When I was in the progress of creating my first Underground Chambers series of podcasts, I felt as though it would not be complete until I had performed the music I created from my recordings of street musicians, on the street, thus returning the music they gave me, subjected to my alteration , back to the city.

So in March or April sometime I was contacted by the Make Music New York festival to perform on the street, and I felt this was my perfect opportunity to give my Underground Chambers recordings their proper bookend. It was around this time that my wife, Suzanne had received her acceptance and fellowship to the University of Texas at Austin, therefore we would be moving to Austin, Texas before the fall.

I had a difficult time figuring out where to play, my first idea was one of the few locations musicians could not play. Finally as it got down to the wire a friend suggested the Brooklyn Bridge and it was a go. Until the day before, when MMNY called me and said the NYPD told them that if anyone performed on the bridge the'd shut the whole thing down, in spite of not seeming to have a problem with it before. I decided that I'd perform right by the entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge on the Manhattan side.

Now, the night of the show, around 6:30 pm, as the time approached, the clouds gathered and suddenly grayed, and I am not about to do a laptop performance in the rain. It poured. But almost as quickly the rain stopped and the sun came out. I got down there, parked, set up, moved a couple times until I found the right spot, and got ready to play. I begin my set, people are turning there heads, I get some pretty encouraging shouts, the kid in the picture above thought there were fireworks somewhere, things are rolling. However around ten minutes into my planned thirty minute set, I see a drop of rain on the screen of the laptop. A few minutes later, Sue and I are under a tree as it poured again.

On our drive home, completely soaked I told Sue that I started thinking of playing this street performance as my way of saying good bye to the city, (I know it's corny but, cut me some slack, I am rarely sentimental) and the experience I had was just like my entire eight years in New York in a nutshell, it took a long time to get there, there was confusion involved, it took forever to find a parking spot, I had to fight to find an outlet for my creativity, got some encouragement, got stuck in the rain and it was all over way too quickly. So this week's podcast
The Bronx Is Boogie and The Battery Is Down is the full set I planned, recorded the next day at my apartment.

El Plan De Aguavodka continues his run of psyched out tours odd spaces with Apocalypse At Lord and Taylor's and what's more odd than a Lord and Taylor's. Another in a series of bad trips.

The podcasts are going to take a break until August 6th, while I am in the progress of moving to Texas. I'll still be updating the blog with info on the looming release of Marco Oppedisano's CD.

Now available Little Ricky's House of Chankletas' 27 New York Anti-Sonnets. The OKSRNA debut of this exciting band of ridiculously creative individuals blazes with a quick wit, musical intensity, melting improvised jazz, operatic vocals, base room electronics experiments, processed vocals, and hardcore punk outbursts. It calls to mind the experiments of the Los Angeles Free Music Society if of course all of those bands were playing at the same time.

Download "The Lobster Waltz"

Order your copy from CD Baby now



Take care and stay tuned for release updates, podcasts will return in August.