Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    <scribbled by dfowlkes Tue 3 Jul 12 10:14>
  

    
Love that story about your officemate. I, too, take that as a
compliment. Strange what pull B's rap still has. Maybe you should lend
him the CD. And yes, it seems as though a Buckley gestalt is slowly
descending on the culcha. I hope so. And if I'm not being too
presumptuos, what kind of work do you do? Can never resist finding out
more about the constituency.
  

    

Dan Guy, one word:  headphones!
  

    

For those of you waiting for your books to arrive, or if you need a nudge
toward buying one, click this link to read a few sample chapters from the
book:

http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/buckley/
  

    
     I was digging the CD again last night that accompanies your book,
Oliver.  Robin Williams is the contemporary who comes to mind most
often while listening to Buckley.  Both of them change voices,
tonalities, and mood constantly, even shifting from farce to pathos in
an instant.  
     I'm going to shamelessly plug the book, but it's truly an
impressive achievement.  It's densely packed with information -- no
fly-by-night quickie it be -- with the smart construct of 1) first
person oral history and opinion, 2) Lord Buckley himself, including,
most crucially, his routines, 3)the author's histoscribing that links
it all together.  And then the reader gets a CD of quintessential
Buckley to boot.  It's one of the finest biographies ever writ, and as
I've told you, I've read thousands of 'em.  
      Now that I've fluffed your nutter and hopefully moved a few
copies, perhaps the most touching section is the recounting of
Buckley's death.  America executes nonconformists without necessarily
or literally strapping them into a gurney or tying a noose around their
necks.  Can you explain the circumstances of Buckley's death and
express any personal opinion about how he actually died?  
  

    
     The book has the potential to be made into a classic flick. It's
a natural, one man, tour de force for almost any great actor.  I was
thinking Robin Williams and, of course, he is a distinct presence in
your book.  What were your impressions of Williams?  When he's 'on',
there are few contemporary comedians who skirt the edge of madness the
way Williams does.
     A moie based on "Dig Infinty" would also be a helluva truly witty
comedy.  Those are rare these days.  
     Do you have plans for turning "Dig Infinity!" into a film.  It's
clearly the most comprehensive bio and source material on Lord Buckley.
 Anyone who wished to make a film on Buckley would have to go to you. 
Any ideas on who could play His Lordship?  And just out of curiosity,
do any of our audience members have suggestions as to what actor would
make a perfect Lord Buckley and WHY?
  

    
Thanks again for your gracious compliments. Sometimes hard, thoughtful
work does pay off. And, the accompanying CD is really the necessary
icing on the cake. Part of my thinking with the CD was to present as
wide a portrait of the man and his craft as possible. ANd his banter
with Studs really shows that there was no mask he standing behind: he
had truly become LORD buckley. That's one of the reasons it's a little
light on the classics but varied in its choice of other, in my opinion
equally as great, material. You should hear the uncut Buckley/Terkel
tape: there are killer versions of "The Raven" and the rare, unreleased
"Swingin' Pied-Piper."

Yes, Robin Williams certainly comes to mind as perhaps the most
high-profile Buckley artistic descendent. I'm told he even quotes His
Lordship's "People" at his live show. But certainly, his free-flowing
stream-of-consciousness riffs really challenge the listener to stay on
his helium-powered psychic roller coaster and quickly connect the dots
and associations of his mind-blowing/bending verbal excursions. And he
would make a great Lord Buckley should a movie ever become a reality.
Gene Hackman, John Goodman, Nick Nolte, Tommy Lee Jones, Peter Boyle,
Anthony Hopkins, and Kevin Kline are others that have come to mind when
the subject of who would/could play Buckley arises. I think in terms
of the strengths these greats of the screen would bring to the role and
each on each one of them, if given the opportunity, would be really
intresting to see play with the man and his matter.

