Back to Seedy Bars

There was a time in our parenting lives when the only way we could get to see much of our kids was by visiting them in seedy bars in questionable parts of town.  Three of our kids were in a band called "Lawsuit" for ten years and we tried to get to most of their shows--and since they played nearly every weekend, we spent a lot of time in bars.  Which is fun for someone who doesn't drink!

Lawsuit packed up its bags and faded in to the annals of music history in 1996 and while there is a revamped band, Preoccupied Pipers, they aren't as organized, don't play as often, and only Ned is in it regularly, Marta occasionally, and Jeri when she is in town (rarely).

But tonight Preoccupied Pipers played as part of an extravaganza called....

Ned has been working with Tom Fay to put  this show on and publicize it (lemme tell you...if you want a good publicist, Ned's your man!  He managed to make and post a video a day for the past week advertising this gig, in addition to an appearance on a Sacramento morning TV show and getting his mother to write a half-page long article, with two color photos, on Tom Fay, "The Christmas Miracle.")

And so there was no way we could skip this concert.  Harrow's isn't exactly as "seedy" as some of the bars we have visited following our kids around Northern California.  It actually has a menu of real food, so we could have dinner there.  Ned saved us a table overlooking the stage and dance floor

A quartet opened the show and then Tom and his band, the Rhythm Kings, took the stage and did their set, ending with The Santa Rhumba.  To look at him tonight you wouldn't think he was 75 and nearly died of a stroke two years ago!

There were a couple of other bands following the Rhythm Kings and then Preoccupied Pipers came on  The thing that was always interesting about Lawsuit is that they always filled a dance floor.  Even in a crowd that hadn't danced to other groups the same evening, would always be dancing to Lawsuit.  That's what I thought when I saw the group dancing to Preoccupied Pipers.  It was a Lawsuit flashback.  (Walt pointed out that I could tell my mother that we went dancing tonight!)

It's always fun to see Ned on the drum, though he's hidden behind all the instruments in front.  He did come out in front with guitar to do a duet with Marta.

There were also several "guest stars" whom I did not get pictures of, like Sarah "Sarge" Clanton and Barbara West singing a trio with Marta and later Paul's best friend Kag sharing the lead with KC Bowman on the finale, one of my favorite Lawsuit Songs, "The Grassy Knoell," their off-beat tribute to Christmas and the Kennedy assassination.  Even Ned's brother-in-law Brad got in there playing the tin whistle.  Everybody just had a great time.

There was another band after Preoccupied Pipers, but we decided to skip it and just came on home to watch Jeopardy.

 

As I write this, I am uploading my video of "The Grassy Knoell" to YouTube.  If it actually uploads, I will link to it here tomorrow.  It made me teary remembering the Lawsuit years and missing Paul.

We came home on such a high, the show having been so much fun, and with the happy news that Doug Jones had won the Alabama Senate run-off.  

Of course by the time I got to the end of this entry, Roy Moore had refused to concede and was demanding a re-count and you just know they'll find some way to reverse the votes.

Sweet Memories

I came across this piece about Lawsuit, written in 2001 by "Oakling", and wanted to share it.

An 11-member Davis-born musical group - also known, initially, as "those milk-drinkin' wizards." They began in 1987 as a ska band, and ended up spanning so many musical styles that every record label refused to sign them - most often claiming that they loved the sound but would not be able to categorize them for sale. Lawsuit just increased in popularity year after year, eventually gaining fame down the California coast from Sacramento to Los Angeles.

They produced a number of albums, including the semi-eponymous Lawsuit EP, Emergency Third Rail Power Trip and Kind of Brown, as well as a multi-issue "audio magazine" called Preoccupied Pipers.

I grew up listening to Lawsuit. They were my first real concert, my first many concerts. Those concerts were the first place I dared to dance in public, barely more than shifting my weight from foot to foot in time with the music, bouncing up and down in time as the energy of the night rose. My friend Erin and I were painfully, excruciatingly shy young teenagers, listening to old Beatles albums and sharing Doctor Who reruns and novelisations when we weren't indulging this, our one foray into modern-day culture. It was our one peek into what we thought normal life must be.

The thing I remember most about them was the sense of closeness we got from knowing they had grown up in our town and graduated from our high school. Even though they were now big stars all the way from Sacramento to Los Angeles, they had once played at our junior high school, right in front of us, right before they made it big.

