WEBLEY SITE
September of '04 a friend, Jason Webley, came back to town. He had played at the Knitting Factory. Missed that show. He'd apparently run long (for the KF) and took his crowd to the street and when he was done he'd asked the crowd if anyone knew of a place to play in town on such-and-such a night. A venue of any sort, ...
:::::::::::::::::
He seemed a sport about it enough to make a bit of a show that ended with the 15 or so people there spinning like dervishes and singing:
"When the glass is full,
Drink up! Drink up!
This maybe the last time
We see this cup.
If God wanted us sober,
He'd knock the glass over,
So while it is full we drink up!"
The performance began with him telling a story of how Chris & I had met him the previous year.
:::::::::::::::::
Someone, upon hearing "ecclectic folk singer/accordian player with a lot of vegetable imagery in his songs and on his records and he's touring with a puppeteer" thought it'd be good for the kids to see. Nevermind that one of the puppet pieces was rabbits acting out the story of a Johnny Cash song where one of the rabbits is hanged at the end. Parents were aghast. The kids loved it, Jason said, telling the handful of us in that apartment it was that show which was maybe the weirdest venue he'd played, until this one.
"This one" was a smidge of a collegiate hollow with improvised art on the walls, including an LP cover of an Allen Sherman masterpiece.
::::::::::::::::::
We arrived at Watts Towers on the day of a drum festival featuring Leon Ndugu Chancler, art & craft show, food fair -- cool sounds, some fine fine art and great smells. I raved about Bottle Village (similarly envisioned as to be constructed from consumer cast-offs, similarly movitated by an anti-alcohol streak, but constructed vastly differently since Simon Rodia was very much a preternatural engineer and Grandma Prisbrey was very much not) and how next time Jason should see that.
:::::::::::::::::
Some more of the story, with more to come. Some pix, with more to come.
<< Home