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.

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.

Once a Mom...

I hadn't seen a smudge like that in 14 years.

The last time I was at The Hotel Utah in San Francisco was New Year's Eve, 1997. We were there the previous year, too, when Lawsuit played its farewell concert. Lawsuit had played the Utah a few times before and it was a nice sentimental place to call and end to the band's 10 year career.

A year later, the owner convinced the band to return for a big reunion concert. The tickets for the event sold out in 30 minutes. We were all there to see Lawsuit play together for one last time. The show was good, but it was clear that the magic was gone and that there would be no future reunions.

But Walt and I were back at the Utah again tonight, this time for an evening that was part of the International Pop Overthrow (IPO), which is held every year in August. Jeri is usually here at that time and gets together with some of the old Lawsuit group in a new band called Preoccupied Pipers. They do one ~20 minute set as part of an evening showcasing bands from around the area. She's been doing this now ever since she moved to Boston.

This year IPO was at the Hotel Utah for the first time and we decided to go down and listen to the band. We paid our money at the door and got the familiar hand stamp. We greeted the kids and were ushered upstairs, where they had saved a corner for us, so we could sit down. Ned handed me his camera and asked if I could take movies, and Jeri asked if I could watch her bag for her. I felt as if I had gone back to the old days when all the parents would come to all the Lawsuit concerts and we would do stuff like that for our kids. It was kind of nice to have my very grown up children asking me to watch their stuff again.

We sat through the 2 bands that preceded Preoccupied Pipers and I sorely missed the ear plugs that Jon Lee used to pass out to parents at Lawsuit shows. I thought of the irony that I had canceled a doctors appointment this morning. I was going to get my hearing checked because of some problems I've been having, but the problems seem to have cleared up a week ago. But the thought of going to have my ears checked in the morning and then going to this ear-shattering concert in the evening was strange.

It was fun seeing the kids back in action again. I only took a few pictures because I was busy working Ned's video camera. I also took a very short video, which I took with one hand while operating Ned's camera with the other! (I will post that tomorrow, after it has finished uploading--it's nearly 2 a.m. and I don't want to sit up and wait for it!) I thought at the time that someone with a camera downstairs might get a better picture of ME trying to handle two cameras simultaneously than what I was filming downstairs.

It was so much fun seeing them up there on that stage again.

The band this year consisted of KC, Jeri, Joe, Marta (on bass) and Ned, with Kag and Barbara joining in on a couple of the vocals.

A fun surprise was Phil making his Hotel Utah debut wearing his old Lawsuit bowling shirt.

He was introduced as "Jiminy Hendrix" and rocked the house in his one number.

He is flying back to Boston on Saturday while Jeri is going to stay through the middle of next week. Phil came out early to go to a Phish concert with Ned and their friend Jessica near Seattle. He has apparently been having a great time while he's here.

Jeri arrived on Saturday and is doing her usual "fit everyone in" tour, having already spent 2 days with her grandmother, then coming up here to see friends in this part of the state, spend some time with us, and get together with some of the pinata people too.

August is usually a fun month.

A Double Header

I feel like we've been to a double-header today! The morning was quiet enough, ending with taking Polly for her weekly torture--3 hours at Petco. I had arranged for Ashley to bring her back home again, since we would be at a family reunion.

The reunion was held at the home of my cousin's daughter (is that my second cousin or first cousin once removed? I can never remember). Anyway, Denise lives in a beautiful small home in Petaluma that has a fabulous garden that my mother has been raving about for years.

Unfortunately, I didn't see too much of the garden. It's terraced up the back of a hill and I could see everything in bloom farther up, but I'm such a klutz and nearly fell off my Birkinstocks just getting to the first level, that I didn't go up farther.

This wasn't one of the blow-out reunions where people fly from halfway across the country to attend. With very few exceptions, everyone who was there was directly related to my cousin Shirley (well, we all are, but I meant her daughters and their spouses, brother and grandchildren). That was a pretty big group right there. But there were a few of us "not quite so closely related" people too, like Peach and Bob and their daughter Karen.

But we were there to do a little visiting, barbeque some bratwurst and have a quick dinner. There are already plans for next year's reunion, at a place several miles north, in the redwood country. The plan is for it to be 3 days and the facility has cabins and kitchen facilities and all that sort of good stuff.

We couldn't stay long because of the concert tonight by the Preoccupied Piers, which was being held from 6-9 at a pizza parlor in Davis. We knew we would be late and would miss the first set by Adrian West. Not only were we getting to town at 6:30, we had to stop off at the house first and feed the dogs.

We got to the pizza parlor just as Adrian was finishing his set.

It was like old home week. I swear I knew 1/3 of all the people in the place. My friend Ruth, with whom I have lunch at a downtown restaurant every two weeks, was there; my Lexulous buddy Jess was there. The kids' old math teacher was there. Walt's sister was there. Lots of old Lawsuit groupies were there. Paul's old boss was there. Some other people I knew in town were there.

I even saw one of the midwives I used to work with, who had been taking her grandson to get some ice cream, heard the music and came in to see what was going on. Aiden, the grandson, had never seen live music being played before and was mesmerized.\

Unforunately, the midwife, who was always one of my favorite people and whom I have not seen in a long time, managed to leave before I saw her. I would like to have spoken with her a little bit, but I'm glad that she at least stopped in to see what all the commotion inside the pizza parlor was!