My favorite part was feeling like I was in on all the jokes. I remember a few concerts where they replaced one anti-smoking lyric with:

"I know it's cool and I hate to say this,
But there's no smoking in Davis!" 

Fans who were in the loop somehow, who knew people who knew people (and in a town of 50,000 that's not so difficult) or who went to all the concerts, or read all the small print on the albums, ended up getting lots of little winks like that thrown in with our music. They would quote an old lyric in a new song; or have Jeri Sykes (or was it Marta?) sing "Fever" in the middle of a concert, all smoky and dazzling, and then swing into the stomping intro of "Useless Flowers" as if the songs were made for one another; or launching a "geography contest" around the elaborately nonsensical (we thought) lyrics of "North Dakotachrome."

Now that was a strange song. It seemed to wander from noun to noun, stringing them together with the odd preposition like beads on a sentence.

I knew your kind, I dwell aware
But the main thing's for me not to care
a line, a line can tuck you into bed
And tear your heart into shreds
Oh, Ed meant tons to Louis Z.
And I know my place.... 

We were puzzled.

Then we read about the North Dakotachrome Geography Contest. There were place names hidden in the song, they explained, besides just "North Dakota." Mostly states, a few cities, maybe a country or two.

I don't remember what the prize was - CDs, I suppose. If anything. We puzzled over it for years, shouting out place names along with the song -

I NEW YORK! ind, I DELAWARE!
But the MAINE! thing's for me not to CAR -
OLINA line KENTUCKY into bed
And tear your heart into shreds
Oh, EDMONTON to LOUISI -
ANA! know my place.... 

It was fun. We were part of something for a while there. When I play their songs, on the old tapes I bought in the early 1990s because I thought CDs were just an annoying high-tech flash in the pan (cough, cough....), I remember deep in my body what it felt like to be in high school. I remember how strongly I knew who I was, how solid my core inside all the nerdy trappings, how starry-eyed I was, and I feel that way again. It gives me compassion and understanding for who I am and where I've been. (Or is it the other way around?)


In 1996, Lawsuit members announced that "After nine years of legal action that would make Johnnie Cochran jealous, the band Lawsuit has decided to settle out of court." Several of the band members formed a new band called Broken Thing, which continued to perform for some time. One of the Broken Thing members and Lawsuit's lead singer, Paul Sykes, continued performing monologue shows and other theatre in various venues until his death in April of 1999 while rehearsing a scene. 

1,000 Red Roses

Twenty years ago, the Davis Art Center wanted to raise money to pay for sign language interpreters so that children with hearing disabilities could take classes at the center.  They turned to Lawsuit and asked if they would do a fund-raising concert.  They did and the funds were raised.  They called it the "1,000 Red Roses concert", after the lyric in one of Lawsuit's songs, "Picturebook Pretty" (I think the original lyric was "a dozen (or maybe 100) red roses would not be quite enough...")

That concert was amazing because it was signed by a team of signers.  I had, of course, seen signers at lots of theatrical events, but never at a concert.  It was quite a sight to behold.  After the show, a mother came to me, tears in her eyes, and told me this was the first time her deaf teen age daughter had ever danced and that thanks to the signers and whatever vibration she could get from the beat through the ground or the speakers, she was able to "get it" and was able to understand the music.

In 1996, there was another 1000 Red Roses concert.   This one right after David died and it was a very emotional concert.  It was the only concert--ever--where Paul was rendered speechless.  His father walked out on stage to sing a small solo and then, with pre-arrangement with Tom and nobody else, he took a stage dive into the audience and was carried through the crowd by Tom and his friends.  It was an unforgettable moment.

Lawsuit is gone and Paul is gone, but the music lives on.   Lawsuit morphed into Preoccupied Pipers, which includes many of the Lawsuit musicians, some of the Lawsuit songs and lots of new music.  They usually play one concert a year, when Jeri is in town, and it's more for fun than anything else.

This year, the Art Center contacted Ned again and asked about doing a concert to pay for sign language interpreters again. That concert was last night, on the E Street Plaza, which we have always called "Paul Plaza" because the performing area is covered with lots of bricks, many of which have memorial comments for Paul and David, a project spearheaded by the Davis Downtown Business Association.   The brick Walt and I bought says "The name of this band was Lawsuit."