Robin, as you noted, was a great interview. It's funny...when I was
interviewing him I kept thinking to myself that he was giving me
nothing shtick. Entertaining as hell but shtick nonetheless. However,
when I came to transcribing the interview I realized just the opposite:
here was a thoughtful, insightful lover of Lord Buckley with really
salient (and funny) impressions of the many layers of Lord B.

In re: the Buckley film: I have been developing a screenplay with
Michael Monteleone, lordbuckley.com webmaster who has also been working
on a fine video documentary of LB's life & art, for a number of years
now. It's rendered as a road movie with flashbacks taking place in the
last weeks of Buckley's life with visits to each primary epoch (the
dance marathons, vaudeville, bebop & the beats) in his ever-lovin'
passage on this plane and includes roles of Al Capone, Bird, and, most
significantly, Ed Sullivan. Think "The Many Lives of Isadora" meets "My
Favorite Year" to put in La-La Land pitch terms to give some idea of
the aesthetic we were aiming at. Although witty and comic, I would
describe it more as a tragic hero's journey rather than some zane-fest
about a wild and crazy guy. Don't forget, Lord Buckley does die at the
end.

And, while on the subject of Buckley's death, allow me to briefly
summarize. After Prohibiton, the NYPD instituted what became known as
the cabaret card statutes as a means of keeping the mob out of the
nightclub biz. The basic deal was this: if a nightclub employee had any
kind of police record (even an arrest without a conviction), it could
be used a means to deny he/she a cabaret card to work in the clubs.
While well-intentioned, the laws eventually devolved into an
institutionalized shake-down operation in which the vice squad could
routinely line their wallets. Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Billie
Holliday, and Buckley were the more well-known individuals to suffer at
the hands of the law's vague provisions but most of the victims were
nameless waiters, dishwashers, busboys, hat-check girls and the like.

Buckley blew into NYC in October 1960 to begin a gig at the Jazz
Gallery on St. Marks Place. While not a commercial smash, his act began
to attract a following. But after a couple of weeks, the vice squad
got wind of his police record (minor busts from nearly 20 years before)
and used this to confiscate his card and deny him work.

Doc Humes (who I mention earlier) was his manager and got a bit in his
teeth over the problem. A seriosuly well-connected cat, Doc pressed
the matter, pushed for public hearing re: the vice squad's shady m.o.
This was major front page news at the time in all the city's dailies
and even garnered a spread in Life mag after B's death. Anyway, at the
height of the flap, Buckley died of what was alterntley reported as a
heart attack, stroke, uremic poisoning or natural causes. But there are
many other conflicting and bizarre stories about his last days. Some
say he poisoned after a jewel heist or counterfeiting scheme went
south, others say he was beat up by cops or black militants and died
from internal injuries. Perhaps, as one friend suggested, "Lord Buckley
was so heavy Jake, he just FELL off the planet." I dunno. Though I
often tend towards conspiracy theory in my normal life (you gotta hear
my 9/11 rant some time), I tend to think that there was no foul play
directly linked to his death. There is eveidence that he suffered some
kind of stroke in Chicago a few weeks before he got to NYC and when
combined with the anxiety and stress of the cabaret card revocation and
probable on-going police harrassment (and the fact that he was once
again falling off the wagon while not being able to afford to pay for a
proper diet) all resulted in his death on 11/12/60. Also don't forget
that this was a guy who almost always seemed to have cigarette burnt
down to a nub in his paws.

The cabaret card laws were eventually rescinded, it appears, as a
direct result of his circumstance. Really, it's all way more convoluted
than that but I think gives some kind of accessible thum-nail graps of
the matter.

This is my bottom line re: the circumstances of Buckley's death. As a
biographer I tried to dot all the Is and cross all the Ts. I truly
wanted to get down to the bottom of "what REALLY happened." The
storyteller in me, however, likes it left a little vague. It makes it
all so much more...mythic.
  

    

HBO is running a special tonight, Robin Williams Live on Broadway.  It's
on at 9PM.  Live in New York, so I guess we Left Coasters will have to
settle for delayed broadcast.  Wonder if he will be including any of the
material you mentioned, Oliver.
  

