davidvanwert.com

Here’s some information for a sketch comedy show I’ll be in next weekend at The Hub Theatre in North Hollywood.
In a nutshell, it’s Friday the 16th at 9:30pm and Saturday the 17th at 9pm. The Hub Theatre is at 5245 Lankershim Blvd.

December 8 marks the 25th anniversary of the day John Lennon was murdered on the street in New York City. But the man who wrote “Imagine” and “Give Peace a Chance” could be volcanic in his personal life and was not one to mince words, as evidenced in this song written just a few months after the break-up of the Beatles.

Rolling Stone has released the full content of an interview with John Lennon that caused quite a stir in 1970. I dearly hope that in 35 years, people aren’t discussing and analyzing the Paris Hilton/Nicole Ritchie rift with this much passion, but it’s odd to hear a celebrity speak so bluntly and openly (other than as a publicity ploy). These days it would be a statement about “artistic differences” released through a spokesperson.
The interview is available as a podcast, though that doesn’t mean you need an iPod to hear it — nearly any desktop computer or mp3 player will do. “Podcast” was just accepted into the Oxford Dictionary as an official “word” with a “definition” which brings a strange confluence into the picture. Apple Computer was named after the Beatles record company, Apple Records, and there was a lawsuit over whether the name could be used. The computer company won on the grounds of “Hey, we have nothing to do with music.” But 25 years later, Apple Computer achieves a form of product placement in the Oxford Dictionary based on a music device.

Full Disclosure:
Magical Misery Tour (Bootleg Record), sung by Tony Hendra; piano: Melissa Manchester; drums: Jim Payne; bass: John “Cooker” LoPresti; lyrics by Tony Hendra & Michael O’Donoghue; composed by Christopher Cerf; arranged by Christopher Guest; by National Lampoon, 1972.

You don’t see that many One Man Bands these days.
I’d never even noticed that the genre had practically fallen off the planet until last night, during my gallery walk, when I saw a guy on the 1500 block of Echo Park Boulevard holding a banjo with a bass drum strapped across his back and a tambourine hanging off his shoulder, and I thought “Gee, you don’t see that many One Man Bands these days.”
A thump of his left heel boomed the drum and thump of his right heel slapped the tambourine. Meanwhile, his ten fingers flashed across the strings of that banjo so fast your eyes couldn’t perceive and your mind wouldn’t believe. I assume he had just ten fingers… from the way he played though, he might’ve been one of those twelve fingered folk you see now and then on Discovery Channel. But whatever. Hunched in a half crouch, heels thumping and fingers flying, he playing that banjo like a sitar, spewing out music that was half bluegrass, half Bombay — Krishna in Kentucky. Pure bloody magic on the sidewalk, and there was nobody who could stop themselves from stopping. To hear and to feel.
Then his furious playing finally broke a string, and I had a moment to tear myself free. I realized it was then or never — there were galleries I hadn’t seen, and it was getting late. If I stayed to watch this one-man-band, I’d miss everything else. But as he knelt on the sidewalk changing his string, I dropped the buck fifty of quarters I had in my pocket into his cup.
“Thanks, man,” he said.
“Thank you,” I replied. And I honestly meant it. That was my laundry money, but what he’d given me was worth dirty pants.