It was a great turn out on the plaza.  A lot of the old Lawsuit parents came out, greyer, more stooped, more wrinkled, at least one with artificial knees, one looking like she had a stroke.

Kevin Desmond, representing all of the Pinata group came in from his home on the far side of Sacramento.  Shown here with Ned and Sara "Sarge" Clanton, the owner of Stone Soup Catering.  Norm and Olivia came up from Petaluma and brought Alice Nan with them.

The five of us went to the concert together and were able to get parking steps from the stage (thank you, Gilbert).  

We visited with the guys while they were setting up and then went to the Mexican restaurant whose wall is the back of the stage.  We could sit there enjoying our margaritas and keep track of what was happening on the plaza.

While we were sitting there, Jeri's high school band teacher came in.  He and his wife were there for the concert too.

A woman sitting next to me saw my 1994 Red Roses shirt and asked me if I had any connection to Lawsuit, or was just a fan.  I felt very old!

The Lawsuit kids (children of Lawsuit musicians) were now old enough to be in charge of the table where people could buy T-shirts and CDs.  They are like our Pinata group kids!

There were three sets.  The first was by the Corner Laughters, with whom KC (from Lawsuit) plays.  I had not heard them before and really liked their music.

The third set was Adrian West, who was never part of Lawsuit, except for a few guest appearances, but has had his own group in the Bay Area for years.   His wife, Jennifer, is the former mayor of Emeryville and also an occasional singer with one of the bands.  In fact, she and Adrian did their first duet together tonight.

But everyone was there to see Preoccupied Pipers, which also promised old Lawsuit music.  I forget how good these guys are.  I got all verklempt when Paul's best friend Kag sang a song that Paul used to sing and was accompanied not only by the Lawsuit guys, but also his son, Milo, on the trombone.  Milo was born a couple of years after Paul died, and is the first of the Lawsuit babies.  His middle name is "Travis" because Kag wanted to name him after Paul, but Kag's real first name is Paul so insted he chose to name him after Travis Bickle, from Taxi Driver, Paul's favorite movie and favorite character.

"Anything" is an emotional song anyway, Paul's diatribe about all the things wrong in his life, particularly his love life.  I never really liked it when he sang it.  He always screamed it in anger.  When Kag sang it, the screams were just as bone chilling, but perhaps more anguish than anger, and I was sobbing by the time he finished it.

I'd forgotten how much Lawsuit brought people to the dance floor.   People who had been sitting there listening to the concert and shouting their approval at all the music leaped to their feet when a Lawsuit song started and the dancing area was full of bouncing bodies, and they all bounced up and down just like they used to do, at the end of "I am a couch" (a popular song that I'm sure I inspired, as its first lines are:  "I am a couch, and I live in a messy house...")

The finale of the Preoccupied Pipers set was Jon Lee, who has been on the tech crew forever, singing "Picturebook Pretty."  I will eventually have a link to the video I took.  But I got this great shot of Jon controlling the lights with his iPad.  How things have changed in 20 years!

(and by the way, Walt and Ned put up all those lights on the trees two nights ago)

When the concert was over, I brought out a tres leches cake to celebrate Ned's birthday (which is Monday) and then we came home.  I was too tired to start this journal then, but woke up at 2 or 3  and started writing it then, but took a break to try and take a "nap."  But then the house started shaking and the dogs started barking.  There was a 6.1 earthquake near here.  It didn't hit us very hard, but apparently my cousin in the Napa Area had glassware knocked off of shelves.

Facebook lit up with comments from people from the far reaches, from Sacramento to Santa Cruz, everyone comparing notes on how they felt it or the damage it did.  The Davis Enterprise weighed in with information it had with the comment "since you're all already awake..."

It's now 4:30 a.m. and I'm going to try to sleep again.  The news seems to have died down and the videos I took haven't uploaded yet, so I can take advantage of this lull in activity to try to sleep a little.

Friday, Glorious Friday

I think I've decided that Friday is my favorite day of the week.  It used to be Thursday, the day I work at Logos and that is now my second favorite day of the week.  But once I leave Logos, I know that I have six days before I "work" again.  Sometimes there are shows to review...often there are shows to review, but when I wake up on Friday morning, even if there is a show to review that night, I have nothing pressing to do until late afternoon.

It's a psychological thing.

