"Perverb"-ially speaking: Hal Willner's tribute to Tuli Kupferberg

In a previous post, I detailed the joys of seeing two live tribute shows masterminded by producer extraordinaire Hal Willner. Willner has crafted a number of “songbook” shows for composers over the past decade, and has staged the majority of them for free (that’s right, no cash, no ticket) at various venues in NYC. The latest in the series had a high ticket price, but its purpose — to help legendary poet/mother-Fug Tuli Kupferberg pay for his outsized medical expenses — was certainly noble. And, in the process, Willner staged another marathon program that included a sublime mix of musical legends and “unknowns” that are supremely talented.

The show was held on January 22nd at St. Ann’s in Brooklyn (ooh… artsy!), and lasted a full three and a half hours without an intermission. The roster ran the gamut from stripped-down folk ensembles to sonic experimenters (or, as they would’ve been called a few years back, “reverb motherfuckers”). Willner’s propensity to dig deeply into the catalogue of the person he’s saluting proved eye-opening here, as the Fugs were certainly musical innovators, but hearing their music recited and played by people possessing gorgeous voices (and playing their instruments to perfection) lent a whole new dimension to the work done by Tuli, Ed Sanders, Ken Weaver, and the other band members four decades ago. Willner also “mixes it up,” so that a number of the unknown (to me) commodities — including White Magic, Jolie Holland, and Flutterbox — distinguished themselves quite beautifully in between old vets like Philip Glass and a sonic-noise combo of Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson, John Zorn, and Sarth Calhoun playing his laptop.

All in all, the show was a terrific revue-style (or is that variety show-like?) procession of top-notch talent paying tribute to Tuli’s work (a good account of the proceedings can be found on the my friend Carle's Station Sign blog). It’s hard to pick standouts, but one of the nicer surprises of the evening was former Del Fuego and current kid-entertainer Dan Zanes addressing the issue at hand, by performing the Fugs’ “River of Shit” (what a nice tune for the kiddies!) as a tribute to America’s rotten-as-fuck healthcare system. Zanes certainly tapped into the Fugs’ raw energy, but I’m sure that Old Man Kupferberg would’ve surely enjoyed “the ladies of Karen Black” (as they were called, Kembra Pfahler being the only recognizable figure) performing “Slum Goddesss of the Lower East Side” naked, clad only in their trademark primary-colored bodypaint (Tuli was never above a bit of carnal indulgence, as will be indicated below). The Fugs themselves performed twice, which gave one a bit of a nice chill up the spine, as NYC poetry legend Ed Sanders is still in fine voice (at the age of 70) and the group blazed on such fine vintage numbers as the psychedelic spoof “Crystal Liaison” and the theme song for this particular Willner show, Tuli’s terse, brilliant summation of Western Civilization in a few minutes, the anthemic “Nothing.”

The ensemble that seemed to capture the true anarchy found on the Fugs’ Sixties records was led by John S. Hall and Dogbowl of King Missile — I’d love to i.d. the other musicians, but the only downside of Willner’s mind-roastingly wonderful what-will-come-next? show-construction is that acts are announced once and once only (so if you miss the performer’s name, that’s essentially it, just enjoy their voice or playing). Hall and co. did high-energy versions of “Defeated” and “The Ten Commandments” with minimal instrumentation and copious amounts of histrionics. They reminded us all of how really strange and unusual the Fugs were in their day (and our own — do you think performers as un-photogenic and grubby, and brilliant, as Ed and Tuli could ever get on the pool of tedious mediocrity that is American Idol?).

Willner’s shows are truly unique events. At points they seem mildly disorganized, but the short-lived disorganization seems to stem from the fact that the backstage area is literally teeming with talented folks, and Willner seemingly wants to keep the show going all night – I still have a strong memory of performers on stage during his Neil Young tribute at Prospect Park getting the neck-cut “we gotta end the show” gesture, after three hours of great entertainment had been presented, and Hal apparently had even more wonderfully obscure Young tunes lined up.

So who is this Tuli fellow that the folks packed into St. Ann’s were cheering? You can check out his biography here, but suffice it to say that he’s (along with bandmate Sanders) one of the remaining Beat-poet pioneers and a consummate “commie” troublemaker. The Fugs are legends who can be sampled at various places on the Net, including their official site. For Manhattanites, it’s been our pleasure to see Tuli on Manhattan Neighborhood Network, the public-access organization that airs the Funhouse, for three decades now as host/producer of “Revolting News.” When YouTube became the most immediate mode of communication, Tuli wisely moved in on that too, and has posted a few hundred clips to YT and Daily Motion. Recently he suffered two strokes and is now blind and essentially housebound and in need of constant care. The “Nothing” benefit was held to raise money for his care, and wound up drawing attention to what a prolific guy he’s been over the past five decades, which was no surprise to those who’ve even sporadically followed his multi-media output.

A few clips have been posted from the show, including Jeffrey Lewis performing Tuli’s “And,” backed by the multi-instrumentalist, Holy Modal Rounder founder, and all-around joyful-noisemaker Peter Stampfel and his daughter:



Also from the Willner show, Gary Lucas performing a composition for Tuli:



To get a feel for what the Fugs did, here is a golden clip of them performing their psychedelic parody song (this written back in 1968), “Crystal Liaison” on Swedish TV:



Tuli’s clips on YouTube and Daily Motion are truly moving, because here is a gent who is now 86 and not at all healthy, but is totally with it mentally. He will not stop entertaining and enlightening us with his knowledge, his poetry, his aphorisms, and gags. Here he reads a poem from the early 1950s, “Snow Job”:



I highly recommend the clips uploaded by former Manhattan access host/producer Coca Crystal. Tuli guested on her show several times, and the clips can be found on YT. He does a version of the Calypso song ”Everybody Loves Saturday Night”. And here is a terrific version of an anti-nuke song done by Tuli as part of the “the Revolting Theater”:



Tuli has also been posting “Daily Perverbs” on YT, offering us quick jokes and silly puns. You gotta love the guy:



Another perverb:



And a final sample (there are literally dozens of these quickies on YouTube, check ’em out):



Guesting on Coca again, doing the “parasong” “No Business Like War Business”



Tuli’s updating of Woody Guthrie’s classic, with a slightly more realistic tint, “This Land is Their Land.” This “parasong” was performed at the benefit by Penny Arcade, who couldn’t quite sing it on-key, but who cares?



And finally, Tuli peforming a song he claims is his favorite of the ones he has composed, “When I Was a Young Man”:



Tuli has a way with finales — he provided a closing video for the “Nothing” benefit that found him urging us all to have fun on the way home. “It may be later than you think!” The clip above also offers a very nice closer for this tribute to an exceptional poet and, yes, troublemaker: “What are ya gonna do about it? Don’t just sit there!”

The "eldest brother" of the New Wave: Deceased Artiste Eric Rohmer

Eric Rohmer remains for me a “subject for further research” (phrase courtesy Andrew Sarris). I have thoroughly enjoyed the films of his I’ve seen, and yet I haven’t seen a good deal of his oeuvre. Perhaps this is due to the fact that he grouped his films in themed series, and although the films can be viewed individually with no loss of comprehension, the completist in me always wants to watch a series of films in the order it was released in. Perhaps it’s because Rohmer’s films are inherently literary in nature, and as such are chockfull of dialogue and characterization, as opposed to the poetry (Godard) and mystery (Rivette) found in my favorite New Wave films (although without question Rohmer stayed “purer” to his own vision of an intellectual cinema than Truffaut and Chabrol did to their initial rebel tendencies). Perhaps it’s simply because Rohmer made films the way Woody Allen has here in the U.S. — and although Woody favors Bergman as his model, I do see him more firmly following in the footsteps of Rohmer. Which is to say, he produced a steady flow of films that ranged from mini-masterworks to deftly realized but forgettable character studies (with his view of Paris and other locales being akin to Woody’s magical depictions of NYC). Sometimes the more films a filmmaker produces, the more I need to see everything he or she has made; sometimes I just see the “classics” and wind up losing track of the artist’s work in midstream.

In any case, what Rohmer did well, he did extremely well. And that was depicting the nuances of male-female relationships, keeping the viewer focused on the action by avoiding all “frills” (close-ups, flagrant musical soundtracks), and, let’s be honest here, casting really beautiful women as objects of desire, usually found in bathing suits on a beach.

A very early Rohmer work, shot in the early Fifties but not released until 1960, is the short Presentation, ou Charlotte et son Steak, starring none other than Uncle Jean himself, our hero Godard. He is so young here he’s not wearing glasses, has hair, and is ridiculously thin. He dubbed his own voice when Rohmer released the film in 1960, and Anna Karina and Stephane Audran dubbed the voices of the two actresses.



Rohmer’s first feature, Le Signe du Lion (1959), is very rarely seen on these shores. Here is a pretty thorough trailer from its initial release, running three minutes long:



And here is a key scene for Uncle Jean lovers, JLG does with a record player what Jean-Pierre Leaud later did with a CD in his terrific Grandeur et Decadense…. So does that mean Rohmer came up with this bit, or did Godard do it at parties to drive everyone nuts?



The opening of the short Nadja a Paris (1964), sans English subs (it’s all about location and girl here):



Rohmer’s first venture in color is BRIGHTLY colored, perhaps because it was released in the magic little year of 1967. La Collectioneuse can be found in its entirety here. This is a peek at the film's opening, and the quite lovely Haydéee Politoff dressed for some conversation:



Pauline at the Beach (1983) was one of Rohmer’s bigger arthouse hits over here. This is the U.S. home video trailer for the film. I love these odd artifacts of VHS Past:



Another underseen Rohmer title, starring the terrific Pascale Ogier (who died tragically at the age of 26), Full Moon in Paris (1984). Here, my friends, is a a little slice of the Gallic Eighties:



Rohmer’s final series was the “Tales of Four Seasons.” Here is the trailer for A Tale of Summer (1996):



I hate just linking to trailers, but Rohmer’s films are notoriously hard to excerpt. Here is the preview for The Lady and the Duke (2001), a period piece in which Rohmer made brilliant use of CGI to render period atmosphere:



And a wonderful rarity, Rohmer’s film of Jean Renoir and Henri Langlois speaking about the Lumiere bros, Louis Lumiere (1968):



My own offering is a slice of Rohmer acting for his friend Jacques Rivette in the intricate and wonderful miniseries Out 1 (1970). Rohmer plays an expert on Balzac who lectures Jean-Pierre Leaud on the mysterious group known as the “Thirteen.” This very dialogue- and seemingly plot-portent-laden scene comes in the series’ third episode after there has been *very* little dialogue. Thanks to Zach for pointing the existence of this English-subbed print out, and Paul for transferring it so awesomely:



And the chunkier second part of the scene: