From: owner-lucy-list-digest@smoe.org (lucy-list-digest) To: lucy-list-digest@smoe.org Subject: lucy-list-digest V4 #267 Reply-To: lucy-list@smoe.org Sender: owner-lucy-list-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-lucy-list-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk lucy-list-digest Tuesday, November 26 2002 Volume 04 : Number 267 In this issue: [lucy-list] 92nd Street 11.24.2002 Reviews? [lucy-list] vic-a-ri-ous-ly! Re: [lucy-list] vic-a-ri-ous-ly! RE: [lucy-list] vic-a-ri-ous-ly! [lucy-list] for once in your life (92nd street Y) [lucy-list] Lucy at 92nd St. Y 11/24-the rambling part [lucy-list] Lucy at 92nd St. Y 11/24--the review part ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2002 11:03:19 -0500 From: "Paul Rafanello" Subject: [lucy-list] 92nd Street 11.24.2002 Reviews? Did anyone go to the show last night? I havent seen any reviews yet! Paul ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2002 12:57:45 -0600 From: "Timothy Bruce" Subject: [lucy-list] vic-a-ri-ous-ly! >>>she makes them seem so spontaneous and they really ARE funny, but when you hear the same stories essentially VERBATIM at each show, it can get boring. i don't know how benay does it<<< Others have expressed a similar approach, but I let the tedium of repeated banter slide over me like water over a duck's back (when I am fortuante enough to see multiple shows!) I typically enjoy observing the reactions of the rest of the crowd, many of whom are new to Lucy, or at least new to her live shows. This is entertainment enough to make up for the repetition. >>> 5. yay to hear dave carter's "cowboy singer" entered into the normal mix. > can anyone think of another dave song that would also fit lucy's style? >i still think of cowboy singer as mark erelli's dave tribute song<<< Mark Erelli? He's too young a whippersnapper to sing a song about an old, washed-up cowboy singer! As for Lucy, I was a bit surprised when I heard she was doing "Cowboy Singer". While I may have played some small part in putting this song her front burner last winter, at the same time I was pushing Dave Carter's "Lancelot" as a cover. They are VERY similar (slow waltzes) but I still think "Lancelot" fits her better. It's easier hearing her tell a tired knight's tale of love, loss, and redemption IN THE THIRD PERSON than the bent and broken cowpoke's tale in the FIRST person. If she keeps singin' it, we'll have to buy her a pair of spurs! ETimothy in south Minneapolis ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2002 14:04:08 -0500 From: Beth Simons Subject: Re: [lucy-list] vic-a-ri-ous-ly! >at the same time I was >pushing Dave Carter's "Lancelot" as a cover. They are VERY similar (slow >waltzes) but I still think "Lancelot" fits her better. It's easier hearing >her tell a tired knight's tale of love, loss, and redemption IN THE THIRD >PERSON than the bent and broken cowpoke's tale in the FIRST person. but guinevere AND lancelot? a bit much, perhaps? ;-) >If she keeps singin' it, we'll have to buy her a pair of spurs! at least they'll match her leather! :-p - --beth, suddenly not a lurker... <>o<>o<>o<>o<> Beth Simons beth@simons.mv.com Durham and Merrimack, NH (and St-Brieuc, France, at heart) "I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be." --Douglas Adams ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2002 14:11:57 -0500 From: "Paul Rafanello" Subject: RE: [lucy-list] vic-a-ri-ous-ly! Why not something completely different? 1) Susan Werner -next album will be jazz 2) Liz Queler - just announced that her next album will jazz standards 3) Lucy - ???? Country standards? Shakira hip-swiveling dancehall? Diana Krall slow burn jazz? I would vote for country standards. Yes, I am kidding about Shakira. Paul ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2002 22:13:30 EST From: Sdgold60@aol.com Subject: [lucy-list] for once in your life (92nd street Y) well this is the first moment today that i got a chance to write... i got to sleep at 230am and well it was just plain worth it.. if anyone heard Denis Elsas on FUV end his show at 6pm.. he played Dont mind me, followed by Shade of Grey... if you were there.. you were in a concert hall that is mahogany and the acoustic s equal carnegie hall and avery fisher hall.. makor.. the folk venue of the upper west side and jewish center is a part of the 92nd street Y.. and they brought two of their strongest performers to the Y (lucy told a story about her mom growing up in NY and how important the 92nd street Y was to the NY jewish community. .mom was excited lucy had this show) Susan werner.. lit the place up... the played Time between trains, st marys of regret, big car, shades of grey, barbed wire boys, little yellow house then on the piano... a big big grand piano.. she played an abbreviated version of the song cycle.. If i sang cole porter, Light sleeper, much at all, i cant be new and some new songs.. she said she has 20 in this style and the demos are done and she is shopping a new cd.. she blew Denis Elsas away with her piano songs.. and that is a great thing for susan..