 |
| 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." |
 |
 |
|
