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1997 1998 1999
35 captures
7 Jul 98 - 14 Aug 07
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In part of an endless round of celebrations of the Siamese Princes's birthday, merrymakers met in the smokey bowels of the 42nd St Grand Hyatt "Cigar Room" where the waitress offers to take your picture so you can show the folks back home you were there.The cavernous lobby is awash in running water, mirrors, faux gold, a formidable elevator bank and crisply uniformed stormtrooper "concierges."
"Wish you were here,
where we evidently are..."

The waitress brought two plates of olives and snapped this glamorous shot.

Prince Maiko counts the twenties while listening to Molly's Solo Bedroom Project, a song John King was singing parts of in the subway on the way to see a movie about Bob Dylan, Don't Look Back, which is all handheld black and white cam, grainy as hell and sound so bad you forget you're not there b/c what other than a Hollywood life is free of imperfections? It looks in dark scenes--of which there are plenty--as if it were raining.
On stage with only the shadow of the stool elongated at his feet, a pitcher of water his only prop. See Bob's back backlit, audience lost in chiaroscuro wash, as he commands rapt attention without having to ask for it.
Outside the theater, John shared a smoke with two people who talked a lot about The Damned at Coney Island and how all the goths in Jersey City together in one room is an anomoly.
Then best of all were eggs in a long narrow coffee shop with crazies talking to themselves at tiny booths-for-two hanging off the wall where all the way in the back where it got warm and wide John transcribed in loving style the names of songs he's let loose upon the land since he re-invented himself in 1986.
"My New Look: The Compleat John King," is a two-cassette set of songs sung in suburban basements and lonely Hoboken apartment without even crickets to applaud. The prior incarnations of John King (the name means Exalted One) reads like a Who's Who of obscure music for the end of the century: kilgore trout, me, the pope's kids, happy day funbook, chronic platonic, home fires, the room, stinky living room, chainsaw, humidifier. He also put out two CDs with northeast supergroup Spent.

At right, this is not John King. It is the prince in a contemplative mood. Probably he is thinking, "If you're not going to be groovy, just leave."