Jeri spent the night here last night.  I conked out on her and Walt and was on my couch dead to the world before they finished chatting, turned out the lights and went upstairs to bed.  Phil had spent the night with friends he wanted to spend time with.

In the morning Jeri got up, called her grandmother at 9 and invited herself over for a visit.  She had things to do in the late morning so thought she could sandwich in a visit beforehand.  She's also been working on making friends with Polly and the best way is always through Polly's stomach...the other two got the benefits of Jeri's Polly campaign.

When she went to Atria, she took Sheila with her.   I've been thinking about taking Sheila to visit my mother for a long time but have never gotten around it.  I would be hesitant to take Lizzie, and would definitely not take Polly, but mellow Sheila is just perfect and now that she's been there I will have to take her again some time. Jeri says I should walk her over, but I probably won't, being too lazy to do it!

As for me, I spent a lot of time organizing Compassion things today.  I had a few letters from kids I hadn't answered yet, and had not posted to my Compassion blog, where I post all the letters and pictures from the kids.  I usually write letters to all the kids--you can write one e-mail letter and have it duplicated to all the kids, sometimes adding a personal note for the specific child I'm writing to, which makes it go more quickly.  I can pretty much do it in an hour or an hour and a half.  It has made writing to the kids so much less time-consuming.  Not that I have ever minded it, but writing individual letters takes more time than sending out 19 individually produced e-letters!

I don't print my letters to the kids on the blog (they are stored on my computer), but always print a letter when I get one from one of the children.   It's the easiest way for me to keep organized and remember who wrote when and what I said in response.

After I finished doing some Compassion stuff, and when Jeri was out of the house, I got caught up on some TV that I hadn't seen in the last 3 days. Jeri is not a TV watcher, so I try to keep it off when she is around.  She doesn't understand my need for "white noise" all the time and I know it would drive her nuts, so being a good hostess, I just let the DVR handle what I would normally be watching.  But that does mean a lot of catching up to be done when I get to have the TV back again.

The big concert is tomorrow night and someone from Lawsuit posted the above picture on Facebook.  A million years ago, before a Lawsuit concert, the Davis Enterprise posted this photo on the front page and Walt nearly fell off his bike on his way home from work when he passed by a newspaper machine.  This is exactly 12 people who performed with Lawsuit, when they were each in Kindergarten.  They weren't in kindergarten together, of course.  Jeri, with the braids, was in kindergarten a year before Ned, just below her, who was in kindergarten a year or two before Paul, bottom right.  I look at this picture and it makes me smile...and Marta, next to Ned, definitely has the best picture, though K.C. (with the bow tie) may be second--and he hasn't changed a bit since then!

Norm & Olivia, and Alice Nan are all coming up from Petaluma for the show and we are going out to dinner before hand.  It's just like the old days! (except now I make sure that I have a chair to sit in, since no chairs will be provided by the band!)

Day 54:  They're BOTH happy!

Davis Has Talent

The notice appeared on Facebook yesterday:

Talent Wanted!

The Community Services Department is seeking performers for the first ever Davis’ Got Talent event. Auditions will be held on Saturday March 6, 2010, with a time yet to be determined based upon the number of people auditioning....

Oh Dear. I've lived in this town too long.

The first ever "talent show" that I remember in Davis was actually a Gong Show, in the days when that Chuck Barry show was all the rage. The beloved funky old Palms Playhouse (sadly now long gone in its original format, though the name and philosophy live on in a more regular theatre in the nearby town of Winters) hosted the Gong Show and it was the first time that our kids performed before an audience. They called themselves the "Fab Five." David was about 5 at the time, which would have made it about 1977. They danced to the theme from "Dr. No" and were, of course, terrible. But they had worked long and hard on the choreography and were all so darn cute that they didn't get the gong, just a low score.

We were proud parents watching our little kids perform. We had no idea that we would be spending the next twenty years or more watching our kids perform on various stages up and down California and as far away as Boston! And even often back on the stage of the Palms Playhouse itself.

Fast forward to the next talent show I remember in Davis. One of the organizations involved with the Mental Health Association here in town decided to put on a talent show as a fund raiser for the group. The group was the Yolo Community Care Continuum, which has as its aim to "better the lives of people with mental illness through direct services, advocacy, education and volunteer efforts."

It's a worthy organization and the talent show was a reasonable way to raise money.

