The Bagel And The Rat

D'Haene, Vinyl

D'Haene's new disc is spring-loaded with hard-locked rhythms, chunky guitar riffing, and metalized melodies sung with a bluesy, soulful inflection. If, vocally, D'Haene tends to be a touch more convincing on more easy-going fare ("Took Me So Long"), that's because of the soulful quality that defines his vocal style.

One of the CD's best points is the way many of the songs surprise you with unexpected bridges and codas, as in "Wouldn't You Like To Know," or with varied flavors like the Latin opening of "Brand New Threads!" The impeccable musicianship and harmony vocals are also a pleasure throughout. The soul influence becomes explicit with the nodding triplets and organ bed of "I'll Be Your Man," though D'Haene's characteristic guitar buzz remains, maintaining consistency with the disk's overall feel. The same thing happens in the jazzy underpinning of "Playin' It Cool," complete with muted trumpet.

Bookended by the hard-rocking "Another Like You" and "My Woman," this set of solid songs and ace playing is worthy listen.

June Moris, White Spot

June Moris' seven-song disc is a hypnotic set; her quavery voice sounds as if it's bubbling up from an underground stream, accompanied by the hum of insects and distant bells ringing. The atmosphere ranges from a strained, thinly angry pounding, slightly reminiscent of PJ Harvey, to a techno coolness, to a thick Brian Eno drone, but Moris' fluty voice carries through all.

It's an effective, even thrilling tactic through the first five songs. On the sixth track, "The Memory," Moris tries for melodramatic balladry, leaving what seems her natural, postmodern sonic habitat, and it doesn't work as well.

At the end one is left, not with melodies to hang a memory on - Moris isn't about that - but with a pleasingly disturbing sense of disquiet. Shivery mission accomplished.

Back Door Slam, Roll Away and Special EP

The blues-rock power trio is dead?… Long live the blues-rock power trio! Back Door Slam is the real thing. The group, which hails from the Isle of Man, may be barely legal in age, but singer-guitarist Davy Knowles has the grown-up, gritty sound, both vocally and on guitar, demanded by the tradition of Clapton, Gov't Mule, and Robert Cray.

A few tasteful acoustic numbers break up the heavy feel of Roll Away, their debut CD. "Too Late" is a pretty power ballad, but even here Knowles's guitar craftsmanship rides front and center. Ably backed up by bassist Adam Jones and drummer Ross Doyle, and fueled by a deep absorption of the electric blues, Knowles' assured riffs and solos would carry the songs even if the writing weren't inherently good.  But in a genre where spectacular playing is sometimes allowed to substitute for songcraft, Back Door Slam's songs stand up well - especially for such a young group.

In addition to Roll Away, a full-length CD of mostly original songs, they've recently released a download-only EP of covers on which they display their more straight-up blues chops. Knowles wails and shreds with brash confidence on a ten-minute live version of "Red House," while the band shows how tight and sharp it can be on John Hiatt's "Riding With the King," the Doors' "Been Down So Long," and a few more.

If there's still a place in the world for guitar heroes and for power trios with a timeless crunch, put Davy Knowles and Back Door Slam on the up-and-coming short list. In a world of hyper-talented young musicians, this is truly impressive stuff, because it feels real.

One of the negatives of moving from Brooklyn to Manhattan is the serious reduction in opportunities to hang out at Freddy’s, the best bar in the known universe. That was remedied the other night courtesy of my gig with the Kings County Blues Band at which an awesome time was had by all. Starting the musical festivities were The Walkers, pictured below, with a set of story songs that were also performance art pieces, with titles like “The Mayor’s Boyfriend” and “The Devil is a Man.” This is the kind of group you have to experience; simple hearing would not do the trick. It was only their second gig ever. Hope they have more.

Now here’s us - well, two of us anyway, Laura Stein and myself - with the KCBB. Below the photo is an MP3 from the show, of me singing Johnny Taylor’s “Last Two Dollars.” I can’t do it like JT, of course, or like my old bandmate Michael Brewster from whom I learned the song, but I think it’s not too bad for a Jewish kid from Long Island. Anyway, let no one say The Bagel and the Rat is not a hip, multimedia blog.

Oh, and of course: long live Freddy’s, and down with Bruce Ratner and Atlantic Yards.

First photo by me, second photo by Elisa Peimer.

The Klezmer Nutcracker is an amusing play for children that mixes chanukah traditions and Jewish music with klezmerized themes from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite. The story, by Ellen Kushner (host of Public Radio's "Sound and Spirit" program) and based on her children's book The Golden Dreydl, won't win any awards for originality, but its winning characters and enthusiastic cast held the kids' attention at the performance I saw.

Bored young Sara (the spunky Danielle Strauss), down with a case of pubescent existential angst, is given, not an enchanted nutcracker, but a magical Golden Dreydl that becomes the Dreydl Princess (the graceful Melana L. Lloyd). This ballerina-like waif takes Sara to a magical kingdom ruled by her parents, Solomon and Sheba - not the biblical or historical characters, but a benevolent sort of Father and Mother Time who oversee a fairyland of Fools, talking animals, and demons who are more funny than scary.

When the demons snatch the Princess, the Tree of Life is threatened, and with it all of Creation… or something. The plot flops around a bit, with story points merely stated, and references and themes flying by at breakneck speed - rather like the Fool, who guides Sara through the enchanted land attempting to rescue the Princess. Dan J. Gordon plays the Fool with a big, loose-jointed nod to Ray Bolger's Scarecrow, and indeed kids may notice strong parallels to The Wizard of Oz, perhaps even more than to the original Nutcracker ballet.

