacher, who proudly and loudly declaimed: "I'M NOT!"
My friend in the band probably worked very hard to keep from being identified as the one responsible for my presence in the audience that day. As far as I know, there are no video recordings of that particular show, but I have to confess that I wish I had a copy to see if my memory of it is accurate.
• "Sneaky" Pete Kleinow—Sneaky Pete was an legendary steel guitar player with whom I played on a few recording sessions, but not often enough to feel I really knew him.
• Dick Washburn—a great, little-known trumpet player from Indiana. His very distinctive sound, descended from Clifford Brown, graced a jazz group I played in. The leader was Jamey Aebersold, who is now legendary in jazz education circles. I saw Dickie at a dinner honoring Jamey in 2005, and am happy that we had that chance to reconnect.
• Barbara McNair—a honey/fiery voiced singer whom I accompanied quite a few times in my early years. A very sweet, hard-working woman whose fame should have been greater.
• Frankie Laine—He was a veteran singer when I played for him, and managed to put freshness and enthusiasm into songs such as "Mule Train" and "That Lucky Old Sun" despite having sung them countless times by then.
• Tommy Newsom—I played the Johnny Carson Tonight Show quite a few times over the years, frequently with Diahann Carroll, and Tommy and the pianist Ross Tompkins (who died in 2006) always made me feel at home, giving me a chance to play with the band on the commercial break preceding our number and never displaying even a hint of attitude.
• Paul Wasserman—Neil's publicist during my early years with the band. Paul was a complicated figure, and his troubles were many, but I always admired his sharpness and wit. He published a sporadic on-tour newsletter called "Wasso's Word," which was a gossip-heavy and less polite inspiration for what eventually became the PBI.
• Stu Nahan—The longtime sports broadcaster was a fan of our efforts, and he turned up in our dressing room one evening before a show in London. All the reports of his recent passing mention his eternal niceness, and so I will too. It made us feel important that someone as legendary as Stu thought that what we did was worth his attention.
• Oscar Peterson—Okay, I never met Oscar Peterson. But any pianist you ask will tell you that Oscar played the instrument better than anyone else. He had a few critics, usually for very subjective nonsensical reasons, but they must have been motivated either by jealousy or a contrarian impulse, because he played the piano the way it ought to be played, even after a stroke made him monodextrous.
• Finally, I want to mention the gentleman pictured at the top of this page: comedian Stanley Myron Handelman. You may not remember Stanley, but had had a generous moment of fame, opening for Frank Sinatra in Las Vegas and as a regular on an NBC TV series called “The Goldiggers,” among other achievements. He was also an old friend that I hadn't seen in too many years, and the news of his passing underscored the fact that sometimes you really need to just pick up the phone and check in.
At one point in my checkered past, I was the leader of the house band at a night club in Indianapolis, where I had the chance to work with some of the artists mentioned above. Our band varied in size, depending on the stature and requirements of the singer, and the opening act was usually a comic. We did two shows a night, three on weekends, for a two week run. That added up to 28 shows for each comedian, and with that many repetitions you get to know the act pretty well--sometimes a bit too well to maintain the laughter. But Stanley's act didn't wear thin. In the middle of the run, on the club’s dark day Sunday, he came down to our little house in Brown County for a lively and enjoyable dinner with us. We promised to give him call if we ever got to LA.
When we finally did move to California, I contacted Stanley and we invited the Handlemans over to our starter rental home in Van Nuys, and a bit later we went to a party at his then-home in Westwood. We remember that party very well--we were new in the big city and one of the guests at the party was Bobby Darin. We were impressed.
Shortly afterwards, Stanley asked me to play piano for the taping of his comedy album, "Spiro T. Agnew is a Riot," which was recorded at the big RCA studios with a major-league cast, including a sound effects professional, in front of an enthusiastic live audience. (The picture at the top is a detail from the cover of the album.)
This year I've been cleaning out some old foot-lockers which have been taking up too much space in my studio, and I came across a script from the Agnew album. Youngsters today may not even recognize the name Spiro T. Agnew, but he was a former vice president of the United States, one who ranks right up there with Aaron Burr, John C. Calhoun and Richard Cheney.
The album is long out of print, but I got out my copy and gave it a listen and had some laughs--although I suspect they were of the "you had to be there" nature. There's not a note of piano playing on the album--I was there just to bridge things along for the live audience, but it was a treat to be part of a group that included Rich Little, Vincent Price, Pat McCormick, Jack Riley, Jo Ann Pflug, Harold Oblong, and producer Earle Doud. I had been in LA for all of four months, and I now had an experience I could proudly relate to the Hoosiers back home.
I hadn't run into Stanley often in the many years since then, but I'd heard he was teaching comedy classes at UCLA extension. I always thought it would be a hoot to sign up for his class, since humor is a bit of a hobby for me, but it was only a thought, I guess. And now he's gone.
Many of the artists I worked with in my night club days said "Give me a call when you get to LA and I'll see if I can help you out," but Stanley was a rare one who actually meant it. Thanks, Stanley, and bon voyage.
And happy trails to the others who have ambled off into our memory banks, plus the ones I didn’t mention here. I suppose if everybody lived forever, it would become pretty crowded, and the traffic in LA would be unbearable. Oh wait, it is already?

PS—As you see from the date at the top, I wrote this a while back. It bummed me out so much that I didn’t get around to posting it until now, as Downtime Doings gives way to Diamondville Doings for a while.

A Tricky Treaty Halloweenie

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 10:08:37 -0700

Yes, it's that day again—the day when we dress up in bizarre outfits and go out in an effort to convince strangers to provide us high-calorie low-nutrition food to keep us from doing something nasty.
Sounds like a tour, doesn't it? Not in this case, though. It's Halloween, a sort-of-a-holiday that has gotten way out of hand. Long ago, it consisted of adolescents going around and turning over outhouses. This wasn’t always a bad thing. Several times, a rowdy group of kids tipped over my high school friend Frank, which served as his first clue that really he needed to do something about his bad breath.
Nowadays, people who don't celebrate any other holiday release all their pent-up merrymaking by turning their houses into death mansions and costuming themselves as ghouls, vampires, skeletons, Tom Cruise, and other scary creatures.
Larry Brown, one-third of the Joy Circuit ensemble, is a scary-house proprietor, and sometimes we go over to his place to help out. Nothing beats the fun of dressing in a mummy outfit and rising every few minutes from a coffin in order to scare the bejeezus out of kids and provide photographic souvenirs for vanloads of Japanese tourists dressed in suits and ties.
But this year, I've opted for a different kind of Halloween fun. Call it a trick or call it a treat, but I've scrounged together a little video for one of the cuts from our inexplicably well-received album "Taking America to America."
When deciding which song to visualize, we wanted one with a lot of meaningful commentary about the human condition, one with deep emotion and far-ranging philosophical content, so we chose..."Dear PBI."
It's posted somewhere beyond the Jenkins-Peabody home page, and you're welcome to view it, but try to keep one eye shut. That way, if it destroys your vision in one eye, you can always costume yourself as a pirate.