"Friday, for a change, a little more nothing": Deceased Artiste Tuli Kupferberg

The fact that poet-rocker-activist-access pioneer-wildman Tuli Kupferberg died this week wasn’t a great surprise, as he had been having some heavy health problems for months now. The fact that he continued to have videos put up on YouTube until only a month ago was the real surprise, a further indication that Tuli was a dedicated creator of poetic anarchy until the end. He gave away his best work in his latter years, and we in Manhattan (as his access audience) and around the world (as the viewers of his YouTube “perverbs”) were all the better for it.

I already wrote a blog post paying tribute to Tuli, on the occasion of seeing a Hal Willner-produced tribute to his work, and that of his legendary band the Fugs, at St. Ann’s in Brooklyn. I direct you back to that blog post, as it contains some of the best links to Tuli’s work then and now.

To present an update, I would simply like to link to the latest additions to Tuli’s channel on YouTube. Here is yet another clip from Coca Crystal’s terrific cable-access show of the 1980s-90s. Coca’s own channel (with a great Tuli clip) can be found here. Tuli seems to be pretty somber here, but he’s in his prime singing “Where is My Wandering Jew?”:



An invaluable video link is below: the entirety of a show at the Bowery Poetry Club held to raise money for Tuli’s medical costs is up on Vimeo. I attended the show, which was called “A Little More Nothing” and was an awesomely humble little event (none of the heavy star power of the Willner show, but incredibly heartfelt and filled with local talent):

Tuli Kupferberg Tribute A Little More Nothing Part 1 from Thelma Blitz on Vimeo.

In case, you don’t want to watch the whole show, a few highlights are on YT. Here is a great moment, wherein the latest incarnation of John S. Hall’s awesome King Missile combo perform Tuli’s “The Ten Commandments” in a very Fugs-like style:



And one of Tuli’s colleagues, a former Fug himself, the legendary Peter Stampfel, performed one of his own tunes, an intense acoustic ditty called “Stick Your Ass in the Air” that showed that he, like Tuli, has not mellowed with age. Check out that voice!



Tuli’s final vids for YouTube were not “perverbs” (as he called his aphorism one-liners), but they were, each and every one of them, terrific. Here is a tape shot for Tuli’s MNN show, Revolting News, in which he performs his classic “Slum Goddess of the Lower East Side” in a few different versions (the “minor poet” one is pretty fuckin’ brilliant). When asked about what he thought of his first trip to NYC, Iggy Pop noted he was just looking for “that Slum Goddess of the Lower East Side that the Fugs sang about.”



I believe this is Tuli’s final video for YT. He talks about and performs the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Tuli’s colleague Thelma Blitz notes on the video “this is the song Tuli would like to be remembered by” (which is interesting, in light of his beautiful “Morning, Morning”):



Tuli supplied this brief but pungent closing video for the St. Ann’s night. Heed his words, kats and kitties!



And a very touching way to end this tribute, Tuli singing “Summer is A-Coming In,” a very early English poem:



And since like any good poet, Tuli dealt very beautifully with the specter of death, here is the Fugs song he created from that poem, the haunting “Carpe Diem,” which substitutes the Reaper for summer. The thing about Fugs recordings like this one is that they are so blissfully “out of tune” and yet the song sounds just fucking perfect. “You can’t out-sing the Angel of Death/Sing, cuckoo, sing!”



NYC is a lot poorer without Tuli.

A Many-Splendored Thing: the late-night jousts of D.A. Harvey Pekar

I only have two collections of American Splendor comics. I found Harvey Pekar’s writing to be absolutely beyond-authentic, and perhaps that is what has kept me at a distance from becoming addicted to his work over the years: for the past two decades I have had both feet planted firmly in the tedious-office sphere which he depicted brilliantly, so reading his work always seemed too familiar and genuine an experience to me.

That said, he remains a very singular figure in the comic book pantheon: a writer who didn’t draw and who, unlike arguably the greatest modern genius of comics, Alan Moore, chose to explore his inner landscape and immediate surroundings rather than imagined alternate worlds. In terms of his non-comic persona, he was of course wonderfully depicted by Paul Giamatti in the American Splendor movie, and made eight extremely memorable appearances on the David Letterman show, which I link to below.