This isn't a ballet, and parents of budding ballerinas should probably mention that fact ahead of time so kids' expectations aren't set unfairly. Nor is it a musical - it's a play with music. Chanukah songs are sung, and there's some boisterous choreography by Dax Valdes, set to recorded music that uses Tchaikovsky's themes transmogrified very cleverly by David Harris and Michael McLaughlin for the fabulous Shirim Klezmer Orchestra.

Most inventive of all is a wonderful Peacock scene, where the talking, preening bird is played by one actress (the amusingly brash Lindsey Levine) while a group of actor-dancers plays her feathers, all making one organism. This sort of thing is the true magic of the theater, the reason to take kids out to a show rather than plop them in front of a DVD.

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The Klezmer Nutcracker runs Saturdays and Sundays at 11 AM and 1 PM through Jan. 3, 2009 at the Vital Theatr, 2162 Broadway (at 76th St.), 4th Floor, New York. Call 212-579-0528.

Henry Purcell's 1689 Dido and Aeneas was one of the earliest English operas and is considered one of the composer's masterworks. It runs only an hour but is a true opera. Though the story, taken from Virgil's Aeneid, is a tragedy, Thursday night's performance at the Samsung Experience in the Time Warner Center was a joy, and one of an unusual sort.

The Dido Project comprises a group of singers and the Sybarite Chamber Players under the sparkling direction of Pat Diamond. They've transposed Purcell's Baroque opera about the Queen of Carthage and the hero Aeneas, with its libretto by the Irish poet and playwright Nahum Tate, to the modern boardroom. This Dido is the CEO of a major corporation, while Aeneas, rather than literally shipwrecked on the shores of Carthage, is a tycoon on the verge of economic collapse and in need of a business partner to merge with.

A bit surprisingly, the tale lends itself quite well to the updated setting. One reason is the story's resonance with the modern-day capitalist themes of independence and overwork, particularly for women. This opera is, and always has been, all about women. Indeed, its only major male role is Aeneas himself.

Another factor was the physical setting and the use of technology (I use the past tense because this was a one-time performance, though the group has plans for further events). Many modern theatrical productions use video to enhance or comment on the live action, but usually the screens or projections are fitted after the fact into a space designed mainly for live performance. The Samsung Experience at the Time Warner Center, on the other hand, is a showroom for the company's technology, particularly its screens and other video kit - a "10,000-square-foot interactive emporium of virtual reality experiences and technology."

You are surrounded by video. You walk through video to get to the performance space. You pass computers with interactive displays. Bright lighting and shiny equipment give a science-fictiony sheen to the whole environment. Everything is by Samsung, of course, including the two large screens that framed the stage displaying CNN-like "news" and commentary on the story we were witnessing. The backdrop too consisted of a large multi-panel screen, showing an image of the globe, slowly changing color like a Christmas display, reinforcing the sense that we're in a universe of nonstop worldwide news and action.

The video commentary, complete with a news crawl, was clever and funny and helped to both carry and clarify the story (I liked the novel use of the Windows "blue screen of death"). Its only disadvantage was that it replaced what in some opera performances would have been a display of supertitles. Even in an English-language opera like this one, the words can at times be hard to understand, given the strong vibrato of the female voices and the sometimes unexpected (to modern ears) phrasing of a 17th century libretto.

Still, though the audience may have missed some lines, the singers, with their top-notch voices and fine acting, made the essentials quite clear. And it is a story of essentials.

Dido loves Aeneas, but is reluctant to declare it until her sister (here an executive assistant) Belinda prods her. But three witches who hate Dido and want to ruin her life trick Aeneas into leaving town to fulfill his destiny of founding Rome (here, he is starting a new business venture without Dido). He changes his mind, but too late - Dido's heart has been irreparably broken and, more to the point, her pride fatally wounded: "To your promis'd empire fly/And let forsaken Dido die."

Blythe Gaissert conveyed Dido's sadness ("Peace and I are strangers grown") and precipitous fall with solemn, queenly magnetism. Her voice is strong, supple, almost buttery, and in the famous death scene, which was effectively video-assisted, she was moving and a little funny at the same time. Elena O'Connor as Belinda seemed slightly tentative of voice at first but quickly claimed the full measure of the role, singing beautifully while at the same time clowning divinely.

Alex Loustion was winning as the Second Woman, a more important role than its generic name makes it sound; she did a beautiful job with the lovely aria "Oft she visits this lone mountain." David Adam Moore brought a smooth, strong baritone, impeccable diction, and excellent acting skills to the relatively thankless role of Aeneas (this is a play about women, remember). Sarah Heltzel and Annie Pennies made fine witches, and Jessica Medoff-Bunchman was perfectly spectacular as the Sorceress (the head witch) - if she doesn't have a fan club, someone should start one.

The small Sybarite Chamber Players orchestra played with heart, precision, and even at certain moments a smoky intensity. Purcell's wonderful music lost nothing in the translation of the action to a setting of cutting-edge technology. Along with the musicians themselves, conducted by William Hobbs from the harpsichord, Daryl Bornstein's sound design must get some credit for this.

No more performances of Dido and Aeneas are immediately scheduled; I'm sure they'll be posted at the Dido Project's website when they are. As for the Samsung Experience, you can check it out any time you're in New York - it's right in the upscale mall at Columbus Circle known as the Time Warner Center.  A visit to a bright, shiny, holiday-dressed mall in the heart of the greatest city in the world is surprisingly cheering in these tough times. The next live event in the space is an appearance by comedian Mike Birbiglia on Dec. 10 from 4-6 PM.