( FUV airtime) susan was ON.. on on .. and the best i have seen her and thats a lot of times.. she got a standing ovation and when i went to the merch table to buy a gift cd those cds were flying off the table.. lots of new listeners to susan... then when you think you cant top that show... on come Lucille... in blue jeans, brown leather coat ( the new one) and a black tee she had Zev with her on bass, and Duke.. levine.. katz, Levine and Kaplansky... Goldberg can join that law firm.. Duke whispered to lucy on Monday they can go back to their real names... Benay I am sure has the setlist written on the back of his hand Dont mind me the tide... thank you to WFUV for playing this first one ..first one she heard on the radio.. (they still play it too) Loch lomand cowboy singer.. (lucy puts a hurting on this one) im looking through you by way of sorrow Hole in my head Ten year night guilty as sin One good reason this is home i have something land of the living.. you get the drift... standing ovation.. encore.. lucy responds to a request and starts for once in your life she talked of mom and was choking up .. lots of people asked me if the SR Mrs Kaplansky was ill so lucy blanks on the third line.. and from behind me... i hear the one who made the request and from the 4th row.. the hero Benay .. feeding LK the lines..Lucy blesses benay for the rest of her life for prompting her ...this isnt the first time.. benay has fed her lines.. even i dont remember all the lines like that... GO benay.. there was chris chin and benay,, dave from brooklyn, susan from soho, sandy and jeff from LI, me -george and susan my SW friends and elaine who is darlister.. and rebekah who moved to NYU from Texas.. both women became instant fans of LK, SW and member of the lucy list.. Lucy was in a zone and it was great to watch her Kvell she was playing with two of the best side guys.. Why cant they be Lucy Kaplansky and the NY jew Boys.. oh that was kinky friedman.. those guys need a spyboy name.. they are incredible lucy talked about her next cd and took requests.. someone asked if Land of hte living would be on it.. she said MOst definately... someone yelled for Mary and the soldier the only thing missing was her husband... they will be at the harrison tribute this weekend.. and i heard hes ready to come home.. sharon who thinks she scored another adjunct job for next semester.. so call me professor... if your sister or your brother were stumbling on their last mile in a self-inflicted exile wish for them a humble friend and i hope someday that the best of falstaffs planners give you seven half-built manors where dreams may dream without end dar williams ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2002 00:11:08 -0500 From: "Benay Bubar" Subject: [lucy-list] Lucy at 92nd St. Y 11/24-the rambling part With this level of delay from me, I fear the expectation will be of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism here...but in fact, the truth is that mundane craziness of life has kept me from promptly performing my reviewing duties, and tempted as I was to jettison all else in favor of writing about a Lucy show, I did not think anyone would care to read the personal essay that would soon have followed, titled How I Lost My Job Because I Spent My Workday Writing a Lucy Review. So finally, I am home with a little time to write...and Professor Sharon G, I see, has just beaten me to the punch, but I'm going to proceed pretty much as I planned anyway because, well, once started on these things, I can't really be stopped. So yes, yesterday was Lucy's show at the 92nd Street Y here in New York. Of course, before I could go to the show, I had to go to the dreaded baby shower, which meant I had to wrap the present. And, having failed to find a gift bag large enough, I had to go with the much-feared gift wrap. Though it was not without a certain amount of cursing, I finally got the present wrapped in an acceptable if amateurish fashion. (The cursing, I must admit, was also amateurish---I curse only slightly more effectively than I wrap presents, I'm afraid.) So THAT was done. And off I took myself to the baby shower...which turned out to be RIGHT on the border of Ground Zero, closer than I'd been to the area in the entire time since 9/11. I had to fight a childish impulse not to go at all because of that fact, but I went. I took only one look in the general direction of Ground Zero, just long enough to see the Winter Garden from a location where I knew I SHOULDN'T have seen it if...and there is no point to this except that later on when I heard Lucy do Land of the Living, it was that moment's glance I kept thinking about. The shower was very, very nice. Lovely apartment, extremely nice people, good food. But then I found out for the first time what the baby's name was going to be. It's a