Tuli Kupferberg, singer with the Fugs, poet, cartoonist and long-time peace activist, passed away last week at age 86. Kramer produced  and released an album (Tuli & Friends) with him on Shimmy Disc in 1989, and Kramer liked to say that Tuli was the wisest person he had ever met. My last contact with Mr. Kupferbergwas a couple of years ago when I called him about reprinting the lyrics for his amusing anti-war song “Kill For Peace” in Black Postcards. Luna had performed this song at the Knitting Factory on the night that the Iraq invasion commenced. About a month earlier (March 2003), Kupferberg and I had both performed at Joe’s Pub, part of an evening titled “Songs of the Vietnam Songbook.” The Iraq War had not yet started, but everyone in the room knew it was coming. I remember Tuli predicting that “the war against Iraq will be a short war, but the war against the United States will go on for a long time.” It seems he was mistaken with the first part of that equation; the war in Iraq has now been going on for eight long years. Maybe he wasn’t anticipating that the initial shock and awe would be followed by a disastrous occupation. Or perhaps he was only observing that what looks at first like a quick and easy war turns into something else. It seems a fundamental truth of the modern world that  most people will no longer tolerate foreign occupiers — no matter what their supposed intentions. In the 19th century European powers could control vast colonies without facing much resistance, as historian Eric Hobsbawm has observed. It doesn’t work that way any more. But enough history, here is Tuli reciting a poem about a superior billy club (this from his 1966 LP “No Deposit, No Return.”

Lifetime Guarantee

Because the wars are ongoing, they still play “God Bless America” at Yankee Stadium during the 7th-inning stretch (in addition to the “Star-Spangled Banner” at the start of the game). Yankees’ owner George Steinbrenner died this week, the day after Kupferberg, and the eulogizing has not stopped — they even observed a moment of silence at Fenway Park. “George is a great guy,” Lou Piniella once said, “unless you have to work for him.” Steinbrenner, who was convicted of making illegal contributions to Richard Nixon’s re-election campaign, and was forced out of major league baseball in the early ’90s for hiring a gambler to dig up dirt on Dave Winfield, had started playing “God Bless America” at the Stadium after 9-11, and many other cities followed suit. But after 10 years of war, the only stadiums still playing the song are Yankee Stadium and Dodger Stadium. In 2008 one Red Sox fan tried to go to the bathroom during the singing of “God Bless America”, but was detained and then ejected from Yankee stadium by two members of the NYPD. He sued Yankee stadium, and won (with the help of the NYCLU); now we are all allowed to go to the bathroom whenever we like.

Here’s another of Tuli’s songs, from Tuli & Friends, a re-recording of the Fugs’ “Morning, Morning”, certainly the prettiest song he ever wrote.

25-morning-morning

More sad news; Dennis Hopper finally succumbed to cancer. Hopper was himself a wonderful photographer, a collector, and an early supporter of Andy Warhol; he was the first person ever to buy one of Warhol’s soup can paintings, when all 32 paintings were put on sale at the Ferus Gallery in 1962. Unfortunately the dealer (Irving Blum) canceled the sales and decided to keep the entire series together.

We were there as part of the Art Rock Festival. Also at the festival were the Go Team, Jacques Dutronc, and Air (with members of Supergrass) performing the Virgin Suicides soundtrack from beginning to end.

En route to St Brieuc via high-speed train, we passed through the town of Le Mans. I read the TGV magazine, which featured Dutronc’s wife Francoise Hardy on the cover.

Then it was on to Bilbao, where we performed the 13 Most Beautiful show at the Sala BBK. Here is Britta sitting next to me at a local radio station.

On to my hometown of Wellington, New Zealand. The windy city. Our Qantas flight attempted to land in the teeth of a strong northerly wind. We approached the airstrip gingerly, felt the back wheels of the plane touch down, but then a gust  hit and the pilot decided to take us up again. After flying another pattern over the Cook Strait we came in safely on the second attempt.

The show at Wellington’s Town Hall was especially fun. I had been in this room twice before, first as a 5-year-old in 1968, and then as a teenager in 1980; my brother and I saw the Knack live in concert. Not that we particularly liked the Knack, but that’s what was happening on a Friday night in Wellington. .

Wellington Town Hall

And then it was back to Adelaide, Australia, where we played three shows at the Womadelaide Festival, alongside world artists like Ethiopiques, Eliades Ochoa, Ravi Shankar and the - the Transe Express company, pictured here. They are drummers and clowns too.

Our February tour started with a date in at Duke University’s Reynolds Theatre in Durham, North Carolina. For Matt and Lee (longtime residents of Chapel Hill) it was a homecoming — though they would have preferred we play at UNC. Britta and I took the morning before sound check to visit Double Feature’s distribution office — Red Eye Distribution out in Haw River. “Where should we eat?” I asked as we left. They sent us to Biscuitville, and it was yummier than it looks.

Three days later, after 30 hours of flying, we found ourselves in Perth, Western Australia, performing a short, informal set outdoors at the Perth Festival (we came on right after a set by Robert Forster) in the shadow of this Ferris Wheel.

We had a great time in Perth; the festival promoters really took care of us. We swam in the Indian Ocean, ate passionfruit yoghurt and the best mangoes ever, took in an excellent Brian Jonestown Massacre gig, and hung out with Rick Maymi  and Matt Hollywood and Joel Gion.

After four days in Perth, it was on to Sydney. We were picked up at Kingsford Smith Internatonal Airport in a white minibus and driven to our hotel on Kent Street. I walked out onto the balcony and realized that we were right across the street from St Andrew’s Cathedral School, which I attended in 1975. Or rather, we were across the street from the Cathedral — the school had been moved around the corner, but our hotel was built on the exact spot where I attended 5th grade.

We’ve been playing in some beautiful venues around all the world, but tonight’s show at the Sydney Opera House probably takes the cake.  I was here in 1973 on the day that the Opera House opened, and it was pretty special to be back in Sydney, playing in the Concert Hall. All the more so because my parents had made the trip from New York, bringing my son along too. He slept through the performance but was awake for post-show drinks  – outside on the Opera House terrace.

The view from our dressing room at the Sydney Opera House

Cheval Sombre emailed this morning with the terrible news that Alex Chilton has passed away far too young, the author and singer of so many great songs: “Thirteen”, “The Ballad of El Goodo,” “I’m in Love With a Girl,” “Nighttime,” “Oh Dana” etc. Big Star’s Third (aka Sister Lovers) of course is one of the all-time great albums, one of those rare and beautiful records where you get to know every nook and cranny by heart. Last week I took this photo of Big Star Records in Adelaide, South Australia.

Some people read idea books / some people have pretty looks / but if your eyes are wide / and more words aside / take care.

Big Star in Adelaide

I thought I would share some photographs from our recent tour. Here are a couple from Barajas-Madrid’s recently-completed Terminal 4.

And here’s a poster that was hanging outside St. Giles-in-the-Field church in London’s West End, and the view from our Travelodge hotel window – of a new complex designed by Renzo Piano.

After London’s show we traveled by plane and van to Chalons-en-Champagne, a real picturesque French town in the heart of Champagne. This was the view from our hotel window in the center of town. After the show, the promoters generously poured fine bubbly for us.

On to Gijon, all the way north on the Atlantic coast of Spain, where they drink a different kind of bubbly – Sidra (a dry apple cider), poured in small shots from on high, the bartenders holding the bottle above their heads with one hand. It is imperative to drink the cider quickly, while it is cold and fizzy. We were lucky enough to have two days off here, and we ate well – baby squid, octopus, lamb chops, and a local stew called Fabada, made with white beans and pork shoulder and sausage. And we walked, down to the beach, past the Roman baths, up the hill to look out at the sea.

Our 13 Most Beautiful show took place at the Teatro Laboral, a beautiful new theater housed inside the Universidad Laboral, a truly enormous arts and educational building, that looks like it has been there for centuries, but was built during the 1950s, initially as an orphanage for the children of the city’s miners. Franco probably needed lots of orphanages, you can still see fascist symbols like the “shield of the eagle” and the yoke and arrows adorning the buildings.

We left Gijon at 6 a.m. the next morning, and saw a beautiful sunrise over Asturias. It was the day before thanksgiving, and we had a five-hour layover at Charles De Gaulle’s Terminal 2E (the shiny new one that collapsed in 2004). It sure is pretty though, and we explored every shop and restaurant from one end of the terminal to the other.

You see some odd juxtapositions at the Relay newsagent. When we came here in June I saw Michael Jackson with Friedrich Nietzsche. This time it was Albert Camus sitting next to French rock star Johnny Hallyday. Hallyday is currently in a medically-induced coma in a hospital in Los Angeles, this after a failed operation (in France) for a herniated disk. Apparently a couple of his fans were so angry about the initial operation that they donned black masks and attacked the doctor who performed it outside his home in Paris.

Home at last – baggage claim at JFK International Airport.

November 17, 2009

We have arrived in a windy London, after shows at the Tanned Tin Festival  –  in Barcelona on Friday night (at the Apolo, where Luna played our last show in Barcelona), and at the Neu Club in Madrid on Saturday night. We shared the bill with Cheval Sombre, who sounded great with both Sonic Boom and Britta sitting in on keyboards. We discovered an interesting Norwegian band on the bill Saturday night too – Rocket to the Sky.

Upon arrival here we went out for a meal which I shall not describe, and then went over to the Borderline and caught some of the set by L.A.’s Darker My Love. In the audience was one Mark E. Smith – an incongruous and surprising sighting, but apparently some members of Darker My Love have also played with the Fall.

We are at the Travelodge on Drury Lane, which I thought would be a step up from the Columbia Hotel, but it is not. Still, our room has a nice view of a new complex by Renzo Piano, and we are only steps from tomorrow night’s venue – the lovely St Giles Church. Anthony and Britta and I popped our heads in there today, on our way to Foyles bookshop, and saw a choral group rehearsing. This is going to be an intimate show, and you will be sitting in wooden pews if you show up Wednesday night. Cheval Sombre (with Sonic Boom) goes on at 8:15, we will start at 9:30.

- Dean

November 10, 2009

Tuesday morning here in New York, we are rehearsing today for a couple of weeks’ shows in Europe, Britta and I and Matt and our pal Anthony Lamarca, who is back with us for a bit after a couple of tours drumming for St. Vincent. Last night I deejayed at a fundraiser for Words Without Borders, an organization that promotes translation of foreign literature. Apparently only 3% of literature published in the U.S. has been translated from another language. The fundraiser took place at the Bohemian National Hall on the Upper East Side, and my DJ set started right after Paul Auster finished reading a poem to the audience. I should have started with “Moon Palace” but instead I led with Jarvis Cocker’s “Running the World.”

Friday night we’ll be in Barcelona, Saturday night in Madrid, both shows part of the Tanned Tin Festival – a small festival featuring just a handful of bands, including our friends Cheval Sombre and Spectrum. Then it’s on to London for a show at the Sonic Cathedral (also with Cheval Sombre) November 18, our first London gig in quite some time. We’ll play a mix of Galaxie 500, Luna and Dean & Britta songs. Then back to the Continent for shows in two towns we’ve never been to – Chalons (France) and Gijon (Spain). We have a few days off in Gijon; I’m not sure what we’ll do those days but apparently the International Bagpipe Museum is located there.

We had a great time in Melbourne in October, playing the Warhol show three nights in a row at the Malthouse Theatre, and a memorable in-store at Pure Pop Records in St. Kilda, where they sell records and CDs and have a little bar out back where bands play live. The in-store gig was organized by the Sand Pebbles (formerly penpals, but now real flesh-and-blood friends). I apologize to those of you who stood in a long queue (line) outside the shop but couldn’t get in, on account of the Irish folk band who were on before us running a bit late, and their fans preferring to stay and drink and hear the Sand Pebbles play great versions of “23 Minutes in Brussels” and their own “Speed and Intensity” and “The Day Summer Fell.” The whole afternoon was subsquently immortalized by underground comic Fred Negro.

Thanks again to Chris Hollow and Ben Michael X and Andrew Tanner and the rest of the group for showing us around Melbourne, showing us where to buy jeans and where to drink beer.

One other note - we are playing an early New Year’s Eve show at Southpaw in Brooklyn — onstage at 8:30, done by 10:00 p.m., giving you time to reach another destination by midnight. . .

Britta and I ate dinner over the weekend at Wichcraft on 20th Street, where our friend Sisha Ortuzar cooked us delights like pork ‘n’ pickle, avocado with a burnt chili sauce, and cannelloni stuffed with sweet-pea puree. Thursday we’ll be eating cheesesteak sandwiches in Philadelphia; before our show at Johnny Brenda’s, Friday it will be chili dogs before our gig at the Black Cat in D.C., and Saturday night we will eat and perform at Le Poisson Rouge on Bleecker Street in Manhattan. This last is an early show – Cheval Sombre will go on at 7:30, we’ll be on at 8:30. These will likely be our last non-Warhol shows of the year, at least here in the USA.

Matthew Buzzell emailed from Los Angeles over the weekend; he wanted me to know that one of my favorite films, Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point, has at last been released on DVD. Matthew has always liked Luna’s “Roll in the Sand”, a B-side recorded during the Penthouse sessions, which was an ode to Mark Frechette, the actor who played the lead role in Zabriskie Point, a young university student who steals a small plane after a riot on campus. In real life, Frechette was a member of Boston’s nutty Fort Hill Commune, to whom he gave his earnings from the film. His co-star in the film, Daria Halprin, also joined the commune after making the film, but quickly got out.

Antonioni staged a great love scene in the desert; dozens of naked bodies rolling in the Death Valley sand, set to Jerry Garcia’s “Dark Star.” Apparently critics laughed aloud during this scene; the film received nasty reviews and flopped at the box office. The soundtrack is unbeatable – Garcia, Kaleidoscope, Patti Page singing “The Tennesse Waltz,” the Rolling Stones, and an incredible slow-motion sequence of explosions at the end, set to the music of Pink Floyd.

In 1973 Frechette was involved in a botched bank robbery ordered by the Commune, was sent to jail, and died there in 1975 – in an accident in the weight room.

He fell from the skies
With his sensitive eyes
And he dropped out of school
With his evil sunglasses
And the desert he crossed
Was a picture to see
A roll in the sand
He had it all in his hand