    
I saw the ad on a bus stop billboard this afternoon on 7th Ave. but I
don't get cable...56 channels and nothing on if you know what I mean.
Perhaps he'll a nod to the Lord. It couldn't hurt.
  

    

I watched and laughed myself senseless.  What he did was all pretty 
topical, but this is my first intro to the Lord, so...I don't know.
  

    
E-mail from Michael Monteleone:

As Oliver mentioned, I'm working on a documentary film about Lord 
Buckley (titled "Too Hip For the Room".) One of our interviews for 
the film was with Robin Williams. It was a lovely session. He was 
very present and his great love and respect for His Lordship was much 
in evidence. Four or five times during the interview he dropped into 
a Buckley like voice and it was extraordinary. Williams is a very 
accomplished mimic and his ability to produce the timbre and rhythm's 
of Lord Buckley's speech really gave me goosebumps. The voice was 
hip, seductive, jazzy, almost overpowering and charged with a quality 
that was simultaneously elegant and hilarious. It gave me just a hint 
of what it must have been like to have been in the audience at one of 
Buckley's performances. There is something about being in a room with 
a powerful orator that really flips one's meter. So, long story 
short, if Lord Buckley goes Hollywood big time I vote for Robin 
Williams. Second choice: John Cleese (he's tall, he's got great vocal 
range, and he's got the same energy as Lord Buckley.)


thanks,


Michael Monteleone
  

    
     Thinking and talking and writing about Lord Buckley has also
caused me to think about free spirits, free thinkers, and artists.
     The mark of a true, no-shit, original is someone who synthesizes
myriad -- often disparate -- influences with a strong personality.  The
problem with most humans is they think in boxes.  The entertainment
industry thinks in boxes.  To make up an example, a common phrase heard
out here in Hollywood is "We need a Janeane Garofalo type.  Get me a
Janeane Garofalo type."  Well, why not get Janeane Garofalo?
     The LA Weekly, who I write for, recently ran a tri-section cover
story piece about the lack of originality in rock criticism.  One
section profiled Richard Meltzer, another Paul Williams, as examples of
rock scribes who by breaking rules created singular forms of
practicing music criticism.  For those who are unfamiliar, both Meltzer
and Williams, while completely different types, are both early
maverick rock critics.  Both have also gone beyond music and written
fiction, poetry, etc.  But I found it galling that the Weekly was
bemoaning the lack of originality in music critcism when I've never
seen Meltzer's or Williams' by-line in that newspaper.  I've lost count
how many times I've been told to "tone it down" in The Weekly (not
usually the music dept.) because I was being too weird for the delicate
sensibilities of the bourgeois readership.
      "What does this have to do with Lord Buckley?", you may ask. 
"How the fuck do I know?", I answer.  All I know is that the real genii
don't do what everybody else does and that's what seperates the golden
wheat from the everyday chaff.  Lord Buckley is Lord Buckley and not
Joey Bishop because there's only one Lord Buckley and there's thousands
of third-rate joke tellers working comedy clubs or Vegas.  Lenny Bruce
used to say, "I'm not a comedian, I'm Lenny Bruce."  "Comedy" is a
box, and Lenny was more than a walking joke book and so was His
Lordship.
     The lesson we learn from Lord Buckley is when you find a rule in
whatever art form you're working in, either ignore it or smash it into
smithereens.  If someone says "You can't do that", the answer is "No,
YOU can't do that, I can do whatever I want." Most of the time,
however, true originals are simply INCAPABLE OF BEING TRITE. The road
will certainly be rockier if you ignore the rules, but a real artist
gets used to the bumps.  Sometimes it kills them young like Buckley or
Bruce.  And it's very sad.  But thank you Lord Buckley.  Thank you
Lenny Bruce.  Thank you Jim Morrison.  Thank you Jerry Garcia.  Thank
you Maya Deren.  Thank you John Coltrane.  Thank you Diane Varsi. 
Thank you [insert name of favorite maverick].
     Any thoughts, Oliver?     
    
   
  

    
To Michael M: I'm sure you'll agree that our main day, king-sized
buddycat Tom Calagna is not only an A-list Buckley channeler, but can
take you one a verbal journey off-stage that would rival Svengali. If
Lord Buckley goes Indy Film small-time, I vote for Tom.

To Michael S: Perhaps when they say "I want a Janeane Garofalo type"
it's because they want someone cheaper or because they fear that the
audience won't be able to see the character through the actor. That's
probably the only reason why, if I was producing a Buckley film, I
might shy away from Robin W as Lord B: that he's too close to the genre
of stand-up himself to make to leap believable. And it may be why
Robin might himself shy away from the role, that it wouldn't be
considered enough of a stretch or that he was falling into the trap
Billy Crystal or Richard Pryor did when they made films of their roots:
"Mr. Saturday Night" and "This Is Your Life, Jo Jo Dancer."

And yes, Lord B could never be put into a box. Really, I hardly ever
even describe him as a comic. More like visionary storyteller. I think
using the word "comic" sets up certain expectations that are just not
there. Describe him as a comic and the uninitiated is waiting for the
punchline that never comes. I think of almost like quantum physics
where if you set up an experiment to find the wave, you'll find the
wave. If you set up the experiment to find the particle you'll find the
particle. With Buckley, if you listen for the comic you will hear it.
But if you listen for the sage philopsopher you will hear the sage
philosopher. If you listen for the post-modernist storytelley you'll
hear that. If you listen for the holy fool jazzster goofball, you'll
hear that. Me? I can usually hear them all simultaneously but that took
years of work. Perhaps "Meta-comic" works best.

And yeah, guys like him often do die young but others, like Moondog or
Sun Ra, managed to make it last. The world can be a dangerous place
for those who step off the grid. And while we're at it, thank you Bird!
Thank you Clifford Brown! Thank you Eric Dolphy! Thank you Hart Crane!
Thank you Richard Farina!
  

    <scribbled by dfowlkes Tue 3 Jul 12 10:14>
  

    
I would never call Lord Buckley a comic. He was a living freedom jazz dance.
  

    
Beautiful thought, dear prince. How about cosmic folkster?
  

    

The enthusiastic listener to NPR that I heard quoted on Morning Edition
this morning enthusing about your book and its subject, set me to looking
for the story about your book that was done on July 1, 2002.

I just discovered that it's available online at NPR, but because it's 
audio, I can't give you the exact URL.  Just go to www.nrp.org and do a 
search for Lord Buckley and it comes right up.
  

    
E-mail from Wayne McGinnis:

Oliver,  
        The fabulous & legendary- in- his- own- right jazz musician Bob
Dorough is still around & at least once gigged with The Lord
in L.A., I believe.
  
        Do you know anything about their relationship [I see Bob is not in
the  Index to your truly momentous book (!), however]? 
        
         If not, would you like to know the little tid-bit I think--think--I
can supply?

As Michael Monteleone says, 

Yours in the Lord, 

Wayne McGinnis
  

    
The name Bob Dorough is familiar but I can't remember if I ever tried
to track it down.

So, Wayne, lay it on us right and tight from the alleys and the
valleys, on the plains and the mesas with your little bit o' tid. If
you're uncomfortable about floating it for public consumption, feel
free to email me private-like.

Also, any of your own impressions of Lord B are most welcome. Like
Bird said, "Now's The Time."
  

    
     In addition to a hipster resume the size of a telephone book, Bob
Dorough produced "Good Taste Is Timeless", the 1971 album by
super-freaky psychedelic folkies the Holy Modal Rounders, whom I just
scribed a tribute to in the forthcoming issue of Crawdaddy magazine. 
Six degrees of seperation and further proof of my maxim that "There are
only eleven truly hip people on the planet at any given time." 
     I was pondering ways to push this cyberchat into different
realms.  Howzabout we get a psychic online and see if we can get His
Lordship hisself in on the gumflapping? 
     If there is a heaven, it'd be interesting to know which
historical figures Buckley is hanging with.  Oliver, what's the
scenario in your imagination?  Buckley and funny guy Jonathan Swift and
that troublemaker Galileo and of course the libertine De Sade  whom
His Lordship riffed on.  And the dames!  If there is a heaven and it's
as heavenly as its name suggests, he must be one happy hipster. 
  

    
I know a guy who channels Buckley. Let me email him and see if he can
do it online?

Lord Buckley in Heaven? What a thought. Personally, I think he's still
in Limbo. "Hey! Bring that boat ovah here! This River Styx don't seem
so sticky! C'mon Lord, let's knock those little ol' TRANS-gressions off
the rap sheets and let me slide on by. Why I can see Cleopatra and
Clara Bow just ovah there peelin' me my grapes for lunch. Oooooo-weeee
I can taste 'em now. Whatta ya say? Can I cross the river today? Damn
man, you sure is one hard-to-pleasy soily cat."
  

    <hidden>
  

    
     I'm sorry to quote Terence McKenna again in a forum reserved for
Lord Buckley, but as different as they were, they also swung in the
same infinite universe -- which we all do but very few are aware of it.
 In an essay entitled "Psychedelic Society", Terence wrote: A
psychedelic society would abandon belief systems for direct
experience...We must transcend the historical moment and become
exemplars of humanity at the End of Time."  
     It seems to me that His Lordship had arrived at a similar
conclusion.  He existed in past, present and future simultaneously. 
Past by his fascination and usage of history and literature, Present in
that he lived -- like any hipster -- in the moment, and the Future in
that he was a prototype for The Ultimate Human, beyond ideology and
square convention.
     So Buckley -- again like all great hipsters -- serves as a model.
 If more people aspired to transcend normalcy, roadblocks to bliss
such as religious war (to use a common topical example) would be less
frequent for so would organized religion.  As I stated in an earlier
post -- Buckley's lesson is "think for yourself".  
     Has it occurred to you, Oliver, that your mission in spreading
the Gospel of Lord Buckley has weighty potentialities?       
  

    

In hidden response #47, <gerry> asks that explain the steps I took to find
the story about Oliver's book that was broadcast on Morning Edition.

So, here goes:

I went to www.npr.org.  At the very top of the page is a box that says 
Enter Keywords, and to the right of that box is a button that says 
"search."

I entered "Lord Buckley" without the quotes in that box, and clicked 
Search, which resulted in three links.  The first two appear to be 
identical, and are links to the audio broadcast of July 1, 2002 of Morning 
Edition, which is presumably when the story aired.

The third is to a page about a show called Jazz Set, which says that on 
August 22, it will broadcast:

"Kurt Elling in Washington 
With the three-horn section from his CD Flirting With Twilight, Kurt 
Elling sings his own tunes, as well as those of Stephen Sondheim, Lord 
Buckley, and Jon Hendricks. Pianist Laurence Hobgood is the musical 
director. From the Louis Armstrong Legacy Concerts at the Kennedy Center. 
(Written and produced by Mark Schramm)." 
  

    
I can go a few ways with this. Sure, the gonzo existentalist in me
yearns for a more in-the-moment, spontaneous, creative life of
potential and revelation. I've even lived that life for brief stretches
back when I was living with Doc Humes or hitchiking and hopping
freight trains to Alaska or New Foundland and back or when I got on the
bus with the Grateful Dead traveling to shows far and wide. But then
reality in the form of survivng and you know, like getting a job,
kicked in. It seems like that employment is about the surest way to
asccomplish the task of feeding and sheltering oneself. It occurs to me
that the psychdelic society McKenna speaks of, while well-intentioned,
has been used by a cop-out by others.

Isn't it kind of cop-out rap for the semi-privileged? Most people
(myself included) are way too busy just swinging some Muscatel on table
or slapping a patch on junior's pants to really consider this utopian
path too seriously.

Not to sound too square, but those I know who still tread the tail of
that tiger seem kind of lame, not only forever spinning their wheels in
a quest for instant karmic bliss, but letting down the people who love
them in as well. And you know something, despite Buckley's artistic
accomplishments and unusual life, the path he chose to walk was a
dangerous one and probably hastened his premature death. And yes, while
we can admire and romanticize the troubadour in him that spread the
truth from town to town living by his wits in the pure flash of hipster
moment, he also burned alot of people who were not pleased that he had
run out on a hotel bill or worse. Again, as his biographer, I have to
look at some his exploits with a janudiced eye.

I guess some of my tude this morning comes from a kind of "chance<?>"
meeting I had last night with Lee Hambro, a well-known pianist and
educator (he toured with Victor Borge for many years and is a friend of
a neighbor here in Brooklyn). While a friend and admirer of Buckley's,
some of Lee's stories were not so pleasant, portraying a kind of
maniacal, not-so-charming operator who didn't really give a shit where
the chips fell. None of this was exactly new news and it brought back
to me one of the reasons I got drawn into the Lord B vortex in first
place...that there was a vital yin/yang mojo working itself out both in
his life and art. That he could be, on some level, all the characters
in his routines and carry all the impulses percolating in his material.
For every Nazz there is a de Sade, for every Hip Gahn there is a
murder, for every Gasser a Nero. And while all of this makes for a
fasicinating and compelling biographical subject (and I think a good
read), it doesn't exactly hold up as a paradigm of a virtuous life.

Yet, for me, the light in Buckley's life and art and the possibilities
for redemption and rethinking of how we actually do business as
humans, still seems to mightily outweight his dark spots by some great
measure.

I was thinking about the synchronicities implied by T McKenna's work
that we discussed earlier and how often that not only has long-factored
into my worldview and experience but impacted my Lord B research
journey as well. Needless to say, I made many connections with people
and archival material in the most unusal ways.

My favorite, and one that I tell quite often, concerns how maverick
flutist Robert Dick wound up contributing to "Dig Infinity!" About
seven years ago, I changed my daily cycle so that instead of writing
after my son went to bed at nine and working till midnight or whenever
(a real burnout!), I figured if I can't beat 'em, I'd join 'em. So I
began crashing at nine and waking usually about 4am and working till 7
when the family rose. I always wanted to be an early early morning
person anyway and it has proved to be a change that has resulted in
greater focus and productivity over the years. Anyway, maybe the second
or third day into the new regime, I was up and pecking away at the
keyboard, listening to the radio (the probably soon-to-be-lost WKCR
Columbia U station) and enjoying the light of a spring morning washing
into my home office. A beautiful, exotic piece of music came spilling
forth from the speakers and I made a point to catch the title and
artist's name when it was finished. When it did, the DJ announced that
it was "Robert Dick and his composition 'A Black Lake With a Blue
Boat.'" "A Black Lake With a Blue Boat"....I kept repeating ot myself,
"A Black Lake With a Blue Boat"...I knew I knew that phrase from
somewhere but where? Suddenly it occured to me: "THAT'S BUCKLEY!!" And
it was. A line from his "Bad-Rapping of the Marquis de Sade." So I call
the radio station, get all the info, the name of record company etc.
Later that day I write a letter to Dick caro of the record company.
Weeks go by, a couple of months...then, one day, out of the wild blue
yonder, I get a three-page fax from Dick explaining his fasicing with
Lord B and describing a cycle of Buckley related/inspired pieces he'd
composed. Turned out he was a huge baseball fan as well so we became
friends and hang out when he visits NYC...saw David Welles strike out
17 Oakland A's (incl. Mark Maguire in last game as as Atheltic) one
afternoon back in '97. I hooked him with Michael Montelone who worked
up a website for him and even shot an instructional flute video with
him. So, out of this "chance<?>" radio experience many years ago, a
whole vein of connectivity developed.

Like "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" sez: "Synchronicity Spoken
Here." Really, I got a million of 'em....