ROCKPILE on the road

EVERYBODY WAS IN NEW YORK

We checked into the Gershwin Hotel, a tribute to Andy Warhol.

The Gershwin Hotel…my mini movie tribute. from ROCKPILE on Vimeo.

I remember I ate a huge corned beef sandwich at the Carnegie Deli.

New friends, Amy and Sean, from Australia who we met at the Black Cat in New Orleans showed up at our ROCKPILE performance at the Gershwin.

Ira Cohen was there too, with his nurse, Micki, his sister Janice and brother-in-law, Charlie, and Will Swofford, Suzi and Allan, Ellen Geist, Bonny Finberg, Joy Lau, Steve Ben Israel, the ghost of my grandpa Sam,
Martha and Basil King, Allan Graubard, Joel Lewis, Jake Marmer, my cousin Bill and cousin Lisa and cousin Margo and her husband Adam, a young poet friend of theirs.

And there was Terri’s “sister” Isabel…

and her old (and first) friend, Avi, from her Miami days.

Jim Feast, Vincent Katz, Manuel and Ronnie DaRocha, Tom Savage, Christopher Winks, Arielle Guy, David Henderson, let me know if I left you out, and of course
The Band…Marty Ehrlich (multi-reed), Bill Zavatsky (piano), Lindsey Horner (bass) and Michael Stephans (drums). Marty Ehrlich was a great bandleader.

Marty Ehrlich (multi-reed), Bill Zavatsky (piano), Lindsey Horner (bass) and Michael Stephans (drums).

The sound system sucked but we did the best we could. I think the people in the front of the room enjoyed the show more than the people at the back of the room.

Ellen Geist said it was the best “music and spoken word extravaganza” that she ever heard. Manuel was amazed it was so good.
But friends are often biased, my cousin Margo explained.

Baz said, “Now that’s poetry!”
Thank god for friends!!

Earlier in the day John Sasgard took pictures of us (Thanks John! Beautiful photos. I am home now and found the pictures in the mail) at CUNY, after the symposium on “Art and Activism, Poetry and The Troubadour Tradition” hosted by David Henderson and Ammiel Alcalay.

Get more information on the Humanities Center
at The Graduate Center, CUNY (The City University of New York)

The audience had some great stuff to say. Tonya Foster was especially lucid.
Anne Waldman showed up to add to and join in on the discussion.

ROCKPILE CUNY NYC Discussion from ROCKPILE on Vimeo.

There was another great ROCKPILE symposium at St. Mark’s with Jim Christy, Harris Schiff, Suzi Winson (she provided refreshments too),Wanda Phipps, Murat Nemat Nejat, Ammiel Alcalay, moderated by Jim Feast. Steve Ben Israel, Tom Savage and Chris Winks
had a lot to add from the audience side.

ROCKPILE Symposium at St. Mark’s Poetry Project NYC from ROCKPILE on Vimeo.

Terri and David and I were on the move all the time, a la New York, ate a lot of edamame, shop talked over cold sake, met up with the great sports writer George Kimball, in the coffee shop off the Gershwin Lobby. Talked about boxing, Chris and Angelo Dundee, folk music, and poetry.George took David out onto the street for a smoke. Exhale. David was grateful for this encounter.

We got in a taxi that took us to the wrong place and we got out of the taxi without realizing we were nowhere to be found. We walked a block through a street fair, rummage sale, and took another taxi back to the Gershwin.

There was this Irish bar we went to for lunch one day
where I was able to get a cheap, honest, mediocre chicken sandwich.
David ate his perpetual Caeser salad with chicken
(alternative salmon which he describes as “virtuous”).
I haven’t seen a virtuous piece of fish since I was 7 years old

There was this fancy restaurant that got on my nerves.
I was tired of being the third wheel (sober) and everything was tiny and way overpriced.
Terri wasn’t hungry so we shared an average desert. I just wanted a tuna sandwich and a good night’s rest.
It was not going to happen. Wah! Wah!.

New York City is a kind of home for us all. Though I’ve never lived there it has always been part of my neighborhood. I am an east coaster, born and raised in Miami Beach, and many of the people I grew up with were transplanted New Yorkers, or it was the New Yorkers who created the seasonal snow-bird backdrop for us Beach kids every year, or it was the New Yorkers who inevitably retired in hordes to the sunny cracker jack retirement condo mausoleums stacking up along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of Florida.
There is something in the New York sensibility which is both annoying and endearing, just like family.

Pushy, intrusive, honest, emotional, noisy.
Ya gotta like that!

Terri was born in NYC and lived there until she was 4 years old, then she spent half her life in Miami (a NY suburb?(( forgive me mom …she “hated New Yorkers”)).

David was born in Brooklyn and his whole being lit up as soon as he hit the NY streets.

He swung down Madison Avenue on his aluminum sticks,
“I want a cigarette, I want a drink, I want to party all night long!!”

If he didn’t say it, he was thinking it…

I finally ended up in David’s wheelchair and Terri pushed me down the sidewalk
while David skipped down the cold night streets
looking for a memory, a passion fix!

Stay tuned for video clips of the Gershwin Performance soon, as well as more from Chicago and St. Louis!