Only problem was that nobody involved with the organization had a clue about what was involved in putting on a show. They had gradiose ideas about how it would be fun to put citizens into skits or dance numbers or have them sing songs, without knowing whether they could actually act, sing, or dance.

The community has some real talent who agreed to perform and selected community leaders would be interspersed in skits or dance numbers among the "real" talent.

The committee invited myself and a couple of people from the Davis Comic Opera Co. to help them with the technical aspects. I remember my mouth dropping open when they were discussing the cost to rent the theatre and wondered if they really needed it for rehearsal. Couldn't we just all meet at the theatre and put on a show and save money?

(Obviously they had watched too many Judy Garland-Mickey Rooney movies!)

Myfriend Stephen Peithman and I wrote the script for a quiz show. I can't even remember what it was now.

I also helped them get my then-boss, who was a jazz musician in his spare time, to play. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that he intended to play for about 20 minutes and that nobody could get him off the stage!

There were two performances of this talent show and the reason I don't remember much about what exactly was involved is because the show was so bad that after our quiz show had its moment, I left the theatre and went home. It was too painful to watch.

Fortunately, the thing was apparently a rip roaring success, made lots of money for YCCC and the people who organized it still rave about how wonderful it was. In the end that's all that really matters anyway, that the people in the audience have a good time and that everybody remembers how wonderful it was.

Even if it was ... horrible.

So, technically speaking this upcoming show isn't exactly the town's "first ever" talent show. But I'm sure it will be just fine.

The Return of Bongo

It was so nice to see Bongo again tonight.

When we were on our trip, we talked about having an "after party" to rehash the trip and to share photos (though many of us have already posted them on line). With no date chosen, Jeri took the bull by the horns and suggested we have the party on August 30, when she will be in town and can attend. Everybody agreed that sounded like a great idea, so the party is set for August 30.

But some people decided that was way too long to wait, so an interim gathering was set for tonight. Thing was that not everybody could make it tonight, but Sheri, Ashley and Bongo came so I took the above photo to send to Jeri, so she wouldn't feel left out. He's sitting next to a container of prosciutto and melon that I brought as my contribution to the dinner. I think I may finally have gotten prosciutto and melon out of my system!

We enjoyed sitting around our hosts' gorgeous back yard, overlooking Mt. Diablo

What a difference it was this time vs. the pre-trip parties. This time I wasn't uncomfortably standing around trying to get to know strangers I would soon be spending two weeks with, I was sharing memories with old friends who had survived the Bataan march together. I was hearing about how Kathy and Russ's trip to Spain had gone and what other people thought about the hell that is DeGaulle Airport security. It was remembering Ian and laughing about the time David posed with the statue of David.

It was remembering the gelato and the chocolate croissants and the Big Head and Jennifer's trip to the doctor and all the other things we enjoyed together. It was sad that only about 10 of the group could make it, but fun that two of them, who were supposed to be at a party somewhere else, had to stop by for a few minutes because they couldn't stand not to see us when we got together for the first time. But I think almost everybody will be there on the 30th, when Jeri is able to join us.

At Cousins Day, Kathy asked what the state of the economy was in France and Italy and I replied that we stayed in 4-star hotels and you really didn't get a sense of that (or at least I didn't because I wasn't looking), but we were talking tonight about how few other guests there seemed to be at most of the other hotels (except the one in Paris, which I learned is owned by the same corporation that owns Motel 6 here). Once we left Paris, there were no other tour groups, no tour buses and in a couple of hotels, we never saw any other guests. The guy at our last hotel, outside Florence, said business was terrible and that not only were they not getting any customers, but the U.S. was no longer ordering their wine, which had been a huge financial blow to them, since it's their wine exports that pay for the upkeep on the hotel. (Makes me wish, now, that I had bought a bottle of wine, in addition to the olive oil I bought!)

I'm looking forward to getting us all together next month, when Jeri is here. We are now old friends who survived the 2 week tour and share memories we will never have with anyone else, though the chance of me seeing most of the others again is slight!

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SPECIAL LAWSUIT ALERT: Ned has been posting old Lawsuit videos (because, of course, there are no new Lawsuit videos!) on the "Lawsuit Music Channel" on You Tube. If you were a fan and are missing Lawsuit in your life, or if you just wonder what the magic was all about, by all means check it out!