When it comes to Beatles fans, there's a whole spectrum. Some just like the music. At the other extreme are those who obsess over every detail of the band's life and work: reading all the biographies and analyses, studying all the lyrics, following all the legacy news.

This new documentary is for those who fall somewhere in the middle. The information and perspectives imparted by these variously scholarly interviews won't give extreme Beatles geeks anything they don't already know, and to the casual fan they may not be of great interest. For someone like me, though - a serious music listener and Beatles fan, but without the desire (or, I suspect, the brain capacity) for encyclopedic knowledge - it hits the spot.

The documentary focuses on "the centerpiece of their success: the extraordinary songwriting partnership of John Lennon and Paul McCartney." During the years 1966-1970 that partnership took the Beatles from pop stardom to the forefront of musical sophistication and even the avant-garde, resulting in a body of work that continues to stimulate imitation, inspiration, and study decades later. (A previous DVD took up the formative period, from 1957-1965.)

Authors, journalists, and creative souls like Barry Miles, Klaus Voormann, Allan Moore, and Robert Christgau talk about the progression of events and influences that fueled the creativity of the Beatles' two primary songwriters through the period of the group's greatest success. The Dylan influence, Lennon's taking surreal inspiration from random phrases and posters, McCartney's immersion in the London art scene, the challenges of Frank Zappa's experiments and The Who's noise-rock - all these and more collect into a pretty well-rounded picture of what made these boys tick.

George Harrison's songwriting contributions, which became very significant in the later period, aren't covered here, and one misses them - not because the filmmakers don't deliver on what they promise, but because one can't feel fully immersed in the world of Beatles music without Harrison. But purely as a study of the songwriting of Lennon and McCartney, it succeeds. The documentary footage is interesting, if limited, and despite the dry, semi-scholarly tone, one gets fairly caught up in the excitement and emotions of a time when pop music was becoming much more than trifles for the ear.

Since the focus is on a small selection of representative songs, full versions of them would really improve the film. Beatles fans most likely have all the songs anyway, but being able to listen right then and there would certainly be a plus. Of course, getting the full rights to songs can be difficult or impossible, especially for independent filmmakers.

Extras are scant: a structural analysis of the song "A Day in the Life" by Allan Moore (just the sort of thing I find fascinating), and textual biographies of the contributors. The latter are useful because I didn't know who half of these people were, and it's good to see what makes them "experts." British fans will find more of them familiar names.

For the obsessive Beatles fanatic who knows everything but also needs everything, this will be a welcome addition, but non-completists can probably take a pass. For those who are merely highly interested, it's definitely worth a look.

Things are bigger in Texas, and people live life a little slower. Maybe they just need more time to take it all in, since there's so much of it.

Zero, an import from Dallas (it has also played in Chicago), reflects something of that vast Lone Star spirit. For a one-man play, it's bigger than a lot of what we're used to here in frenetic New York City. Parts of it go a shade or two too slow for my caffeinated heart to beat to. The twenty-somethings whom Danny O'Connor brings to life on stage spend their days sloshed in beer, tequila, and Jagermeister instead of coffee and protein shakes.

There's no denying the craft, stamina, and supersized ambition of the play's primary power source. O'Connor, on stage by his Lone Star lonesome for over two hours, plays six different characters, sometimes three at a time, while working through two separate storylines. All of them are precisely eight years out of high school, but he defines them with easy changes in accent, demeanor, and posture, loading each with personality in the process. Yet O'Connor sketches in their details just enough to make us want to know more about them; we'd like to see deeper into them than their war stories, their obsession with a high school flame, their drinking to excess.

The occasion for the main storyline is the return of Alex, one of the high school buddies, from the Iraq War. Alex reflects the play's origin: O'Connor and his brother Robert collaborated on the script long-distance during the latter's service in Iraq. Then, after his second tour, Robert committed suicide.

That grim backstory doesn't make the play a downer, though. To the contrary, it's pretty jolly, especially considering its protagonists' inability to achieve satisfaction, the low-level sadness underlining their lives. They are all, in various ways, the "zeros" of the title, although only boisterous Sam, the group's "good ole boy," refers to himself that way. "High school's with us forever, dude," he tells his actor pal Len, who has quit trying to make a career of what he loves.

Sam, despite being something of a caricature, is the best fleshed out of the three drinking buddies. Eternally trapped in sarcasm, he waxes philosophical: "Some people just aren't meant to follow their dreams." Yet in context, his bittersweet bluster is more humorous than sad, and that's a good thing, because the play's funny lines and body language and the intermittent outrageousness are what keep things moving as well as they do.

It's in the scenes where Sam, Len, and Alex get together that the action slows. O'Connor plays all three parts nimbly, but a lack of crispness in the dialogue bogs us down. By contrast, he transports us in high style when he's "by himself" - in the wordless opening, when Len wakes up from a humongous hangover and tries sourly to get the day going with a lot of help from a bottle of water and a toilet; in the monologues from James and Gabe, a preening metrosexual and a sad sack, whose planned night out constitutes the secondary storyline; in the hysterically pretentious performance piece by "Malthazar," who cracks us up even as we realize that his kind is a pretty easy target.

Zero is an impressive performance, and an enjoyable evening out, but one that would be more enjoyable if it were trimmed or tightened. Look out for Danny O'Connor; this fine, Texas-sized actor and monologist is a darn sight more than the sum of his "zero" parts.

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At the Roy Arias Theatre 2, 616 Ninth Ave. at 44th St., NYC, through Dec. 30. For tickets please visit Theatermania or call 866-811-4111. For more information visit the Zero website.

