“I've always depended on the kindness
of strangers.” I think a lot about that line from Streetcar.
Tenessee Williams may have been making a point about Blanche DuBois'
naivete and absolute self-involvement, but me? I really could not
live this preposterous little life of mine without the kindness of
strangers. I call a stranger in a strange town to which I've never
been and ask them to put me on a bill, then perform a bunch of songs
to strangers who have never heard them, convince enough of them to
buy my CDs so I can afford gas, and then convince yet another total
stranger to let me sleep on their couch. And that's the best case scenario. That's when everything
goes according to plan. When something goes wrong? This is Pen Pen and some ominous looking clouds.
So
around 8pm on Saturday I got word that the Acoustic Festival at the
Vatican't was off. Dylan had been having some trouble with the cops,
and it sort of seemed inevitable. But 24 hours wasn't much time to
put something together. Wes from All Over the Place said there was
some open mic in Pittsburgh, but a friend I knew only through the
Occupy twitterverse had been telling me about some festival in
Buffalo. So I reached out to Reactivi and she said she'd be able to
put something together at the last minute. Three cheers for the
kindness of strangers! This is Pen Pen standing on a naked lightbulb, because that's the other famous line, right?
So I
made it to the Infringement Festival and was thrown into the fire
pretty quickly. Curt, who organized the music, had me do a few songs
at the block party stage, while Marty, who was booking a bunch of the
venues, got me a show at a radical book store at 4. Curt told me
after my Burning Books set they'd give me a spot to play on the
street. Venue sanctioned busking essentially. I met up with Reactivi
and headed off to Burning Books. It was quiet, but Fat Nate showed up
from my PPAS days and they shot some video, so all said and done it
was pretty rad. Radical. Whatever. This is Pen Pen declaring Drone Warfare on Noam Chomsky.
We
headed back to the block party, and I set up with my suitcases of
doom and started playing everything I could think of that was high
and fast and might attract attention. It didn't work. So I started
playing covers. Well. 3. “Billie Jean” was followed by the
longest rendition ever of “Jerusalem” due to a long conversation
with a guy in a Professor Thom's shirt (for those of you who aren't
Boston ex-pats living in New York, that's NYC's Red Sox bar. I once
saw the cast of 30 Rock there at trivia night!). I joked afterward
that I should just play “Alice's Restaurant.” One of the people
who had gathered around said “yeah, you should!” So I did. All of
it. Actually slightly more because I forgot the order of a few things
and did the arresting bit twice. We went back to Reactivi's house, had another Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat, and didn't
get up until the next morning when I had to drive to Cleveland. This is Pen Pen singing you this song
now because you may know somebody in a similar Situation, or you may
be in a similar situation, and if you're in a Situation like that
there's only one thing you can do and that's walk into the shrink
wherever you are ,just walk in say "Shrink, You can get Anything
you want, at Alice's restaurant," and walk out.
This
is a song I wrote one time. You should download it and share with
your friends.
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