boy, due in January...and I think I'm safe saying this here because the parents aren't Lucy fans and no one on this list knows them, and even if anyone DOES know them, I think very highly of them and mean no disrespect. But I had to pause when I heard that they were going to name their baby boy...CERULEAN. A great word---meaning "resembling the blue of the sky" for anyone interested in increasing their vocabulary today (I had to look it up)---but as a NAME for a CHILD...hmmmmmm. I won't mention Cerulean's last name here, but that's no picnic either. Having grown up as Benay Bubar, I have considerable expertise in living with a weird name, and all I could think was, this kid is going to be good at spelling because he is going to spend his whole life spelling his name to everyone he meets..."That's C as in Cat, E as in Elephant, R as in...." When there is a long pause while his teachers are taking attendance in school, he can assume it's because they're trying to puzzle out his name and can be assured that they will all butcher it repeatedly before finally getting it right. He can pretty much forget about ever hearing a poem or song with his name in it...well, at least, AS a name rather than a general descriptive term. And when he goes on vacation and finds himself in a store with cheap kids' souvenirs, he will never, EVER find his name on any of those miniature license plates or keychains. Not being able to find your name on a mass-produced personalized keychain...well, it marks a person for life in some ways. Sometimes I think part of the reason I keep asking Lucy to sign stuff at shows---ticket stubs and things, since I got my CDs signed long ago---is for the sheer pleasure of NOT having to spell my name for her, because she actually knows it by now! For a while I've had half a mind to start an organization promoting ordinary names for children to make their lives easier. I was thinking about it this evening on my interminable car service ride home from work. In the planning stages, it's all about the acronym, of course, and I could call it the National Organization for Ordinary Names---NOON. But I rather prefer Naming Your Kids Normally Augments Mental Ease...a more cumbersome title, but one that would allow me to use the acronym NYKNAME, which I happen to think is quite catchy! OK, review next, to augment (a word I like a lot now, since it's in the title of my new organization) what Sharon said about last night... Benay ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2002 01:02:19 -0500 (EST) From: "Benay Bubar" Subject: [lucy-list] Lucy at 92nd St. Y 11/24--the review part So I arrived at the 92nd Street Y just a little bit early for the 8:00 show. At 5:25, to be exact. Seeing no line, I went into the building lobby and asked the front desk guards where the line would be for the Lucy Kaplansky show. They looked genuinely bewildered. "You're the SECOND person to ask that!" they said. "But the show's not for two and a half hours!" Yes, I realized that, I said...but where would the line be? Still looking stunned, they simply gestured expansively at the lobby itself. So I planted myself in a corner of the lobby and commenced waiting, subject to occasional bemused glances from the guards. I didn't have to wait too long, luckily, before I was joined by Chris Chin (the FIRST person who had asked where the concert line was...he'd gone to get food in the meantime). Then came Rebekah and Elaine, two relatively new Lucy fans who may not be on this list yet but hopefully soon will be because they both now own Every Single Day and from there it's a slippery slope. And finally we were joined by our favorite professor, Sharon G---Jeff and Sandy and Dave and Susan arrived later. As a concert venue, the 92nd Street Y has some very good points. They had the good taste to have a show featuring Lucy with Susan Werner as an opener, for starters...you've got to hand it to any place that is willing to have such a show. Also, they publish a particular piece of literature about their seasonal events that features a nice white space on the back that's perfect for keeping the setlist of a Lucy show if someone who always keeps a setlist happens to have forgotten to bring paper. Very considerate of them to do that. The area in which they do NOT excel, however, is in methodology of seating an audience. In a large auditorium setting, as this was, assigned seats are best...but if you're going to have a show with unreserved seating, it's only reasonable to let people in generally in their order of arrival. If people come at 5:30 for an 8:00 show, presumably they are interested in good seats, not just wanting to kill time in the lobby of the 92nd Street Y! What ended up happening last night was a mad rush through three separate entrances at about 7:45, regardless of when anyone had arrived. I did manage the fourth row, and I ended up being perfectly happy, but it wasn't the best planning by any stretch on the Y's