Some recent activity...

Let's see:

So, I got new headshots. Beautiful, right?! (Two of them are visible on this page.) I'm referring not so much to the subject matter (although she is impossible to ignore!) as to the photographer, Jessica Siemens. I met Jessica through a friend a couple of years ago and I'm so glad I decided to let her take my new publicity photos. Jessica has been photographing professionally for a long time, so it was surprising to see how organically she works, all up close in natural light. She captures the real you. Take a look at the mini portfolios on her website, and LIKE the Jessica Siemens Photography Facebook page. She's a very cool person and charges very reasonable rates for amazing work. I am so pleased!

Uptown Crew is all over Monticello Avenue these days. I'm hosting our Open Mic every 2nd and 4th Thursday at Moore's Lounge, 189 Monticello Avenue. Moore's has become something of a second home for me, especially since it's practically around the corner from where I live. I'm happy to see that the UC Open Mic has brought new attention and business to this 40+ year community establishment.

Besides Uptown Crew's open mics, Moore's is famous for live jazz. My whole neighborhood, from Journal Square down to Communipaw, West Side Avenue to Monticello, probably has the highest concentration of world-class jazz musicians, and live jazz performances, in all of New Jersey! I'm not kidding -- it's amazing.

So...I'm co-producing a jazz showcase of three live bands at Moore's with two veteran producers and live music professionals: Nick Ciavatta, a highly accomplished singer/songwriter in his own right, an outstanding voice-over artist (you have heard him many times!), and CEO of Friggin Fabulous Productions, and world music expert Neva Wartell, aka DJ Neva, an ethnomusicologist and the brilliant mind behind the Music for the Masses movement. The June 3 show is called JC Originals Jazz, it's part of JC Fridays, and it's going to be amazing!

Inspired by hanging around some super talent singer-songwriters over the past half a year, I've written three new songs in 2011. Nothing on audio/video yet, but come out to one of the Uptown Crew Open Mics and you're likely to hear one of them. I have a new cover too, an old Percy Sledge favorite of mine: At the Dark End of the Street.

I've been cast in a new off-off-Broadway one-act play...Galileo the Musical opens June 8 as part of the Planet Connections Festivity in New York City. This annual theatrical festival focuses on works with an environmental theme. Galileo the Musical jumps from the present, where scientist John Holden attempts to convince Congress that global warming is a real and present danger back to the court of Pope Urban where Galileo attempts to convince the clergy that the earth is not really the center of the universe. Both gentlemen suffer sad rebuke. It's a great play, and I'm super pleased to be involved with such talented people! Being in this production has given me the opportunity I've been looking for: It's made me refocus on my legit singing, what with all the vocal pyrotechnics! Come if you can, and please donate to our fundraising campaign - even $5 makes a difference. Galileo the Musical is a _gaia production.

I'm also working on a spoken word CD. We're in editing mode, and an awesome artist is on board for the artwork. Sorry...can't say too much about it now, but this CD should be available for purchase within the next few months.

Other than that, I'm focused on my domesticity, my heart, and bringing Uptown Crew to the next level - we're working on our 501(c)3 application! Please, LIKE our Facebook page and, if you can, make a donation to support our ongoing activities. We've got a lot in store for the next twelve months, and we need your help -- THE CREW IS YOU!


A life well lived is my wish for us all.

An Old Moment

Last night, I went out with friends to see the

TOTAL
LUNAR
ECLIPSE

and possibly a meteor shower.

We set out at about 1:45am, bundled up as best we could, with a sack of goodies to help convince us that if we went out there, into the middle of the freezing cold night, we would not die.

We made our way towards the fields at Lincoln Park, stopped for coffee. (Who knew Al’s Diner at 2:00am was going to be a see-and-be-seen venue?) I launched my StarWatch app and we pointed out the beginning of the show to the waitresses and then headed out.

We drove around the park and over Route 440, made camp in the car at the edge of the Hackensack River, and watched the earth eat the moon. Bit by bit, it blackened the satellite’s full, bright face. And as it got closer to full coverage, sure enough, the predictions came true – the moon turned RED!

Or rather, sepia. That’s what our driver was saying. I was saying, “RED!” She was saying, “No. It’s not red. It’s more brownish.” “No way! That is, um, reddish!”

The iPhone sound track started with the Fifth Dimension singing “Age of Aquarius”. Then two of us broke out with a very gusty “Red Rubber Ball”, inspiring all of us to produce a new act for the occasion:

Band Name: Sepia Moon

Album: Beyond the Tinge

First Hit Single: You Never See That

Plus, ten cosmic tracks, including

• Moon to Earth 1: Get Out of the Fucking Way, It’s Cold Up Here.
• Moon to Earth 2: We Get It, You’re Floyd Fans.
• Earth to Newark: What’s With the Lights, Largest Commercial Seaport in the Continental United States, Huh?
• 72 Minutes Means the Earth is Fat
and
• It Really Happens Every Friday


A glow of almost gold capped what used to be our moon, lying across the top of this now unfamiliar circle in the sky, like snow atop an Arizona mesa, only 235,857 miles away, straight up.

And then, it got cinematic. The glow slid slowly down, over the face of the ball, and illuminated it more brightly than I ever expected, until it became not a disc, not a circle in the sky, but a three-dimensional glowing solid mass. It was a body, suspended, full, alive, incredibly precious. I whooped, my mouth opened, I stared. I said, “I read that 1638 was the last time this happened on the winter solstice. It was so beautiful here then.” I thought about what it must have seemed like to those people, the Lenape, the Algonquin, the Mohawk, the Africans, the Europeans.

Now, the moon looked like a glow-in-the-dark superball, like Orion’s belt in Men In Black. But it was so real that some part of my brain kept looking to see, how did it stay there? And I had to tell myself again that it is the pull of the sun, behind us now, that keeps it there, that keeps us here, that in this miraculous universe planets, moons, stars and dust spin around each other, a phone plays songs and maps the eternity above us, and friends share an old moment in a new time.

So, no meteor shower. But that was awesome.

The Fog

I met the original Baadasssss tonight. He showed up at a fundraiser for BlackWaxx Recordings (http://www.blackwaxx.com/) at their Jersey City studios. Other luminaries were in attendance, including Bob Law of "Night Talk" fame, who proved his finely honed wallet-squeezing skills.

Melvyn Van Peebles is 75 now, a diminutive-looking man with a white-gray beard. He wore black parachute and an orange/black bandana. His cinematographer, whose name I regret I did not catch, drove/accompanied him. We chatted about the fire in the Deutsche Bank building, south side of Ground Zero, that burned today. Weird.

Here's what I took away from him.

He said that when he was starting out -- he's been writing for film since the 1950's! -- it was like he was rowing around in the fog. He called out, "Hellooooo," but all he heard was his own voice. It was lonely but he kept rowing. Periodically, he would call out again, "Hellooooo."

Finally, once, he called, "Hellooooo," and listened hard till he heard a couple of small voices, far away, calling back -- "Helloooo." He rowed in what seemed like their direction, and they did the same. Eventually, they met up and made contact. Together, they rowed on, called out, made contact with still other, like-minded artists of vision and together, they made their way and backed each other up.

Van Peebles's 1971 Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song exploded into black America, first, and then hurled itself at the rest of us, lauching more than a genre, not a movement, but the ship called Equal Opportunity, the chance to create work, control its creation and profit from its sale. As author, producer, star and director, Van Peebles owned "Song" in every way.

The thing is, he made it because he KEPT ROWING HIS OWN BOAT and worked with people whose sense of integrity was compatible with his.