The operatic tradition has always had a place in rock and pop. Elvis Presley and the Platters' Tony Williams, Pat Benatar and Heart's Ann Wilson, metal's Ozzy Osbourne and pop-rock's Dennis De Young, and of course Freddie Mercury, are all singers who have adopted, at certain times and to one degree or another, opera's highly controlled vocal techniques rooted deep in the body.

At the same time, bands and arrangers have utilized orchestras, mellotrons, samplers, synthesizers, and dense, powerful vocal layerings to capture in popular music the bombastic drama of composers like Wagner and Verdi. Just think of the Beatles' late, highly orchestrated experiments, Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody," The Who's "Mini-Opera" and Tommy, Black Sabbath's "War Pigs," and almost anything from Led Zeppelin's peak period.

The East Village Opera Company comes from the other direction, taking famous themes and arias from classic operas and crafting variously flavored pop music around them. Their adaptations, while often clever, are not mere exercises, but really enjoyable music in their own right.

Producer-arranger Peter Kiesewalter and the group have a fine knack for finding modern-day settings for timeless themes without the self-conscious slickness you sometimes find in pop-classical crossover projects. The opening track, a pastiche of Wagner, Led Zeppelin, and Rush, is something of an exception. But overall the music has a fairly consistent sensibility. One gets the sense that the East Village Opera Company is a band, no less than The Beatles or Black Sabbath were.

Granted, this band has a bevy of guest artists in addition to its core of three singers and excellent musicians (they carry three string players when on the road): a pedal steel player on "As You Were Then" adapted from Bellini's Norma, soprano star Nicole Cabell on "Brindisi Libera (Pop the Cork)" from Verdi's La Traviata, a very effective children's chorus on "Soldiers" from Gounod's Faust, and more. There are touches of jazz, funk, and even country, and a bit of schmaltz of the sort you get from operatic pop singers like Josh Groban and Sarah Brightman.

But the singers don't sing like opera singers, most of the time, nor like opera singers trying to sing pop music, but simply like very good pop singers. And some of the opera themes are pretty well disguised. My sense is that a pop music fan completely ignorant of opera would likely enjoy this disc, although less so than someone familiar with opera. As such it's not the kind of thing that would tend to draw a potential fan into the world of opera.

But I don't get the feeling that's what the group is aiming for. I think they're aiming, like any band, to earn fans, to do something different or exceptional, to put on a good show, and maybe sell some recorded music in the process. I for one am looking forward to the next opportunity to see them live.

The all-female Queen's Company updates the classics with a modern pop-culture sensibility, while remaining true to the language, the story, and the groove of the original text. With a comedy like Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, this gang is also funny as hell. In fact, I laughed so much I got a headache. Damn you, Queen's Company.

One might imagine that Twelfth Night, with its cross-dressing plot and high ribaldry, would be perfect - or else problematic - for an all-female troupe. In fact, it is neither. The cast is overall so skilled, and directed so cleverly by Rebecca Patterson, that we hardly sense the non-traditional casting at all. The production succeeds entirely on the same merits as would any good Shakespearean staging, whether cast with men and women, with all men as in Shakespeare's time, or with the women of the QC.

It's been three years since I last saw one of this group's productions. Since that time they've maintained their energy while building their skills even further. Patterson's staging conceptions are brisk as ever, but have deepened, with increased subtlety. The cuts are judicious. The actors' line reading choices serve both clarity and high spirits. And the musical numbers just have to be seen to be believed.

It's a good thing she has excellent castmates to play off of, otherwise Aysan Çelik might steal the whole show. Her dart-sharp, hilarious Malvolio preens and pouts and struts, carrying us along with every move or glance. She even pulls her weight when she's not on the stage, merely being talked about. Carey Urban, who played Kate with panache in the company's Taming of the Shrew, makes a flouncy and tangy Olivia, and Virginia Baeta is a delightful, gamine-like Viola. Only Gisele Richardson's Sir Toby Belch could be improved - though it's a physically spot-on performance (and she's done up like a riotously drunken Al Sharpton), the lines are sometimes lost in swallowed diction.

Feeling drowned in our gloomy economic times? Get shipwrecked with Viola and her brother Sebastian (the elfin Amy Driesler) in the court of Duke Orsino (the regal Frances Uku) and his fool, Feste (the sly Natalie Lebert). A dip into The Queen's Company's singing, dancing, and fully Shakespearean version of fanciful Illyria is just the tonic for troubled days like these.

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Twelfth Night plays through Nov. 23 at Urban Stages, 259 W. 30 St., NYC. For tickets visit Smarttix or call 212-868-4444. For more information visit the Queen's Company online.

 

Photo (L-R): Carey Urban as Olivia (center) and the angels (beginning at lower left & going clockwise) Valerie Redd, Kari Nicole Washington, Gisele Richardson and Karen Berthel. Photo credit: John Santerre

What to do with the weight of expectations? The French novelist J. M. G. Le Clézio is not well known in the English-speaking world, and many of us might never have heard of him had he not been awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature. Now we have had the pleasure of that introduction, but because of the prize, we also feel the burden of expecting greatness.

Greatness probably can't be ascribed to any author based on the reading of one fairly short book. Nonetheless, Le Clézio's 2004 novel Wandering Star is unquestionably a work of power and beauty even in this suboptimal translation.

It tells the story of Esther/Hélène, a girl from a secular Jewish family forced by the Nazi invasion to flee their home in Nice. In the countryside, in a small village, under the dubious protection of the less-murderous Italian military, she comes of age.

Eventually Esther reaches Israel, where she encounters Nejma, a Palestinian refugee her own age. We read Nejma's story in a separate section, but the contrast between the trajectories of the two lives is clear, and crushing.

Having borne many trials but escaped the full horror of the Final Solution, Esther has arrived at her promised land. Israel's War for Independence is raging, and it seems life for her is an endless whirl of destruction, yet she is a survivor. But in order for the Jewish refugees to establish their homeland, another people - Nejma's - is uprooted and transformed into refugees themselves, persecuted in their turn not by murderous armies bent on genocide - though plenty die in battle - but by starvation and disease. Though the two girls meet but once, their dual stories comprise a singular tale of the nightmare of war, and the promise - and tragedy - of human migrations.

The translation has problems. Not having the original French in front of me, I don't know to what extent the translator, C. Dickson, has adhered to Le Clézio's French sentence constructions. But whether from too-literal rendering, or carelessness, or some other reason, too many sentences must be read twice. The reason is nonstandard punctuation, primarily the use of commas to create run-on sentences, and other careless constructions: "Elizabeth had followed her into the bushes, she caught up with her on the bank of the river, breathless, her legs scratched from the brambles."

The poetry of the writing blasts through nonetheless, even in passages such as the above. It burns down like the desert heat beating down on Nejma as she passes her days in a refugee camp at what feels like the end of the world. In the following passage, Nejma, who has grown up by the sea but now languishes in the dry, dusty camp, has just witnessed a young pregnant woman being bathed, her "long braids twirled around on her back like wet snakes."

Outside the sun was still dazzling. The camp was heavy with dust, with silence. Before nightfall, I was up on top of the hill, my ears filled with the sounds of water and the droning voice of the old woman. Perhaps I had stopped seeing the camp through the same eyes. It was as if everything had changed, as if I had just arrived, as if I were unfamiliar with the stones, the dark houses, the horizon obstructed by the hills, the dried-up valley scattered with scorched trees where the sea never comes.

Through Esther's life story and Nejma's, Le Clézio bathes even the muddy or humdrum moments in muted light like this. Yet the girls' suffering is almost palpable, both Nejma's physical destitution and Esther's literal and psychological displacement. Esther lives on, a survivor; Nejma's fate remains cloudy. But having read their stories, so different and so similar, we are left with one rock-solid truth: there is no simple right or wrong.

And there is a second truth, this one buried in the author's way of telling itself.  It's Keats's youthful truth, that beauty is truth and truth beauty. This truth, carried to us on the wings of great art and literature, can survive the worst of times - however unexpectedly.

Matt Morris, Backstage at Bonnaroo and Other Acoustic Performances

Listening to Matt Morris, intimate is the word that comes most readily to mind. His high, fluty tenor, recorded closely into the mic, wafts his words into your consciousness like a message carried on the wind.

The first three songs on this sparsely produced EP have little more than Morris's voice and acoustic guitar, with a few subtle lead guitar fills. For the final two tracks he switches to piano. On "Let It Go" Morris flutters close to Antony territory. The disc closes with "The Un-American," a deceptively sweet-sounding condemnation of consumer culture that nicely bookends the opener, "Money," with its pithy explanation that "Money ain't the villain / It's greed that's the killer."

Speaking of money, Morris, known for writing for Christina Aguilera and Kelly Clarkson, is being championed by Justin Timberlake.  But in spite of these glittery associations, as a singer-songwriter he has a way of gently delivering serious lyrics that harks back to the early solo work of David Crosby, and to the more modern singer-songwriter feel of Elliott Smith. At the same time, his voice, though soft and plaintive, has an up-close tang and controlled yet emotional falsetto heights that make one think of what Jeff Buckley might have sounded like if he'd been able to write material with real hooks.

Lee "Scratch" Perry, Scratch Came Scratch Saw Scratch Conquered

It's hard to keep up with dub-reggae pioneer Lee "Scratch" Perry, even for us relative youngsters. At 72, he's still putting out a full-length CD roughly every year.

Since I last wrote about Scratch he's released two discs. The newest features appearances by Keith Richards and George Clinton, but despite the heavy-hitting guests, this hourlong CD is all about Scratch and his new collaborator-producer Steve Marshall. (The two also worked together on Scratch's Grammy-nominated disc last year.)

Either you dig Scratch or you don't. Trancelike but jovial, self-obsessed but always with a slightly scary wink, the man and the music seem one. The dub and classic reggae elements are all here: the horns, the repetition, the stops, the sound effects, the social consciousness, the religion, the aphorisms, the weed. Then Scratch adds the flights of fancy and the wordplay. "Riches come / And riches goes / Cigarette come / Cigarette goes / But I remain / I am the rain / I remain," he declares in "Jealousy."

"Sinful Fuckers" needs no further explanation.

"Ha ha ha ha," he proclaims sleepily in "Yee Ha Ha Ha." "La la la la / Ha ha ha ha." And so it goes. Light something up and dive in. But look out. As George Clinton intones, "Headz Gonna Roll."

Asylum Street Spankers, What? And Give Up Show Biz?

The busy Asylum Street Spankers are back with a live double CD recorded at a series of concerts in New York City earlier this year. The Spankers are always fun, but they're more fun in person, and this set captures a good bit of the wacky, childish-for-grownups fun that makes their concerts such a hoot.

There's a mix of favorite Spankers numbers ("Beer," "Winning the War on Drugs," "Blade of Grass"), newer tunes, and classic covers like "I Got My Mojo Workin'" and "Since I Met You Baby," all strung together with spit, twine, musical saw, between-songs banter, and silly tales about life on the road. There are even a couple of songs from the band's recent children's album, including "You Only Love Me For My Lunchbox." And don't miss "Hick Hop," Wammo's fusion of country and western murder ballads and gangsta rap.

