KCRW Sessions with Moby

Tonight I attended the second of a series of concerts called Sessions, put on by my local NPR flagship, KCRW (89.9 FM). If you read my blog post about the first Sessions concert back in April, which featured Australian vocalist Sia, then you'll know that KCRW is just about the only radio station I tune into. Since it's a public station, the DJs are not bound to any corporation's playlist. They spin hand-picked stuff and pride themselves on their diverse tastes. KCRW's favorite word is eclectic. I probably shouldn't say they're the only station I ever put on. You've also got Jack FM for those awesome hits from the eighties (my favorite decade!) as well as KUSC's classical music for your more contemplative moods.

To illustrate how all over the map KCRW can go, they've gone from Sia--with her gorgeous, soulful, heart-stabbing voice--to Moby, who himself is sort of one big bag of eclecticism. As before, tonight's event was at the Malibu Performing Arts Center (MPAC). When you live in the Valley like I do, that means hauling it over the proverbial Hill, making a bee line for the coast, and then winding north along Pacific Coast Highway, through Santa Monica and the Pacific Palisades, past the Getty Villa, until you're pretty much in downtown Malibu, a seaside town of about 10,000 or so people. MPAC is a two-story building sitting right behind Malibu City Hall. As I did three months ago, during my drive tonight I couldn't help wondering if I was passing the spot where Mel Braveheart got pulled over for drunk driving two years ago. You know what I'm talking about, when he suspected the barely legal deputy of being Jewish and therefore the scourge of Western Civilization.

Have you ever listened to Moby? You've probably heard at least one of his songs, perhaps one of the tracks from his 1999 album Play. A healthy share of those pups were appropriated by various TV shows and commercials and movies and accordingly became quite ubiquitous. At any rate, if you know of Moby at all, you most likely know him for his electronica, for being that guy in the club churning out house music from his laptop. Well, that's not what the beautiful bald vegan was up to tonight. Don't get me wrong. Raves do have their time and place, but I doubt a good share of the 500 people tonight had a rave in mind when they coughed up the healthy coin to score a ticket to this gig. Nah, so Moby showed up with a five-piece band, and it was kind of eye opening to see how versatile he was with the instruments. He could swing the axe just as well as he could take the sticks behind that Plexiglas wall. Also a standout was Laura Dawn, this big-voiced blonde who provided vocals on just about every song. I'm not sure if she has a solo career, but lord knows she should. I could even see her as a soprano on the opera stage. That gal's got pipes!

As with Sia, the format for tonight's concert was that Moby and his band came out, played a few tracks, and then Nic Harcourt came out for an interview. While the rest of the band adjourned backstage, Nic and Moby sat on a couch and bantered back and forth for about, I dunno, a half-hour maybe? After that, Moby and band went back at it for a much more extensive and diverse second set. Nic Harcourt, by the way, is the music program director for KCRW and also DJs Morning Becomes Eclectic, their weekday music show, from nine till noon.

While I had a more than swell time overall, I didn't enjoy this quite as much as I did Sia. For one thing, Sia's voice is awfully tough to beat. And secondly, if you've listened to Moby at all, you can imagine that a lot of his songs don't exactly lend themselves to being performed onstage with a band in a traditional concert format. Mind you, I've been a fan of Moby's longer than I have been of Sia's. Sia entered my life in the summer of 2001 when she contributed vocals to two songs on Zero 7's debut album Simple Things. As for Moby, it was when Play came out in '99 that he caught my--and the rest of the world's--attention. That sucker, his third full-length, sold something like eleven million copies. I snatched a copy of 18 as soon as that came out in '02. He's since come out with two more albums, 2005's Hotel and this year's Last Night. No, of course it wasn't a coincidence that he was making a much-hyped live appearance in Malibu so soon after releasing a new album. Sia had just come out with Some People Have Real Problems when she took the MPAC stage. Hey, an artist's marketing mission is never done. Anywho, 'point being that I love Moby as much as the next wannabe raver. But that's just it. Dude's music lends itself much more to being performed in a dance club or something, not in an auditorium where people sit down. Not surprisingly, there were several tracks tonight that provoked all 500 of us to get to our feet and sort of groove with the music. At one point during the interview Nic called the show a "partially seated rave." My four favorite songs from tonight were "Lift Me Up", "Bodyrock", "I Like It", and "Honey". Those tunes, and a few others, translated quite well to a live band performance. Others, not so much.

Here's some biographical tidbits about our man Moby. He was born Richard Melville Hall in Harlem on September 11, 1966. The man was barely out of the womb when his folks decided to nickname him Moby. No, it's not a coincidence that they'd give him the name of Herman Melville's whale, nor that his middle name is Melville. Herman was his great-great-great grand uncle. Anyway, Moby's dad died when he was two. He and Mom moved to Darien, Connecticut, where Moby did most of his growing up. They lived in poverty for pretty much his entire childhood, subsisting on food stamps and welfare. The adventures didn't end there, though. After double majoring in photography and philosophy at SUNY Purchase, ol' Mobe moved to Stamford, Connecticut, where he lived in an abandoned factory in a crack ghetto. His main method of survival was to horde tons of bottles and cans and then go wait in line with homeless people to exchange the containers for coinage so he could eat.

During his couch interview with Nic, Moby downplayed his poor upbringing. The only time he came within a football field of mentioning it was when he talked about his earliest music memory, which also doubles as his earliest memory period. He talked about sitting in his ma's beat-up white Plymouth ("the tailpipe hanging on with twine," he said). They had just gotten home, and on the radio came "Proud Mary" by Creedence Clearwater Revival, from their 1969 album Bayou Country. He was just three years old at the time, and he refused to get out of the car until the song was over. Aw, isn't that cute? Can't you just picture that tiny little bald kid really getting into the groove?

So that was it. Besides mentioning their raggedy ol' Plymouth, Moby never said a word about being poor. You gotta admire the guy for not feeling sorry for himself as well as not wanting anyone to feel bad for him. I mean, I'd say he's doing okay now, wouldn't you?

His mother's musical tastes influenced him greatly. Her tastes spanned the spectrum, which helps explain why his songs can sort of dart all over the map. He told Nic that she could listen to The Birds or Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young one minute, and then switch to Miles Davis and Stravinsky the next. He said he regularly raided his mom's vast vinyl collection, to the point that it became a routine for her to go into his room once in a while to take back whatever he'd "borrowed." He was also big on recording songs off the radio. His favorite station growing up was WNYU, a college station in New York. He was particularly fond of a program that came on after school called the New Afternoon Show, which played a lot of punk and new wave. Moby would literally sit next to the radio with his finger on the record button, just in case a tune came on that caught his fancy.

The first record he ever bought was the 7" single "Convoy" by C.W. McCall. It was thanks to a fiver one of his pals found on the street. Because Moby was there when he found it, his pal gave him a dollar. Moby didn't waste a minute. He immediately made his way to a local discount store in Darien called Bradley's and bought that single. Then he went home and listened to it forty. Consecutive. Times. Forty. This was in the mid seventies. Moby wasn't even ten. The next day at school that little squirt walked around the halls talking like a trucker, pretending he was talking to his pals on a CB radio or whatever.

When he was nine or ten or so, he landed a job mowing lawns for his neighbors and used that money to buy the soundtrack to Live and Let Die, which scared the bejesus out of him at the time. At 13 he scooped up a copy of Aerosmith's self-titled debut...and played it while making out with his girlfriend. "Dream On" was playing. Moby swung for home. But only hit a double. What made it kind of awkward, Moby said with a cringe, was that he had bigger boobies than she did. Not that it mattered. She didn't like how he kissed and dumped him for his best friend, thus making the song's title quite prescient. About ten years ago Moby ran into Steve Tyler at a party and related this little narrative. According to Moby, "Steve couldn't have cared less."

While his tastes slowly but steadily expanded across the genres, his first gravitation was to techno and hardcore punk. In high school he was part of two bands. The first was a hardcore punk band called the Vatican Commandos. Their main thing was to rail against religious fundamentalism. They also did lots of Sex Pistols and Clash covers, as well as a cover of Minor Threat's "12XU". According to Moby, any and all punk bands worth their salt were obligated to cover "12XU". Before breaking up, the Vatican Commandos actually managed to put together an EP entitled...(wait for it)...Hit Squad for God. Also during high school, Moby was part of this Joy Divisionesque post-punk group called AWOL. They actually stayed together long enough to put out a full-length (self-titled). Most of the other peeps in these bands were Moby's fellow nerdy pals from the high school's AV club. Moby was the kid whose task was to wheel the film projectors into the classrooms and set up the reels. Ever the musical loner, he said his lunch usually consisted of sitting in his AV room cubby and eating sandwiches while listening to Joy Division on his walkman.

When Nic asked him how he got into disco, Moby recalled fondly how open the music scene was in New York during the eighties. One club he was especially fond of was Danceteria, which played all kinds of stuff (e.g. Clash, Donna Summer, Johnny Cash, you name it.) It was at Danceteria that he discovered disco. And his tastes continued to grow.

He never dreamed he'd have a music career (he had two majors at SUNY Purchase, music wasn't one of them). That didn't stop him from giving it a whirl. By the time he finished college in '87, he was hardcore into The Smiths, so he put together a demo of songs that, a la The Smiths, were sort of angsty. He submitted it to a bunch of places and got back all of one response. It was a form letter rejection from Disney saying they don't accept unsolicited material. Then in '89 he made a demo of techno music and actually got signed to a tiny label called Instinct Records. He said Instinct was so small that they had neither a name, an office, nor any employees. "A mime equivalent of a record label," Moby said. His first single, "Mobility", sold 1,500 copies.

It was his second single that gave his career a nice boost. In the early nineties David Lynch had a show called Twin Peaks. Moby's song "Go" became known as Laura Palmer's Theme. Moby was 25 at the time. Tonight, just before he played that song, he said he wouldn't have a career without Mr. Lynch.

His debut full length was 1995's Everything Is Wrong. That didn't do much. Then in '96 he did a punk rock album called Animal Rights, which to this day is his biggest flop. Moby, in true Moby fashion, says that, also to this day, Animal Rights remains the only album he really likes and doesn't mind listening to now and again. It was during this slow phase that he met vocalist Laura Dawn. She spotted him in a bar, went up to him, and couldn't stop gushing about Animal Rights. They've been working together ever since.

As I said above, what launched him into the stratosphere was 1999's Play, by which time the critics had already called him a has-been. And talk about ironic as all hell, the critical notices for Play were horrible. The songs, though, kept getting appropriated for tons of TV shows, movies, and commercials. The album ended up going quintuple platinum or something.

In the wake of Play, he started going to celebrity parties and whatnot and eventually decided that celebs are mostly "insecure people with not much to say." The good thing about his success is that he's gotten to jam with a lot of his idols. He toured with New Order and convinced them that they should do a Joy Division cover together. Hilariously, Moby had to teach them how to play this one Joy Division song even though New Order, of course, had been the ones who originally wrote it. The song they picked hadn't been sung since Ian Curtis. Moby also played with David Bowie at Carnegie Hall. To rehearse, Dave came over to Moby's Little Italy apartment one morning and sat on his couch so they could go over tunes like "Heroes" and what have you. Like I said, Moby's doing okay now.

So here's what the beautiful bald man played. During the applause after each song, ol' Mobe never failed to say thank you three times really fast. "Thankyouthankyouthankyou."

First set:

Lift Me Up

Go

Bodyrock

Disco Lies

The Stars

Interview with Nic

That raucous second set:

Great Escape

Porcelain

Extreme Ways

I Like It

We Are All Made of Stars

Run On

When It's Cold

Natural Blues

New Dawn Fades

Encore:

Next is the E

Honey

The Wandering Fly

(Governor Tom's Note: This is a short story I wrote in the spring of 1998, during my final semester at Temple U. It was for an English lit survey class, wherein we read all kinds of stuff, from excerpts of Gulliver's Travels (which became one of my favorite novels and inspired the title of this blog) to short fiction by folks like Caroline M. Kirkland, Katherine Anne Porter, and Katherine Mansfield. During my Temple years I was living with my dad and stepmom in a suburban subdivision in South Jersey. That neighborhood inspired the setting for this piece. Enjoy!)

________________

Ryan Peers was going to turn five that July. It made him giddy just thinking about it.

But then he would remember it was only June. One whole month was forever, like those seemingly endless expanses of fields he’d see at the end of the fairy tale cartoons when the hero horseman gallops into that infinity, becoming a little dot, getting farther away but still not very close to his destination. Ryan had asked his parents to get him the action figure of that horseman for his birthday, as well as his arch-enemy, the silver-winged dragon. His father was at work a lot, and whenever he’d remind his mother of his wish, he was answered with an unenthusiastic "Maybe."

Like now, for instance. Ryan sat at the kitchen table, swinging his legs in the air, eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. His hair was sandy blond and unkempt. He wore an orange T-shirt and olive green shorts, his feet bare and brown with floor dust. The table was made mostly of white-painted wood, the corners and parts of the legs maple brown. The chairs were white with maple bottoms. The sun beamed through the sky lights directly above, adding a glistening sparkle to the strawberry jelly dangling from the half-eaten sandwich in Ryan’s hand. The yellow chips on his plate glowed gold, his milk gleaming holy white. His mother was tidying up, running back and forth between the sink, white-top counters and island, and the refrigerator, the front of which was decorated by vacation photographs and some of Ryan’s colorings from his coloring book, in this case a purple parrot with a pink beak and a yellow monkey hanging from a red-violet tree. His mother’s shoulder-length auburn hair was tied back in a bun. She was wearing cut-off jean shorts and a two-day-old white T-shirt with dishwashing stains on it. She always did the house chores in her bare feet, the bottoms of which would be coated brown by the end of the day, the stiff yellow corns of wear-and-tear blemishing a couple of the toes. Her feet thumped along the salmon pink tiles, vibrating the table and the vase in the middle as Ryan ate. The single yellow rose drooped from neglect.

Ryan snatched one of his golden chips and bit off half of it. "Mommy?" he said with his mouth full of sandwich and chip.

"Hmm?" she said on her way to put a tub of butter in its compartment in the refrigerator.

"I want the horseman figure for my birthday."

"Maybe, Ryan."

She went on to say something about their "financial situation," but Ryan wasn’t paying attention. From behind a small bag of potatoes next to the refrigerator emerged a fly. Ryan couldn’t hear it at first, but he noticed the little black dot shoot out as if ejected by the bag of potatoes, describing zig-zag patterns in the air before landing against the window over the sink. "Damn," said the mother, looking around the kitchen for something with which she could swat the fly. There weren’t any magazines or newspapers within eyesight, so she settled on a roll of paper towels standing on the island. The roll was like the sword awaiting her hand, thought Ryan as he watched her grab it with one hand and swing terribly aimed misses at the fly buzzing against the sun-baked glass. She knocked over a small pot of flowers on the sill, catching it before it fell into the sink. "Damn it." The fly continued its deranged course toward Ryan’s end of the kitchen, smacking its little black body against the glass cupboard which housed the cups and wine glasses. She swung and missed it there too. Then its path skewed abruptly. It disappeared into the adjoining dining room. "I’ll worry about it later," she sighed, putting the now mashed roll of paper towels on the island. She looked at Ryan through the strands of hair glued to her sweaty forehead, wisping in front of her eyes. "When you’re done with that, can you take it up to the sink by yourself?"

"Yes, Mommy."

"Come upstairs when you’re finished."

She thumped out of the kitchen, not noticing the glob of jelly that splatted high up on Ryan’s left breast. He continued chewing slowly and without purpose, occasionally wiping at the persistent itch just under his nose with his free index. Soon the fly came back in. He never took his eyes off it. It zigged-zagged its way to the sliding glass door which led to the backyard. The door was just a couple of feet from the kitchen table so it was close enough for Ryan to hear the thumping and buzzing of the bug as it tried in vain to penetrate the invisible wall. It wanted to get at the quarter acre of perfectly trimmed grass dotted with hints of yellow death, the baby pine trees decorating the fringes of the lawn, and the adjacent lawns with their similar plushness and blemishes.

Ryan got up and walked to the glass door. The fly was buzzing against the glass near the top. He watched it blindly work its way to the top right corner where it came to a rest. The noise of a little girl shouting came from somewhere nearby. He saw in the backyard connected to his by the northeast corner a little girl about his age being swung in a swing by her father. He was making her go progressively higher. In the backyard connected to the northwestern corner of Ryan’s lawn he saw a woman whose hips were swollen and puffy with her hand above her eyes, watching the father and daughter play. Through the sliding glass door of the house directly opposite came another woman out onto her dark brown wooden deck, about the same age as the first woman but much smaller and thinner and pale, her black hair tied into a long pony tail resting on her back. She was bringing out some large toys, her small child following her out and howling at her for her to stop. The man at the swing with his daughter was watching the little scene, as was the woman who had previously been watching the father. The woman with the child looked up and noticed the father watching her. As she turned to scold her child, she noticed the other woman watching as well, who then went back to looking at the father. The girl on the swing was hollering for her father to make her go higher. The woman by herself went back into her house and slid the door shut. Ryan could still see her peeking through the sliding door blinds at the mother wrestling with her child’s temper and the father struggling to satiate his daughter’s wishes to go higher.

The fly started buzzing across the top of the sliding door, still looking for a hole.

"Ryan, are you finished yet?" came his mother’s voice from above.

"Yes, Mommy."

"Take your plate and glass up and come upstairs for your nap."

When he got to his bedroom, his mother was peeking through the blinds at the woman with her son and the father with his daughter. Ryan got into bed. She shut the door and went into her bedroom where the television was on. The voices emanating from it faded as Ryan heard her close her door. He dozed off listening to the faint weeps of the son and the whoops of the daughter.

The father came home from work just as the mother was finished making dinner. His blond hair, which was combed and slicked back to perfection every morning before he left, was now dried and disheveled. His burgundy tie decorated with steel diamonds was partly loosened on his white shirt, his dark grey coat folded under the same arm which held his worn black briefcase. Ryan was sitting at the table waiting, looking up at the fly slamming its little body against the glass shield behind which glowed two long fluorescent bulbs.

"What’d you do today, little guy?" the father said to Ryan as he took the fast food trash out of his briefcase and stuffed it into the waste basket.

"Nothing."

"Colored today, huh?" he said, closing his briefcase and kissing his wife on the back of her neck. She cringed and blushed and told him to stop. "I’m going to go change."

The fly landed on top of the paper towel which covered the salad. The mother noticed it as she set the bowls down beside it. "Damn it."

"What’s wrong?" asked the father.

"It’s this damn fly again. It’s been a nuisance all day."

"I’ll be right down," the father said on his way out.

Some time after dinner, when Ryan was supposed to be getting ready for his bath, he wandered into his father’s study. His father was now wearing his turquoise golf shirt and khaki shorts, his bare feet crossed. No lights were on. He was sitting at his computer, the monitor glowing white on his face. His mouse was in one hand, the clicks of his finger on the buttons intermittent and random. Behind him the sun was a blood-red ball threatening to disappear for the night. He turned briefly in acknowledgment of his son’s presence but just as quickly turned back to the screen. "Hi, Ryan. Aren’t you supposed to be taking a bath?"

"Daddy, what are you doing?"

"This is called the Internet. Remember when I told you about the Internet? You can do a lot of neat things on it." The fly was in the room. Ryan couldn’t see it but could very easily hear it. Its buzzing was at first distant but grew louder until it sounded like it was right next to his ear. It landed on the monitor screen. The father swatted at it, but it always came back. "Get the hell out of here!" the father shouted.

"Ryan, come take your bath," his mother called from the bathroom.

"Ryan, listen to your mother," the father said, waving his hand through the air while trying to click with the other.

"Daddy, I want the horseman figure for my birthday. And the silver-winged dragon."

"Maybe."

"Ryan, come on," said the mother. "Quit bothering your father."

As Ryan left the room, the sounds of kids shouting came from outside. The father turned to look through the blinds at the front of the house. On the sidewalk three girls rode by on bikes, none older than ten, one of them with training wheels and going much slower. The father watched them ride by and saw the man across the street watering his lawn with a glass of brandy in his hand, who was also watching the three girls. The father grabbed the hexagonal rod and twisted it to close the blinds. He turned back to the Internet and started clicking with renewed passion. "Close the door behind you, Ryan."

After his bath, his mother put him to bed. Ryan always liked to sleep with the nightlight on. It was a figurine shaped like the horseman which plugged into his wall socket, gilding the room with a soft golden glow. "Sweet dreams," his mother said before closing the door gently, leaving it a hair’s width open.

"Night night, Mommy." Soon after she left, the fly buzzed through the crack of his door and zigged-zagged its way to the nightlight. He sat up to watch it. The fly landed on the glowing horseman and was still for a few moments. Then it took off and batted itself against the wall which was giving off the same glow it received from the horseman. It worked its way along the wall until reaching the window right above Ryan’s headboard. He watched and listened to the frantic buzzing, reminded of when it was looking for a way through the sliding glass door. Across the hall his father was telling his mother to shut the door to his study. Suddenly afraid his mother was going to come back in and try to hurt the fly, he got up on his knees and, as quietly as he could, slid open the window as well as the screen behind it. It took a few moments for the fly to discover it, methodically working its way along the cool pane, but it finally found its freedom. It disappeared into the gloom outside, its body and its buzzing soon beyond his range of perceptions.

Ryan closed the window and lay down, a slight smile cracking his face. He looked at the horseman glowing against his wall and was glad that at least the fly was free.

Bit o' Lit

(Governor Tom's Note: On July 1 I read an article in the Washington Post about one of the best inventions I'd ever heard of. Called Bit o' Lit, it's a booklet of book excerpts distributed free of charge to D.C. Metro riders every other Monday. Its premiere issue came out the first Monday in May. What's the point, you might ask? Well for one, not a lot o' people read anymore. By letting you read excerpts of various books on the otherwise monotonous trek home, you can decide if you like anything you see, in which case you'll hopefully go out and buy the book. And then that'll snowball into your taking up reading as a new way to fill the time. If you're already a reader, then Bit o' Lit can "up your addiction," as Shannon MacDonald, the 25-year-old brain behind this ingenious idea, puts it. It was back in '04 when the idea zapped Sharon in the noodle while she was taking the Metro to her paralegal gig.

The way it works is, publishers fork over a per-page fee to have anywhere from four- to eight-page samples of their titles printed in each issue. Bit o' Lit also features articles on any and all things literary, whether it be how to make kids turn off the Wii and turn on the Boris Pasternak, or which book sites are worthy of adding to your Favorites. And there's also a regular feature called Lit to Flick, which spotlights recent films adapted from material previously published. Sharon's choices here, as with her book exerpts, are quite eclectic. In one issue she wrote about Iron Man (based on the comic book of course). In another, it was When Did You Last See Your Father? (from the memoir by English poet Blake Morrison). While naturally I've seen the former (you've seen Iron Man too....haven't you?), I should also admit here that I was fortunate enough to catch the latter just before Father's Day. I don't think I've ever dissolved into Niagara Falls so much in my life. And finally, each issue's got a game section called Word Wit.

Not only does Sharon get the credit for this awesome idea, but she gets props for getting all twenty....thousand!....issues to the Metro stops throughout our nation's capital. That makes me exhausted just thinking about it. After I read the Post article, I shot Sharon an e-mail praising her idea and saying that if and when she ever expands California way, I was just the bookworm to help her out. Are you kidding? I'd help peddle these things for nothing if it ups the literacy rate. I saw a poll last year that said something like 25% of adults didn't read a single book in 2006. And just yesterday I read in the L.A. Times that a full third (!) of L.A. Unified high school students dropped out in '07. Prozac now, please!

There's a book blog called Buzz, Balls & Hype, which posted a statement from Sharon on June 18 about what Bit o' Lit is all about. When I e-mailed her, I asked if I could reprint that statement on my blog, and she very kindly agreed. So without further ado...)

___________________________________________________

Bit o’ Lit is a booklet-sized magazine that is handed out for free to commuters in Washington, DC as they board the bus or train on Monday evenings. The booklet’s primary contents are fiction and non-fiction book excerpts, in addition to regular features.

Bit o’ Lit grew out of a several weeks of crankiness and a general boredom with Sudoku and crossword puzzles. And probably, though I don’t remember clearly, some very poor library choices during those weeks. Needless to say, I started complaining to my friends that it was absolutely ridiculous that no one properly advertised books on the Metro. There were posters advertising books on the Metro, but they really didn’t tell you anything about the book—just a grand bunch of fluff. If there was ever a time that a person would read anything, it was on the Metro. Excerpts. Publishers should include book excerpts on the Metro. That was my solution, and I yammered on about it for some years afterward.

Then, about two years later, I accosted a nice editor from Random House in his living room over the subject. I wanted to know if he thought publishers would be interested. He thought publishers would be too cheap. Well, in February 2007, I decided to find out. I began researching and planning Bit o’ Lit.

One of the most striking articles that influenced me was a report conducted by the Author’s Guild. The report had attempted to identify whether the number of books being published by midlist authors were increasing or decreasing. What they did find to their surprise was that major publishers were publishing more books—but marketing them less and less. These books by midlist authors were called “mid-list” books: good books that rarely left the shelves.

But based upon the statistics, why should publishers put more money into marketing these books? Out of eight books six would flop, one would break even, and the final of the eight might break big, making enough money to finance the rest of the titles.

The problem at its core was word-of-mouth. A good portion of the population only buys new books based upon referrals from friends. They do not read book reviews. They do not look at book websites, yet they make up a major portion of the market. (I fall into this market.) Thus, word of mouth is what sells mid-list books, and publishers seemingly had no control over it.

Another factor that surprised me was how little book publicity had to do with the actual book. Irony upon itself, we do not have a common language to talk about written language. A restaurant can sell food on menu because all humans have the same basic salty, sweet, sour, bitter palate. There is no such thing as a reading palate. What people like about a writing style depends on their reading speed, reading comprehension, interests, and life experiences—to start the list. A good book review might convey to readers that a book has promise, but readers have little way of knowing if the reviewer’s taste aligns with theirs.

I believed that Bit o’ Lit could overcome these challenges by:

1. Reaching the public en masse
2. Putting the writing first, in the form of an excerpt
3. Creating a local marketing campaign for books with author events

Bit o’ Lit is not intended to replace book reviews, author tours, or any of the awesome digital marketing that has arrived on the scene in the past few years. The point of Bit o’ Lit is to introduce books at the right time and in the proper space. I have little doubt that word of mouth will continue to reign supreme as the ephemeral and fickle determinant, but I would also like to think that Bit o’ Lit will provide some new introductions to the court of literature.

Shannon MacDonald

Publisher

Bit o' Lit

http://www.bit-o-lit.com/

Last Remaining Seats: Silent Comedy Classics

Tonight was the sixth and final screening of this year's Last Remaining Seats series from the L.A. Conservancy: Silent Comedy Classics.

Sponsored by Hugh Hefner.

Sorry. Had to give that line its own little paragraph. Each of these screenings has had different sponsors, and they saved Hef for last. Although I didn't see him, apparently he was out in the audience somewhere 'cause Conservancy head Linda Dishman gave him a shout-out.

Wait a minute. What happened to the fifth screening? If you've been keeping up, you'll've read about four screenings thus far: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Mildred Pierce, Goldfinger, and Young Frankenstein. Last Wednesday they screened a Spanish comedy from 1950 called El Rey del Barrio. Unfortunately I was so God damned sick from this Godzilla cold I caught in Reno that I simply wasn't up to going. Hopping on that crowded subway, going all the way downtown, sitting in a theater with 2,000 other people....I would've been misery on two legs. I'm still not a hundred percent just exactly, but I did go to the doctor's this morning to score some antibiotics. They're already making a difference. That Dr. Schneider, I tell ya. A friggin' miracle worker!

Anyway, back to tonight. So tonight's program was called Silent Comedy Classics. Yes, Classics plural. They had three lined up, two half-hour shorts, and then an hour-long feature. First you had Charlie Chaplin in Pay Day (1922), followed by Harold Lloyd in Get Out and Get Under (1920), and finally Buster Keaton in The Navigator (1924). The venue was the Orpheum, where they had Goldfinger three weeks ago. If you read that post, you'll remember that this is the venue with that huge ivory organ, the Mighty Wurlitzer, up in front of the stage where that feisty old cat Bob Mitchell was belting out the tunes before the show.

Tonight the organ wasn't just used for pre-show tunes, but for the three films' soundtracks. 'Member, these are silent films. Back in the day when silents were the thing, when they were simply referred to as the pictures because sound hadn't come along yet to create the whole silent distinction, many theaters typically had an organist up front or in the back to play a soundtrack composed specifically for whatever film was showing. As part of their effort to evoke the authentic experience, the fine folks at the Conservancy brought in an organist a bit younger than Bob Mitchell, someone who was more nimble and able to play the sucker for two plus hours solid. Chap's name was Israel, Robert Israel. So tonight Rob was playing the ivories before the show, but then he stayed there during the show to play the soundtracks. During the intermission between the two shorts and The Navigator, Rob actually took the time to explain to us that the organ wasn't as simple as it looked. It wasn't just a matter of taking enough piano lessons until you got all the keys straight, nor was it simply a matter of timing the playing with all the tomfoolery happening on the screen. Apparently this thing has quite the number of switches and buttons. For instance, the same key could play several different notes depending on which switches were in which positions. Mind you, this thing had two or three rows of keys to deal with. If you were standing on the other side of this thing from Rob, you'd barely be able to see him 'cause of how buried in this thing he was. There are so many rows of keys, knobs, and switches the poor sucker's gotta negotiate to get this thing to play what he wants to play. All that goes without mentioning the blasted pedals. During his spiel, Rob talked kinda fast and did a whole slew of demonstrations and whatnot. The man obviously knows his way around the Mighty Wurlitzer. I wonder how one learns that kind of thing. You've gotta figure this is a highly specialized career. And actually, if you look up Mr. Israel on IMDb, you'll see he's got quite the CV, which includes a ton of credits for updating the soundtracks to flicks from the silent era. He also did the music for an episode of 21 Jump Street for Pete's sake. Hey, if it pays the bills...

Before the show started, Linda thanked everyone for supporting the Last Remaining Seats program this year. 'Cause, ya know, every penny spent on these movie tickets goes toward the Conservancy's fund, which in turn goes toward helping to preserve and restore all these awesome old buildings in L.A. County. That's why I'm not exactly broken up over the twelve bucks I lost on El Rey del Barrio. It's for a great cause.

And then Linda brought out this guy called Markham, Steve Markham. Dude's in his eighties, but he was so together and with it that he could've easily passed for sixtysomething. Steve took the mic and had the stage to himself for a while. It wasn't the most stimulating lecture of all time, and yet at the same time it was kind of fascinating. Steve's forte, right? Is curtains. The spry old guy's all about the stage curtains. And so he took us through his personal history, how he sort of fell into the theater business as a youngster, and then came back to it in his twenties after WWII. He was telling us about how a lot of the material he found for his curtains came from discarded material in trash bins and whatnot. The curtain that the two thousand people at the Orpheum tonight had been looking at ever since we took our seats was one of the curtains that Steve made. Then that went up, and we got to look at another curtain, which Steve would talk about. This went on for about seven curtains. Perhaps the most fascinating anecdote had to do with the fourth or fifth curtain, which he said had been laying in a corner of the warehouse he used to work at for something like a decade. And then finally he got curious about that pile of cloth. He unfolded it, saw it would make an awesome curtain, and then set about restoring it. And it took him forever to restore. This particular curtain had sort of a tan color with various characters sown onto it, wearing garb that would've been more in style in a flick like Gone with the Wind. The characters looked kind of faded. In fact, had Steve not said anything, I would've guessed the curtain was suffering enough wear and tear to warrant restoration. But the way it was now was "brand new" relative to the state it was in when Steve pulled it out of the trash. Steve's done curtain work for a bunch of theaters in L.A., including the Orpheum back when it was still a vaudeville venue. This theater, in fact, was the fourth and last theater built as part of the Orpheum vaudeville circuit.

The only gripe I have about the pre-show entertainment is this weirdo named Maxwell DeMille. I don't know what his real name is. He's an actor who's one of many actors over the years to have played this fictional entertainer. He wore a 1920s-style suit and talked in that rapid-fire vaudevillian (vaude-villain?) kind of style. He was supposed to be funny. Perhaps part of the reason I never came close to laughing was 'cause my butt's being handed to me by the worst cold ever. But even if I was healthy, this guy still would've been annoying. He did all this banter with Linda, Steve, and Rob, and whenever they mentioned something that didn't exist in the 1920s (TV, movies with sound), this Maxwell guy would pretend to be all confused. "World War II? There was a second one?" Ugh!

Enough about the pre-show. What are these flicks about? And are they any good? In two words: Hell yeah. They each served as the perfect showcase for the comedian in the lead role. We're talking about three of the greatest comedians this planet's ever seen, and no mistake.

First, let's take Charlie Chaplin's Pay Day. Chuck plays this construction worker whose specialty is laying bricks (no, that's not a metaphor, I'm being literal). That's kind of hilarious right off the bat, right? Can you picture the chap as a laborer? I mean, the rest of the cats actually looked like construction workers, and then you had Charlie Chaplin looking like the Tramp. So right away you've got the visual absurdity that induces a chuckle before anything actually happens. The first ten or so minutes see Chuck trying to stay out of trouble with the foreman (Mack Swain). Not only does Chuck have punctuality issues, he also can't help sneaking a look at the foreman's hot daughter (Edna Purviance). By far the most hilarious part of this sequence is the lunch break. You've got the foreman sitting on the ground next to the makeshift wooden platform elevator, then you've got Chuck up on the next level with not much to eat, and someone else on the level above. So this little elevator goes up and up and down and down and up and down and so forth while Chuck takes advantage of this to take some of his boss's food before his boss has any idea what's going on. The comedy is all in the timing, which carries over to when the lunch break ends. The foreman tosses all these bricks up to Chuck who, facing the wall with his back to the foreman, catches these suckers from behind with both hands and both feet, laying each one as another gets tossed up to him. It's a brilliant sequence.

The reason Chuck didn't have any lunch is 'cause he can't afford it. He generally blows his cash on happy hour. Tonight is no exception. His wife (Phyllis Allen) is on to him, though. She snags his paycheck from the hiding place inside his little hat and sticks it in her purse. But then Chuck steals her purse and goes out and has a great time anyway. I could've sworn this bar he was at was somewhere in downtown L.A. I mean yeah, the area's changed, but not that much. The bar scene could've been filmed just blocks from where I was watching it tonight. The best part of this sequence was Chuck's getting home, or not getting home, as the case may be. This is back when downtown L.A. had a streetcar system. Chuck has a bitch of a time getting home 'cause all the streetcars are filled to capacity, and don't you know Chuck takes advantage of that crowd for more physical comedy, as he starts out in the back of a streetcar, gets squeezed into it, and then suddenly pops out of the crowd up front and off the streetcar. It's morning by the time he gets home. The poor schmo gets all of a minute of sleep or something before his wife wakes him up and confronts him with a rolling pin. Roll credits. Written and directed by Chuck. It was brilliantly simple, yet simply brilliant.

Okay. Now for the next short, Get Out and Get Under with Harold Lloyd. Directed by Hal Roach. First, a couple of a side notes. Both Hal and Harold were still a couple years shy of thirty when this flick premiered in September of '20. About a year earlier, Harold was in a horrible accident on the set of a flick where a prop bomb blew up and took off his right thumb and forefinger. So for this one, you'll notice he's wearing gloves pretty much the whole time. Apparently for the rest of his life Harold went to great pains to hide this deformity, getting flesh-colored gloves so that in black and white flicks it would look like his real hands and so forth. As for Hal Roach, after working with Harold, he never stopped looking to him as the paradigm for all the other comedians he directed. Indeed, many of Hal's later flicks were basically recyclings of the stuff he did early on with Harold. The title of this flick comes from a 1913 ditty called "He'd Have To Get Under - Get Out And Get Under (To Fix Up His Automobile)." In fact, Rob Israel, the Might Wurlitzer player I talked about above, sampled this song when he did a retooling of the soundtrack for this flick in 2004, which he used again tonight. Cool, eh?

Okay, now for the story. Like Pay Day, it's pretty simple, but deceptively so, right? Even though he was only twenty-seven at the time, Harold Lloyd was clearly a genius at the physical comedy. The gist of the premise is that Harold plays this guy who's supposed to take part in an amateur play at someone's house. When it starts out, he's overslept 'cause he's had a nightmare. The woman who's starring in the play with him (played by Mildred Davis, whom Harold would marry less than three years later) wakes him up when she calls and asks what the heck's taking him so long. And so we're off to the races. Harold hops into his Ford Model Tin Lizzie and speeds off. Sure enough, the car breaks down, and Harold has a comically horrible time getting the thing working again. Let the physical comedy ensue! At one point, in perhaps the most brilliant sequence in the film, Harold practically disappears into the guts of the car. You know that wasn't a special effect or anything. Amazing, really. Also of note is that he never would've made it to his gal's play if it weren't for this little black kid who helps get the car going again. This kid was played by Ernest "Sunshine Sammy" Morrison, who had a thriving acting career as a youngster. Thanks in large part to Hal Roach, dude starred in all kinds of stuff starting as an infant until he fought in WWII in his early thirties. When he came back from the war, Sunshine Sammy decided he'd had enough of acting and moved on to a career in the aircraft industry, where again he thrived until finally retiring altogether in his sixties.

Besides the play, Harold's gotta get there because otherwise he'll be replaced by his rival for Mildred's affection (Fred McPherson). I probably don't have to tell you that Harold does indeed make it to the play, but only just barely. In fact, in perhaps the second most brilliant sequence in the film, he sort of unwittingly stumbles into the action just as the curtain comes up. They really don't make 'em like they used to, ya know what I mean?

And now for The Navigator with Buster Keaton. Like Harold, he was still a bit shy of thirty when he made this, still relatively early in his career. Although, in terms of movie grosses, Buster never did a movie more successful than The Navigator. First, though, I simply have to tell you how Buster got the name Buster. His real name was Joe Jr. But what happened was, when Buster was a wee tot, he and his family were staying at a hotel with none other than Harry Houdini. At one point Buster slipped and fell all the way down the stairs, but got up amazingly unscathed. Harry reportedly looked at him and said, "Some buster!" And so the nickname stuck. Now what were the Keatons doing at a hotel with Harry Houdini, you might be wondering? Well, Buster's ma and pa were very successful stage comedians, and quite often they would work with Houdini, incorporating their comedy with his magic. Soon enough they all became pals.

Now here's what happens in the flick. Buster's this rich spoiled brat named...wait for it...Rollo. Don't ask. Anyway, Rollo's trying to woo this rich spoiled gal across the street named Betsy (Kathryn McGuire), whose attitude toward him is akin to arctic. Rollo books a trip to Hawaii aboard this huge ship which, unbeknownst to him, is completely deserted and has been earmarked to be set adrift and destroyed by these warring factions of old white guys. Betsy's dad John (Frederick Vroom, awesome name) owns this hunk of metal. One night, while visiting the dock, John is ambushed by thugs who kick the shit out of him. When Betty tries to lend a hand, she ends up stuck on the ship and can't get off before the thugs unmoor it. So now she and Rollo are stuck on this thing while it drifts off to God knows where.

The bulk of the flick is set on this ship with Rollo and Betsy executing all kinds of great physical comedy while they try to survive. They can't agree on anything: What to eat, when to eat, who sleeps where. At one point, while they're trying to sleep, a portrait of some intimidating guy slides back and forth in front of a hole next to Buster's bunk. It actually looks like a real person's out there watching him. Eventually they reach some island in the South Pacific which is inhabited by cannibals. Hilarity ensues! Rollo and Betsy somehow escape the island and get all the way back to the ship, but those cannibals are relentless. The stunts here are quite brilliant. Buster obviously found the most nimble cats he could to play the cannibal tribe. Just 'cause Rollo and Betsy make it back to the ship without being eaten doesn't mean they're safe. The cannibals then use ropes and makeshift ladders to swarm up to the deck. As a climax, it was perfect. Buster, who co-wrote and co-directed, saved the best comedy for the end. Finally those warring factions blow up the ship like they had originally planned. Rollo and Betsy float in the middle of the ocean with those cannibals in hot pursuit. A submarine arrives! It surfaces from directly underneath Rollo and Betsy, kind of like how Sean Connery was saved at the end of You Only Live Twice. A sailor opens the hatch and invites them in, closing it just as the cannibals arrive.

Interesting tidbit about the ship. Its real name was the S.S. Buford. Originally it was a passenger liner, and then during World War I it was used as a troop transport. After the war it gained notoriety when it was used to deport a couple hundred alleged Commies during what came to be known as the first Red Scare. By the time Buster was set to make The Navigator in '24, the U.S. government was all set to destroy the ship. Buster actually bought the thing from them with his own money. The picture was filmed mainly in Avalon Bay, that body of water separating Southern California from Catalina Island.

Whelp, that does it for the Silent Comedy Classics. I'm not sure they could've picked three better ones if they tried. This was quite a treat, and a great way to end what's been a terrific series of old flicks in these awesome and gorgeous old theaters. I can't wait till next year. What would be really cool is if they could maybe finish restoring one more of the dozen or so old movie palaces along that stretch of Broadway, so that we'll have four awesome venues to use next year. Lord knows they might have the funds now. All six shows sold out this year, which means they sold north of twelve...thousand!...tickets. At $15 per ticket ($12 for Conservancy members), you do the math.

And now for the photos. The first couple are of the Library Bar. As has been my wont during this series, I arrived downtown early enough to grab a bite and a beer (or two) at one of the innumerable cool hangouts in that area. The Library Bar's tap selection should be in the Tap Hall of Fame.