Re: [Harp-L] Jimi Hendrix moments

[Ken Deifik <kenneth.d@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> I HAVE TO DO SOMETHING!

None of us would tell on you if you kept a dead harp in your pocket, and 
pulled a switcheroo at the climactic moment.  At least I wouldn't.

>   What are your Jimi Hendrix moments?  Anyone actually light a harp on fire?

No, but I once watched an NBC news special while playing a gig.

I was in a band called The Love Of Life Orchestra, which was one of the 
original New Wave bands in lower Manhattan in 1977.  We rehearsed in the 
Talking Heads' loft in Long Island City.  I had just come back from 
Nashville, but everyone else had been gigging and living in lower Manhattan 
as punk rock emerged.

The writer James Wolcott had written the first article on punk rock for the 
Village Voice.  He even gave the music its name in that article.  The 
article was republished in England in the New Musical Express.  Nobody in 
England had actually heard the music, as it hadn't been recorded, or at 
least there was no World Wide Web yet.

So bands made up their own music in a style they thought might sound like 
punk rock, (it was nothing like American punk rock of course), and they 
invented all kinds of ancillary gestures like using safety pins for 
earrings.  They were much better at getting publicity than the American 
punkers, partly because they acted far more scornful of the notion of 
getting publicity.  (There used to be this thing called the Music Business, 
you might've heard of it, and the English punkers were far better at it 
than the Americans.  They acted like they despised the Music Business, 
hence selling far more records than the Americans.)

Of course kids with safety pins in their ears became The Perfect New 
Boogeyman for the American Media.   "Be very afraid.  There are these 
English kids, see...."

The Love Of Life Orchestra had a weekly Saturday night gig in the basement 
of an art gallery called the Franklin Furnace.  All the burgeoning New Wave 
bands came to gawk and dance, along with half of Soho.  Unfortunately, NBC 
News chose Saturday night to run its documentary on the London Punk scene 
("hide your children, run screaming...") and there were no VCRs or Tivos 
yet, so you had to actually watch the show when it aired or you were 
FOL.  And the other musicians in the band were not about to miss that show, 
OR the gig.  So they ran an antenna connection down into the bowels of the 
Franklin Furnace,  brought a TV up on stage, and we watched the show while 
we played for a roomful of dancers.

Michael, if you'd-a been there I'd have invited you up onstage to throw the 
TV into the audience after the show was over, and maybe even set it on fire.

At the end of the gig we split the house take.  I got about $5 per show, 
which may actually have been worth more than the $26 you got last night, so 
I'm not going to gloat.

The great sax player Peter Gordon led that band.  Laurie Anderson played 
violin.  (I was soon to start playing on her recordings.)  The novelist 
Kathy Acker and the cellist-composer Arthur Russell, both long since thrown 
off the stage of life in the flame of youth, were in it too.  Hell of a band.