The Spankers handle blues, old-timey jazz, country, bluegrass, nearly every style you might hear at a postmodern vaudeville show - even a little rock - with equal skill, and a big dollop of silliness that wouldn't work half as well without the high-level musicianship; they make it look (or sound) easy.

Most often I wouldn't suggest a live album as a good introduction to a band, but if you haven't heard the Spankers, and you don't mind a fair amount of banter in between songs, this wouldn't be a bad place to start at all. At the very least it will probably make you want to catch a show when this clever, funny, and well-traveled band of zany gypsies comes to your town.

Speaking of creatures of New York, you can just see in the upper right section of this photo a red-tailed hawk that spent a while circling over Manhattan - somewhere around the 20’s - this morning. I don’t have the kind of camera that could really capture it, but there is was, red tail and all.

The theme of this edition of Creatures of New York is:

The Abandoned.

First, here is an abandoned bear, hung from a fence in Madison Square Park.

Similarly, this poor donkey or horse was abandoned in Cooper Square.

Traffic cones are surprisingly loaded with personality. This poor guy - or girl, it’s hard to tell in its crushed condition - has ironically collapsed into the hole it was put in to warn against.

This Lion Brand Yarn store is about to re-open on 15th St. Gotta love their lion.

Finally, an aftermath shot I like to call, “The Madder Hulk Gets…”

This is an MP3 of the sound out our window just after 11 PM when CNN called the election for Obama. There was no crowd in the street, no rally, just the sound of people yelling from their apartments on an average New York City street.

The TV news is carrying stories about poll problems in some locations around New York City, but voting was pretty well organized and non-problematic this morning for us. We had to wait about 40 minutes. One celebrity sighting at the polls: Tim Robbins.

Update: Gothamist explains why Tim Robbins was sitting in a folding chair looking annoyed.

Starting this year, I'm adopting my Left Coast colleague Bob Machray's tradition of attending a Halloween-themed performance every Samhain season. I'm happy to report that my new custom has begun robustly, with a delightfully diverting evening spent in the company of Mr. R M Lloyd Parry. A marvelous reader and actor, this gentleman simply sits in a chair, surrounded by the leathery accoutrements of a bookish professor's study, and tells us two spooky supernatural tales by M R James, the great writer of English ghost stories.

Professor James, who lived from 1862 to 1936, was a master of English prose. His sentences weave patterns both elegant and forceful, often taking unexpected turns into obscure, frightening, or funny corners of the supernatural and the psychological. Listening to Mr. Parry read "The Ash Tree" and "Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad" brought me back to my first, youthful plunge into Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Hound of the Baskervilles." It also brought to mind the dark imagination of Edgar Allan Poe, although Poe's American characters are far more rough-and-ready than James's tweedy dons and landed gentry.

Parry starts with an avuncular mien but can also grow spectral before our very eyes, especially with the stage lit only by a few candles. (A tiny bit of stage lighting would have illuminated his face a little more without spoiling the effect.) He makes it easy to suspend your disbelief and tap into your childish sense of wonder. The technique and staging - a solo performer who both narrates and brings multiple characters to life in order to tell a taut but wild story - also recalls Patrick Stewart's wonderful solo performances of A Christmas Carol.

When Patrick Stewart brings a show to America, of course, it's bound for a Broadway stage. Oh, Whistle is being performed in the 30-seat black-box space at the 78th Street Theatre Lab. And the theater was not full. There are four more performances of this award-winning show (it won The Dracula Society's Hamilton Deane Award for best dramatic presentation in the Gothic genre, no less). Nov. 5th through the 8th are your last chances.

Go, fill up this tiny place, and make some noise while ye may. Soon enough the spookiness of the Halloween season will be gone, and in its place the sugary and far less evocative homeyness of Thanksgiving. Don't let Thanksgiving happen to you! Not, anyway, without first immersing yourself in the spooky mind of M R James, the master of the English ghost story.

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Oh, Whistle…: Two Ghost Stories by M R James is directed and performed by R M Lloyd Parry. The final four performances run from Nov. 5-8 at 7:30 PM. On Nov. 7 there is an additional 10 PM performance of two different stories. Purchase tickets online or call 212-362-0329. Visit the Nunkie Theatre Company's website for more information on Mr. Parry's performances.

The powerful new documentary Burning the Future: Coal in America explains how critical coal power is to the US economy and to Americans' energy-greedy way of life. It also focuses on the terrible effects modern mining has on the lives of people who live in Appalachian coal country. Specifically, the film documents the contamination of the water supply and its effects on human health. It also condemns mountaintop removal mining in no uncertain terms.

This modern form of coal extraction relies on heavy explosives to get the coal from the tops of mountains, rather than using large numbers of miners to burrow underground for it. There are some who defend mountaintop mining, but a quick glance at a few photos is enough to convince many that the practice should be outlawed.

The economics and science of coal and coal mining are complex, but in terms of cost to the environment it's safe to say that coal is a dirty source of energy. Most environmentalists believe the US should wean itself off coal.

However, the film raises another, related issue. One certainly sympathizes with people whose lands and water are being polluted, whose children are being sickened, by nearby coal mining operations. But enjoying a modern, comfortable way of life while living in relatively remote areas just might not be sustainable in the first place.

Two scenes in the film brought this home to me. Both occur on a trip to New York City taken by several courageous West Virginia environmental activists who have been invited to testify before a UN commission.

The final leg of the activists' journey takes place via New Jersey Transit. Sitting on the train, one of them observes that she's never been on a train before. To someone who grew up in the northeast, that's almost unbelievable. Never been on a train? Not an Amtrak, a commuter train, a subway train? Never once?

But where she comes from, you have to get everywhere by car. Simple as that. And there are far too many people in this country who have to get everywhere by car.

The second scene occurs when the leader of the activists, the admirable Maria Gunnoe, stands in Times Square, looks up at the huge, brightly lit advertisements looming everywhere, and cries out for New York to turn out these lights. Don't New Yorkers know that their incessant demand for energy is ruining the land elsewhere in the country?

It's a powerful moment. One could, of course, point out that the bright lights of Times Square are one of New York's biggest tourist attractions, and the city depends heavily on the tourist trade. But one can understand Gunnoe's reaction, and one feels in one's bones that she's - at least a little - right.

No, the bigger point the scene raises is that, however much energy might be "wasted" keeping Times Square "Times Square," city residents have smaller carbon footprints than people who live on houses with land.

People who live in houses need cars, every day. They have more rooms to heat and cool than city dwellers do. They might have the proverbial white picket fence, but inside their fences suburbanites waste huge amounts of water keeping their lawns artificially green. People who live in the suburbs or the sticks get none of the economies of scale that come with apartment living. And that was all fine when populations were smaller, gas was cheap, and the effects of our material prosperity on the planet were less well understood. I don't think it's fine any more.

In the film, one of the West Virginians worries that by the time his kids grow up, pollution may have made it impossible for them to continue living where they were brought up. I hope they can, he says.

From a family standpoint, that's sad. But in a way, I hope they can't. I'm certainly not cheering on the pollution, the destructive mining, or the continued dependence on dirty energy. Unless mining and burning coal can be made truly clean, phase it out, for the sake of the planet. But also for the sake of the planet, those country kids should move to a city. In fact, I'll go out on a limb: by the year 2040, unless your business is farming, your family ought to be living in a city.

By then, I hope it'll be really, really hard to find an American who's never been on a train.

Laura Vecchione, Girl in the Band

Laura Vecchione’s second disc is a consummately crafted and craftily written set of tunes that straddle the borders between commercial country, country-rock, and alt/Americana. My colleague Michael Bialas detailed Laura’s devotion to and work on behalf of post-Katrina New Orleans. Notably, on this CD, she covers the traditional “Indian Red” a capella and flows it into her own “Fly Home Flag Boy.” “Magnolia” too evokes the “Crescent City moon” and “wrought iron lace and Spanish roofs.” It’s the same moon, of course, that shines over her Boston and New York City roots in “This Town” and the pillowy but catchy title track. My favorite, though, might just be the sneaky “Don’t Come Creepin’.”

Laura tried out some different styles on her previous disc; here she stretches a bit in her nicely subtle rendition of the Etta James ballad “A Lover is Forever,” while the closing number, the beautiful original “Stone By Stone,” also has a bluesy-jazz tilt to its folky bedrock.

If you haven’t met Laura Vecchione, this is a great place to start. Links to listen and purchase are at her website.

G Tom Mac, Though Shalt Not Fall

G Tom Mac is the strange moniker for the pairing of Gerard McMann, known for the goth track “Cry Little Sister” from the film The Lost Boys, and collaborator/producer Tony Silver. Perhaps because the duo has concentrated on creating music for TV and movies, there’s a variety of moods on their new disc, but a strong thread is their appealing fusion of industrial sounds with a skilled songwriter’s feel for pop music, along with a bit of gothic bite. A good listen altogether.

The Simple Things, The Simple Things

I’m glad I didn’t read The Simple Things’ press kit before listening to their music. “Imagine McCoy Tyner, Rickie Lee Jones, and James Jamerson coming together…” Sure, imagine those people…and then think about their opposites, and you might get something like The Simple Things. What we have here is a collection of spacious chamber pieces, feather-light yet highly focused. Singer Kaitlin McGaw alternates between a controlled wail (”Eyes For Me”) and an affectless Liz Phair delivery (”The Moon Is Torn”), both effective in their own ways. The music behind her is subtle piano and organ from Michael Gallant and tasteful, precise electric bass from Raymond Ruiz, who has a penchant for bass chords. The result is a very modern but accessible sound, contemplative and easeful but rewarding careful listening as well.

The Art of Walking, The Art of Walking

This music is so unobtrusive it’s hard to find something to say about it, other than simply that I liked it. One could safely say that Brian Malvey, who is The Art of Walking, makes excellent use of the studio in creating settings for his appealingly reticent songs with their often winning melodies. But that doesn’t tell you what they sound like. Let’s leave it at this: somewhere between Death Cab for Cutie and Sufjan Stevens, you’ll perhaps find The Art of Walking, treading on soft feet.

Red Wanting Blue, These Magnificent Miles

Listen to the first couple of bars of “Gravity,” the opening song of Red Wanting Blue’s eighth (yes, eighth) album, and if you were new to the band you’d be tempted to say, “Oh, no - another Pearl Jam clone - didn’t that go out of style around the turn of the century?” You’d soon be proven wrong, though - Scott Terry’s throaty baritone turns out to be its own thing, and so is this band’s music.

Based in Athens, Ohio, the group certainly has the earnest heartland-rock sensibility that you can’t avoid when you traipse through the Midwest. (”The road’s paved the same way for sinners and saints.”) But they vary the moods well. Try to resist the elemental rock of “New Cool.” And with solid songwriting, superior musicianship, and their own slant on the basics of rock, they carve out their own niche, with crashing symbols and ringing guitars framing catchy tunes and socially conscious lyrics.

A final note: if you decide to pick up this album, consider spending the extra few bucks for the physical CD. It’s one of the more impressive artistic packages you’ll find on an indie release.