What interested me the most in rewatching these appearances is that, in the most confrontational appearance, Harvey accuses Letterman of being a “sell-out.” I find this interesting, as it betrays the same disappointment Bill Hicks felt in Letterman when his monologue was pulled from the show. Hicks and Pekar both somehow seemed to think Letterman was a hip nonconformist, rather than a jovial, sarcastic standup whose snarky attitude seemed to define Eighties TV comedy, but didn’t indicate any sort of rebellion whatsoever, from anything, at any time. Letterman followed in the wake of Carson and Steve Allen in having some incredibly gifted comedians on his show, but unlike those gentlemen (and Dick Cavett), he was never willing to be a cooperative straight man for those performers (I remember the word “jerk” being used when Pee-Wee, Jerry Lewis, and I think Bobcat Goldthwait came on). Unless the standup was one of Dave’s old cronies from the circuit (like the non-filmmaker George Miller — remember him?), Dave seemed to want to endlessly needle comic characters who came on his show (with Chris Elliott, it was part of the bit; with Brother Theodore, Andy Kaufman, and many others, it seemed like Dave wanted to show that he was “tolerating” what was transpiring in the guest chair).

So on came Harvey Pekar, a truly independent comic creator who needled Dave right back (in fact, the single best moments of the Letterman show at that time consisted of comedians who dished it right back at Letterman after he’d been particularly obnoxious to them). The contentious appearance that found Dave telling Harvey he’d never appear on the show again also finds Letterman calling American Splendor your “Mickey Mouse newsletter,” which is as genuine a moment as you will find on the Letterman show from that time. Letterman is an older, mellower soul these days, but his sarcasm and extreme crankiness (I’m always fascinated when people perceive him as homespun and friendly) has always seemingly been boiling just below the surface. Back in the Eighties, it appeared a number of times, and Pekar seemed determined to draw it out of him.

Here is Pekar’s first appearance on the show:



And a later bizarre appearance where Harvey joins wacky Dave doin’ a wacky stunt, wherein he visits the set of Live at Five (then hosted by current cranky cable host Jack Cafferty, who actually could’ve matched Letterman’s snotty barbs if he’d been genuinely pissed):



Here Harvey is allowed to do a full segment, but there is still tension in the air:



And here is the confrontational, truncated segment I mentioned above, where Harvey won’t let up on General Electric, and Letterman mocks his comic:



This has been billed as Pekar’s final appearance, so evidently he was allowed back one final time on the Letterman program, but he wasn’t on in the final 15-plus years of his life. I guess he didn’t fit into the hyper-slick plug-and-you’re-out guest segments that have been the bulwark of the CBS late-night show:



And, just so I don’t link entirely to agitated interviews with Pekar, here is a quieter, more considered chat, done for PBS:

Kiyoshi Kurosawa: the Funhouse interview

I have been a big fan of the work of Kiyoshi Kurosawa since I saw his License to Live at the New York Film Festival. My interview with him took place in July of 2001, at the time that the Screening Room in Tribeca was conducting a retrospective of his work. I used the interview to create two episodes of the Funhouse and also an article for time.com, which you can find on that website or here. His answers were translated by Linda Hoaglund, who has subtitled some of his films.

Here he talks about his love of the films of John Cassavetes:



And here he discusses the use of sound in his films:

Pity the angry prop comic...

I am of two minds about the weird little sub-genre of standup known as “prop comedy.” I grew up loving the stage shtick of Rip Taylor and the intentionally awful comic magicians Carl Ballantine and (cue “Fine and Dandy,” will ya?) Art Metrano. I also enjoyed as a kid the ultra-frantic Lenny Schultz who, while not a prop comic exactly, worked in same busy-ass mode. I never was a fan of what Rip Taylor hath inadvertently wrought, though — you know I’m talking about Gallagher and Carrot Top (whom Bill Hicks referred to as the comedian “for those who find Gallagher too cerebral”).

Thus, when I found out this week that Gallagher is now a pissed-off, bitter old dude, I was conflicted: I’m naturally prone to feeling sympathetic towards older performers who feel left out in today’s show-biz world. But, since I could never take large doses (or small doses) of Gallagher when he was at his peak of popularity (and for those who weren’t around, or who don’t remember, he was HUGELY popular at one point), I guess I’m slightly happy that he’s now a really fuckin’ angry prop comic who spews racist, sexist, homophobic jokes before he gets around to the Sledge-o-matic bit that seemed moronic when he started doing it more than thirty years ago.

This week an article appeared on a Seattle alternative website by Lindy West that chronicled a Gallagher show she recently attended in Bremerton, Washington. It’s a pretty nice American Gothic portrait of a comedian who never was a curmudgeon to start out with — he was a sprightly crazy guy who came out on rollerskates, told jokes about how he was “stuck in the Sixties,” and then walloped the shit out of some produce with a goddamned big mallet. Comedy gold, you say? Well, millions of people liked it during that period of cultural blight we now quaintly refer to as the Eighties. In her article West recounts Gallagher’s latest jibes against pretty much everybody who ain’t a white middle-class person (he claims that “we” are descended from Viking stock — isn’t the name Gallagher Irish? ’Twas the last time I checked…). It’s pretty eye-opening, and opens the way for the next descent into prop-comic madness (and I do mean *mad*-ness) that I found after reading West’s piece.

In December 2009 David Wolinsky of the Onion AV Club interviewed Gallagher, who spoke out against the “mediocrity” infesting American comedy today. I mean, he’s actually got me there — just visit any multiplex and see what is labeled “comedy,” and try to contradict the fact that the Golden Age of American Comedy is long, long behind us. But, then again, this isn’t coming from a still-with-us comedy god like Jonathan Winters. This isn’t coming from Woody Allen or Mel Brooks or Sid Caesar — this is coming from the guy with the “skullet” (oh my god, those Eighties terms) who still to this day closes his act by smashing a watermelon with an oversized mallet. For that reason alone, you gotta be fascinated by the guy’s anger.

And then, if you’re as much of a fan of descending down the rabbit hole as I am, I urge you to check out the story of “Gallagher Too”. The fact that Gallagher was so monstrously popular his sorta-lookalike brother could tour doing the same act and have a steady career is mind-boggling (further proof the Eighties wrecked the fuckin’ culture). The sad fact that the brothers never speak any more because they had a sort of metaphorical Mexican standoff with their really funny oversized mallets is even more deliciously, pathetically, compulsively readable. I walked past the lookalike brother many, many years ago in the area near Madison Square Garden, before I knew that there was a “Gallagher Too,” and kept wondering why anyone in his right mind would dress like the Sledge-o-matic guy. A paycheck will do strange things to a person.

The only thing these articles do, of course, is make you speculate as to when/where/how Carrot Top will crack. The fact that he metamorphosed somewhere in the Nineties into a bodybuilder who sported arms that looked like they’d been borrowed off of Popeye seemed like a small indication he might change his act. But he remains in the business and continues to be pretty much the leading prop comic in the nation. As for me, if I want to see a specialty act, I would far prefer a guy (or gal) who makes mouth noises for a living. Anyone got a line on Michael Winslow?

P.S. I thank Tim Carvell for turning me on to the original Stranger article. Also, as I looked for pics to go with this post, I found yet another rant-y kinda interview with Gallagher that includes the amazing sentence “There’s a lot of money in hatred.” Whoa baby!

Jumpin' with Joya: Deceased Artiste Joya Sherrill

Last week singer/TV host Joya Sherrill died at the age of 82. Sherrill had a long career in show business, distinguished by her work as a vocalist for Duke Ellington and as an NYC local kiddie show hostess. She was 17 years old when the Duke hired her to sing with his band. She worked with him on and off for the next few decades, and had hits with the group, including “I’m Beginning to See The Light”:



As I was reading Ms. Sherrill’s obits, I realized that I have her duet album with Sammy Davis Jr., Sammy Jumps With Joya. In the more thorough onine biographies like this one, it is revealed that a turning point in her career as a singer came when she toured the U.S.S.R. in 1962 with the Benny Goodman orchestra (purportedly making her the first American jazz singer “to appear behind the Iron Curtain”). She scored a hit with her Russian audience, but Benny Goodman made sure not to include her on the live album he released from the tour.

The part of her career that resounds with people my age was her eventual transformation into a local NYC kiddie-show host — she is celebrated as being the first-ever African-American woman to play that role. She starred in the low, low-budget show Time for Joya on WPIX-TV from 1970 to 1972, and the show’s later incarnation, Joya’s Fun School, was new only from January to March 1972, but this thorough article reveals that the ever-thrifty PIX (which I wrote about here) ran those three months’ worth of shows for the next ten years, until 1982!

In any case, Ms. Sherrill had a pretty interesting show business career. Since none of her shows exist on tape (not saying much for WPIX’s archive in this case), I will close out this little remembrance with another link to the TV Party article that has the full audio of the August 30, 1970 episode of Time for Joya, which featured as a guest her former employer, the one and only Duke. The show is very laidback as Joya sings the Ellington composition “Heritage” from the show “My People.” Duke also tells the story of the Three Little Bears to the kids, and you can hear what a local low-budget Seventies kids’ show sounded like (it’s a shame there’s no video, but we can be grateful to the gent who supplied TVP with the audio).

And, as two final goodbyes, here’s a perky little ditty that Ms. Sherrill did as a jazz singer that could’ve easily become part of her kids’ show:



And a later upbeat tune, with the wonderfully provocative title “Do Me Good, Baby!”: