Comics Love Kamala 2 THIS SATURDAY (10/12) at 9pm at Pangea

If you're a regular reader this blog, you may know that I'm also a comedian. In fact, I've been producing a monthly stand-up comedy show called Eat Drink Laugh at Pangea in the East Village of New York City for two-and-a-half years.

This Saturday, October 12 at 9pm, I'm hosting a very special stand-up comedy benefit for Kamala Harris. Tickets are $10 in advance ($15 at the door) plus a $20 minimum. Advance tickets are available here: https://cur8.com/23871/project/125486

I hope you'll join me and this great lineup of comedians.

Paul

Yacht Rock Revue at Pier 17

At a certain point, the music alternately known as “adult contemporary” or “easy listening” got rebranded, for some inexplicable reason, as “yacht rock.” I discovered this by accident as I was watching PBS one evening and saw a concert by Yacht Rock Revue, a band that mainly covers songs from the late ’70s and early ’80s. I was impressed by their ability to replicate the musical and vocal arrangements of some of my favorite songs and there was a certain kitschy charm to their Huk-a-Poo shirts, hip-hugger bell bottoms and aviator sunglasses.

When I saw them perform tonight at Pier 17, Nicholas Niespodziani, one of their singers, had a cold, which is unfortunate because he has a good voice and sang most of the songs in the PBS concert. Luckily, they have several other singers (most notably Peter Olson) who were able to fill in.

I don’t know if they have a deep repertoire for emergencies like this or they had to rejigger their set list at the last minute, but there were still a few songs I recognized from their PBS show. One stand-out was Sade’s “Smooth Operator.” Kourtney Jackson does great justice to Sade’s vocals and the saxophone player, David B. Freeman, nailed the sax part. Freeman was also featured on another showstopper, Gerry Rafferty’s “Baker Street.” The even performed ELO’s “Don’t Bring Me Down,” which was great since I missed ELO when they played at Madison Square Garden this week. (I suppose “yacht rock” is a loose organizing principal. Some of their songs might qualify as “classic rock.”)

Yacht Rock Revue may be the world’s best cover band. They do have a few original songs but, as they say, just play the hits—or, in this case, other people’s hits.

A Gap Salesperson Explains Global Trade to Me

I just had a very detailed discussion about tariffs, global trade, the economy and America vs. China with a salesperson at the Gap!

It all started when I wanted to buy a belt.

When I walked into the Gap store on Fifth Avenue in the Flatiron District, the salesperson explained that they didn’t have very many belts and they wouldn’t be getting any more in until November. He said I could go to the Gap flagship store in Times Square and, furthermore, they were converting the Flatiron location into a “Gap Factory” store. (It sounds like an outlet store but it basically just means they’d be selling cheaper merchandise.) I explained to him that I was a longtime Gap customer, but that recently I found that their prices had gone up while their quality had gone down and that’s why I now shopped at Men’s Wearhouse. (I’m also no longer a teenager.)

The salesperson went on to say that that was the trend in the clothing industry in general: more merchandise at cheaper quality. (Think Shein and Temu.)

I told him that there was a story in the New York Times that day about how President Biden was imposing more tariffs on China, which was surprising to me because I had just tweeted that those costs are passed on to the American consumer after the last presidential debate. A recent story on the PBS News Hour said that tariffs don’t really work because not that many jobs are saved and prices still go up.

The salesperson compared what’s happening in the clothing industry to what was happening in the auto industry. He said that in the future we’d all have to buy electric cars and unless we imposed tariffs on China, they’d take over the auto industry (as they’ve already done with the clothing industry). Furthermore, he went on to compare both these industries to the real estate industry, which he claimed China was also taking over, and that ultimately the goal was to make the dollar obsolete because China only wanted to trade in gold. (He emphasized that it was the Chinese government that was at fault, not the Chinese people.)

I’m not an economist, but a lot of what he said made sense to me.

All I know is that if I want to buy a belt, I now have to go to Times Square.

UPDATE: Success! (See photo above.) 

Querelle, Music in the Films of Luca Gaudagnino

Last night I saw Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1982 film adaptation of Jean Genet’s novel Querelle at Anthology Film Archives in the East Village. I saw it when it came out, but I had hardly any recollection of it, aside from Jeanne Moreau singing “Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves.” Not only does it still hold up, but it’s quite shocking even by (or especially by) today’s standards. It’s basically a Tom of Finland drawing come to life. I think it might be the most erotic film I’ve ever seen, even though there’s no explicit sex or nudity.

The night before, while I was channel surfing, I happened to catch Luca Guadagnino’s A Bigger Splash on cable, which I had also seen in theaters when it was originally released in 2015. I was particularly struck by a scene where Ralph Fiennes starts dancing to the Rolling Stones’ “Emotional Rescue.” The only words I can use to describe it are pure, unbridled joy.

I’ve always found music criticism to be lacking. How can you convey in words what a song is like? You have to hear it (and, in this case, see it). So here it is:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=623d9vZqF-4

I also remembered music playing a pivotal role in another of Guadagnino’s movies, Call Me By Your Name. In this instance, it’s Armie Hammer’s character dancing to the Psychedelic Furs’ “Love My Way.” Again, the feeling is pure, unbridled joy.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Aq_e88Gp8Bs

On a side note, when I went to see the Psychedelic Furs (twice) last year, it really pissed me off that they replaced the xylophone part in this song with a keyboard. So here it is as it was originally recorded:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LGD9i718kBU

Stray Cats at Pier 17

I remember the first time I saw the first Stray Cats (UK) album at Bleecker Bob’s. (It was an import; they were still relatively unknown in the United States.) It was one of the only times I bought an album just because of its cover. (Remember albums? Remember cover art?)

In the middle of the new wave ’80s, with its synthesizer “hair bands,” these guys carved their own musical path, doing rockabilly, a style that harked back to the ’50s. With his pouty good looks and pompadour to die for, lead vocalist/guitarist Brian Setzer was a natural for the then-nascent MTV. No one was more surprised than I was when they became a hit in America. What was even more shocking was that these guys from Long Island (my hometown!) had gone to London to make a name for themselves. And yet it made perfect sense that these hyper-stylish guys would go to hyper-style conscious England, where it was easier to get a hit record than the US.

They came out of the gate with a number of strong songs: “Stray Cat Strut,” “Rock This Town,” “Runaway Boys” and “Rumble in Brighton” (from their first US album, Built for Speed), as well as “(She’s) Sexy + 17” (from their second US album, Rant n’ Rave with the Stray Cats). Then they basically disappeared. (Anyone remember the Brian Setzer Orchestra?)

But tonight at Pier 17 in New York City, they came roaring back to life, musicianship fully in tow (and they all still have their fabulous hair, damn it!). It’s amazing how much sound these guys get from just a guitar, bass and drums. (Drummer Slim Jim Phantom doesn’t even use a full drum kit, just a snare and cymbal!)

So Setzer and bassist Lee Rocker (who traded a “Long Island, NY” baseball jacket), along with Phantom (who wore a “Massapequa” T-shirt) brought it all back home.

The Village! A Disco Daydream

I felt very un-A List Gay when I entered the Soho Playhouse, but I was eventually won over by Nora Burns’s new show, The Village! A Disco Daydream (and that’s saying something for a curmudgeon like myself).

While I may be a little biased (she once lived in my building), Burns has been paying her dues for years in comedy troupes like Unitard, The Nellie Olesons and Planet Q and is finally getting the recognition she deserves (including a review in The New Yorker!).

And while I didn’t quite catch the end of the disco era in New York City (although I did own a copy of the album A Night at Studio 54) and I was decidedly more East Village than West Village, there were many moments of recognition for me (and history lessons for the kids).

The show tells the story of a hustler named Trade (Antony Cherrie) who lives in the West Village with his sugar daddy (Chuck Blasius) in 1979 and meets a young NYU student (Drew Timberlake Hill) and falls in love. Narrated by “trans-queen” Glace Chase, the show also features “gender fluid” Eileen Dover, a fag hag (Ashley Chavonne), a delivery man (Kevin Boseman) who embodies certain porn movie cliches, and three go-go dancers (Jack Barrow, Chris Patterson Rosso and JMV). (Burns certainly knows her gay stereotypes!) Burns herself appears as Junkie Jane, another character you might have met in the West Village in 1979. While she doesn’t have any lines in this show, she’s prominently featured in her other show, David’s Friend, which is being performed in repertory and which I saw in an earlier incarnation at La Mama.

The mood is set as soon as you enter the theater, to strains of disco music, while the go-go dancers mingle with the audience. While the set is black-box theater spare, for me one of the strong points of the show is its clever theatricality, such as when one actor holds up a widow frame to illustrate someone throwing their keys down to a friend through an apartment window.

The show then jumps forward to 1994 and touches on the devastation wrought by AIDS. The message here seems to be to live life to the fullest and enjoy it while you can.

The entire cast seems to be having a good time and I particularly enjoyed Cherrie who, in addition to being the requisite hunk (with a Ewan McGregor-ish Scottish accent, no less), has some touching moments at the end of the show. And since I sat in the first row, I got to enjoy his, er, “talents” up close. (Yes, I’m smitten.)

If I have any criticisms, they were minor (and, OK, maybe a little personal).

The sugar daddy character, who’s so “old” he has to pay for sex, was the same age I happened to turn the day I saw the show! (I guess people didn’t take very good care of themselves in 1979.)

And the audience on the night I saw the show was sometimes perhaps a little too enthusiastic, especially the man sitting next to me who laughed maybe a little too hard every time he spotted a reference. (This isn’t The Rocky Horror Picture Show!)

But perhaps that’s to be expected when people who are normally glued to their cell phones discover the joy of live theater, especially a production as fun and well-executed as this one.

A Letter to the Editor of The New York Times Regarding the Trump Assassination Attempt

To the Editor:

Political violence has no place in this country and I’m glad former president Trump wasn’t seriously injured by this heinous assassination attempt. But that should not prevent us from having an honest discussion about several things.

Just days before this happened, the president of the Heritage Foundation, authors of Project 2025, said we were “in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be”: an implicit call to violence.

One party, the Republican Party, has consistently blocked every attempt to stem the epidemic of gun violence in his country.

It was Trump’s supporters who attacked the Capitol and beat police officers.

It was Trump himself who said he could “shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it,” who said there were “fine people on both sides” in Charlottesville, who encouraged his supporters to beat up protesters at his rallies and has consistently used violent rhetoric in his campaign, who wanted to call in the military against Black Lives Matter protesters, who said that former Joint Chiefs Army Gen. Mark Milley should be executed and former Congresswoman Liz Cheney should be tried for treason.

Let’s be honest about which party—the Republican Party—has consistently endorsed violence as a legitimate means of resolving conflicts.

I’m not condoning what happened. I’m just saying that, given Trump’s and the Republican Party’s history of violent rhetoric, it’s not surprising.

Paul Hallasy

New York, NY