Walt's sister had a great time, dancing with Ned and with Jeri at various times.

Marta sang a love song that she dedicated to Mr. Tashima, their high school math teacher, because she said that she and Ned had fallen in love in his class. (I can't remember if Ned got good grades or not in that class!)

It was just a really fun night. It's always fun when the kids get together to perform again. One of my favorite things this time was looking down on the floor and seeing the band members' children sitting there watching.

We came home to happy dogs. Today Buttercup began eating like a real dog. She takes so much of Bella's food that I finally gave her her own bowl today (I think Bella got most of that too, but Buttercup is on her way to being a toddler, not just a baby).

Troutstock

I mentioned on Facebook that we were going to "Troutstock" and someone said it sounded like a musical festival with fish. He was half right.

The parents of Joe Hayes, a talented musician who has played in several bands with our kids, own 3 acres of land in Sebastopol, and the kids decided to hold a music festival. (With sheep and cows, not fish). The setting was perfect. You arrive at the house, walk out into a field filled with several tents (some of the people were spending the night), through some bushes, under an overhang and voila! There you are at the stage area!

There was a stage with all the mics and speakers that you'd expect at a concert. And there were chairs and bales of hay to sit on and a food table loaded with snacks over on the side. When the music started there were a couple of opening acts,

including one featuring nose flutes.

Finally Preoccupied Pipers took the stage (the same musicians, but more of them). All I'll say is that you have to see the Video of the day! It would spoil it to describe it.

Some Fine Musicians from Bev Sykes on Vimeo.

They played for half an hour or so...

...while the grown ups sat and watched and the younger generation watched from a nearby tree.

Eventually, a taco truck pulled into the driveway in front of the house and we took a break for dinner.

By the time we got back to the stage, the neighbors' cows had come by to see what all the commotion was about.

There was more music to come and I loved sitting back and watch the second generation of Lawsuit kids play together. They are just like the 2nd generation Pinata kids--they are growing up together.

The two older girls, Clara and Josie, remind me of Jeri and Jenny when they were that age (the younger girl is Fiona, Clara's sister; the dog is Ned & Marta's dog, The Bouncer.)

It started to get cold as the sun started going down and, as nice as the stage area was, there was no lighting to continue the show beyond sunset, so by 8:30 they had played the last song ("The Vegetable Song")

We were back in Davis by 10:30, and found only three dogs. I guess Fozzy Bear found himself a home today!

We're Too Old for This

I remember a New Year's Eve, before we were married, when Walt and I drove to Los Angeles for a party, stayed up late, slept a few hours, got back in the car first thing in the morning, and drove back home again. (For those fuzzy on California geography, that's an 8 hour trip each way.) We did that sort of crazy stuff then.

When Lawsuit was going hot and heavy, we frequently drove all over the state for shows, staying up late, and driving home again from wherever it was.

Last night we did two shows in San Francisco and got home at 2:30 a.m. First of all, it took us three hours to get there. Traffic was horrendous, and even taking the short cut that Walt knows, which cuts off at least half an hour of traffic, we didn't have time to have dinner. We picked up a yogurt smoothie at a stand while we were walking from the parking lot through the Metreon on our way to the theatre.

The first show was The Lamplighters Mikado. Mikado is one of my very favorite Gilbert & Sullivan operettas. It was the one which first enamored me to Gilbert & Sullivan, The Lamplighters, and Gilbert. It was generally recognized that Gilbert's KoKo was one of his best (the other being Jack Point in the less well known Yeomen of the Guard). The Lamplighters once ran Mikado for six months back in the 1960s because it was always a big seller and they needed money.

This current production is opulent and there is lots of good about it, but I have to admit I hated it. Well, maybe "hate" is too strong a word, but I did not like at all a lot of the things the director did with it. Lots of "business" that just distracted from what should have been the focus on stage to elicit cheap laughs, when the real laughs weren't there. And while I may not have hated the show (great performers, great costumes, fabulous set, great orchesetra), I did hate what the director did with KoKo, who minced onto the stage like a drag queen (and the actor himself is not gay, I was told) and had none of the charm that I associate with KoKo. Much of the best about him was gone. I didn't even applaud for most of his numbers because I just hated what the director had done to the character.

(this photo of YumYum and Koko was taken by Rhys Chung, of The Lamplighters
You can see all of her excellent photos of the show on Flickr)

So it was a disappointment. For me. The audience loved it and I was very glad I didn't have to review it because my personal prejudices would have gotten in the way, I fear.

The show ended at about 10 minutes to 11 and Preoccupied Pipers was due to perform across town at 11. This is the group of Lawsuit alumni who get together once a year to perform music that they've been writing, often in e-mail collaboration, all year. Jeri and Phil had flown in, arriving (thanks to Jet Blue canceling their original flight) that morning for the evening's show!. We raced through the streets of San Francisco and, thanks to the fact that IPO shows never run on time, we actually did get there on time.

I hadn't seen the guys up on stage in a long time and it was fun, of course, to watch them.

Ned in costume on the drum

Jeri on flute

Marta

Jeri on sax, Marta on trombone

They played until about 12:30 or so. I forget what time it was, but all I know was that it was after 2 a.m. when Walt and I finally rolled in here. The dogs couldn't believe it. I think it will be awhile before we try that little stunt again! (But it sure was a fun night!)

Today's video contains snippets from the concert.