The story of Donovan's life is a fascinating journey through a period in pop music that continues to shape the creative lives of several generations. A new video biography by Hannes Rossacher makes a good case for Donovan as a kind of nexus for many of the musical and musico-social strains that began to mingle in the 1950s and touched off the most resonant and lasting explosion of popular music in our history - that of "the 60s."

Sunshine Superman: The Journey of Donovan is an unusual biopic in that the subject himself narrates the whole way, onscreen in a series of interviews in which the interviewer is unseen and unheard. As he takes us through his life from his childhood in postwar Glasgow through the present day, it becomes clear that Donovan has a healthy opinion of himself, his work, and his influence. But whatever his true or deserved place in the pantheon of rock godhood, this film demonstrates that he was certainly centrally located.

Along with the well-known facts and high points of Donovan's career - his hit singles, his bizarre encounter with Bob Dylan in the film Don't Look Back, his collaboration with the Beatles and famous trip to India with them to visit the Maharishi, and so on - there are also amusing tales, like getting squirted with a water gun by Keith Moon and Roger Daltry while trying to perform on a TV show. There are also numerous interesting clips of promotional videos, films in which Donovan appeared, and TV appearances ranging from Pete Seeger's show in 1966 to Later…with Jools Holland three decades later. There are concert and festival clips, culminating with a 2008 all-star jam on "Season of the Witch" at New York's Cutting Room, interviews with his wife and others, a brief account of his attempt to avoid taxes by "never living anywhere," a visit to his luthier in California, and more.

And the wardrobe… just seeing the extravagant hippie-wear Donovan used to don for his concerts and videos is nearly worth the price of admission.

Disc 1 is the three-hour documentary itself. The latter part is decidedly less interesting than the earlier sections, but it's hard to imagine how this could have been avoided, considering when the high points of Donovan's career occurred. (Halfway through the film, it's still 1968.) It's in those earlier sections that Rossacher, aided mightily by Donovan himself, makes the case for the artist's central significance. As he worked on his early hits - produced with legendary producer Micky Most - Donovan collaborated with many legends and legends-to-be. Backing him up on the famous recording of "Hurdy Gurdy Man" are Jimmie Page, John Bonham, and John Paul Jones, soon to become three quarters of Led Zeppelin. Elsewhere we see him befriending Brian Jones. There's Donovan in India, teaching the Beatles finger-style guitar. Here he is recording his later hit "Barabajagal" with Jeff Beck's band backing him up.

A brief montage of famous films that have prominently featured Donovan's songs attests to his continuing significance for creators and audiences today. (The most recent major example is the use of "Hurdy Gurdy Man" in the film Zodiac.) More obscure are the clips found on Disc 2, which, like the film, will be of interest to Donovan fans, completists, and students of the 60s.

Sound and video quality are excellent, even on the old clips. Latter-day Donovan remains hale and hearty. His stage style is winning, but, lifted out of the feel-good flower-power milieu that spawned his biggest hits, a little short of mesmerizing, so don't expect to be blown away by awesome live performances. But Disc 2 is packed with extras - not just videos and concert clips and TV appearances, but extended versions of some of the film's sequences, private moments, a family photo album, and, most valuable, several really nice unreleased songs in video form.

You get a lot of bang for your buck with this two-disc set. It provides a close look at Donovan's life, music, and, maybe even more interesting, his times. I recommend it highly not just for Donovan fans but for all fans of 60s music and anyone interested in the period.

I wanted to see The Pumpkin Pie Show because it's the long-running product of the fevered brain of Clay McLeod Chapman, who wrote the script of the remarkable musical Hostage Song. While the two shows couldn't be much more different in mood and presentation, both dig for the gory innards of the human soul.

Hostage Song was a drama with rock music about two Western hostages in Iraq crawling towards a twisted kind of redemption, blindfolded the entire time. Pumpkin Pie is a series of stories written by Chapman and performed by Hanna Cheek (who was so good in Hostage Song) and Chapman himself. Stories are what they are called, and although they are for the most part monologues, stories is perhaps the best word. Each of the tales marries the narrative movement of a short story with the distinct first-person voice of a dramatic monologue.

At each show the two actors perform a different half dozen or so out of a total of fourteen stories they've honed over the past ten years. At the outset, actors and audience don't know which we're going to get, so each show is different. But the tales (at least the six I saw) have in common a strong element of the macabre, and usually a good dose of humor too.

The cast, Cheek especially, are good at transforming themselves into a variety of twisted characters - an overly attached mom, a drunk bridesmaid, a creepy guy who lives under a pier - and the unrelatedness of the tales gives the evening something of the air of an exercise session. But the tales cast their spells effectively, plunging the audience into Chapman's often disturbing, sometimes sickening, and occasionally touching theme park of weirdness. We overuse the roller coaster analogy - for adventure movies and the like - but The Pumpkin Pie Show really is like a thrill ride, full of creepy delights, alternately tickling your brain and turning your stomach. You must be this tall to enter.

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Thursdays through Saturdays through Nov. 1 at Under St. Marks, 94 St. Marks Place, NYC, with a special expanded performance on Halloween night. Get tickets online or call 212-868-4444.

The long-awaited new CD from Whisperado has begun stirring towards existence. Meaning, we’ve started recording basic tracks, up at Scott Miller’s studio in the wilds of New Jersey. Your favorite songs from our shows will be on the new disc… and meanwhile, of course, you can still buy a copy of our first EP, Some Other Place. Get it at iTunes in the form of high quality MP3s, at Cruxy if you want to download actual WAVs (plus PDFs of the CD artwork), or for a physical copy, we recommend CD Baby. Your purchase will help fund the new disc. Onward!