part. Still, all seating troubles were forgotten once Susan Werner hit the stage to open for Lucy. Sharon is right...she was excellent. Her setlist, worth noting because it was one of the best Susan Werner sets I've heard overall: Time Between Trains Shade of Gray St. Mary's of Regret Barbed Wire Boys Big Car Maybe If I Sang Cole Porter No One Needs to Know Light Sleeper Don't Miss You Much At All I Can't Be New I'd Be Good for You (encore---"I'll send you out the door with this...except you're not leaving yet!") By the time Susan finally relinquished the stage to Lucy (saying Lucy would interpret for us all that we'd just heard from HER, Susan!), we were prepared for further delight...and Lucy did not disappoint. She came onstage and said, half to herself it seemed, "Wow, there are PEOPLE here! Good!" (This cracked me up, spoken as it was in a tone almost as if she had thought she might come onstage and see a room full of, say, ostriches, or perhaps lawnmowers, but was in fact pleasantly surprised to find that it was PEOPLE she would be performing in front of this evening.) Lucy's setlist: The Angels Rejoiced Written on the Back of His Hand The Tide (with her "things are better now" disclaimer) Don't Mind Me Cowboy Singer (she does it well...the point of view doesn't end up mattering much) (air guitar story) Loch Lomond Guilty As Sin I'm Looking Through You (can we have an EP of this while waiting for Lucy's next album? Sigh...I love it so much and it's going to be tough NOT hearing it until my next Lucy show, and I don't even want to think how far away that is) I Had Something Ten Year Night (with the comment about seeing the Philadelphia Eagles with Rick as an example of true love...though Beth had a different experience, it has worked with most of the audiences to which I've seen Lucy say it...I like it because it leaves you expecting more of a story until you realize there ISN'T more, and that's what's funny...anyway, I don't think the bug story is coming back...it had a nice long life before it got squashed) By Way of Sorrow This Is Home Land of the Living Hole in My Head End of the Day Nowhere Scorpion Encore: For Once In Your Life (OK, OK, since Sharon is already spreading the rumor, I will admit---*blush*---that I helped Lucy out on this one. She forgot "in a hospital uptown" first, and at least a couple of us tried to assist with that, but then she seemed to recall it herself, and she started the song over again. It wasn't until midway through the second stanza that she really blanked, and that was when I found myself calling out, "It wasn't a fair fight!"---something that, incidentally, it will be handy to know I now have the ability to shout should I ever become a devotee of boxing matches! Lucy picked up from there and finished the song without faltering, and it was beautiful indeed. I was glad she'd done that one---it had been a while, and I'd been wanting to hear it again.) The second and last encore was a riveting rendition of The Water Is Wide from Lucy and Susan together, similar to what they'd done in New Jersey some months ago except even better. It was chills-down-the-spine gorgeous. (Anyone who can catch the Women in Folk shows coming up next March, with Lucy and Susan and Toshi Reagon, should do so---aside from the beauty of their individual sets, Lucy and Susan singing together for even one song is an experience not to be missed.) It was an incredible show---if my run of 2002 Lucy shows had to end (for I unfortunately cannot make my way out to the West Coast to partake of her December offerings), this was a good one to have as the finale. I am, however, quite sad that I won't see Lucy again until mid-February. (Not that I expect sympathy...I know how lucky I am to have gotten to see her as much as I have.) Anyway, I have to pass the show-reviewing torch for quite a while now...to the West Coast and elsewhere...and I will try not to bug anybody about it, and I respect the fact that some people want to talk about other things than show reviews on the list, but I DO hope that some Lucy reviews, in some form, will continue to make their way here while I am left here with none to offer. I hope everyone has a nice Thanksgiving in case I don't show up here again before then. I hope Lucy and Rick enjoy the George Harrison tribute on Friday---and I hope Lucy will tell us about it in her next letter to her fans, since she's mentioned her excitement about it several times from the stage! Well, that's it for now. But something tells me that even without any Lucy shows to see, I just might manage to come up with a few things to say here between now and mid-February anyway...you never know. Benay ------------------------------ End of lucy-list-digest V4 #267 ******************************* This has been a posting from the Lucy Kaplansky mail list digest To unsubscribe send mail to Majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe lucy-list-digest" in the body of the message