Are You Dave?

I’ve been slowly developing a Ukulele class at Guitar Bar, Jr.  One of the moms was kind enough to share this footage:

I just got this e-mail from the casting company in NYC:

The Oral B clients loved the Fuzzy Lemons..

Nothing happening yet, No bookings as of now.. We are still not sure how they will proceed. But IF they do chose you all.
the shoot will be 1 max 8 hours or 2 half days (4 hours) anywhere between 5/4-5/14

PLEASE LET ME KNOW YOUR SCHEDULE FOR THESE DAYS.

Of course, there are NO days in that stretch where all of the Lemons are available, so we’ll see what happens… I’m not holding my breath, but it is exciting to think about.
~ Dave

I saw an e-mail this week from a casting agency in NYC; they were looking for people who used their mouths. It seems Oral-B is looking for people with interesting stories for a campaign. So I talked Justin, Chris and Vanessa into a trip into NYC to meet the casting agent and chat a little bit on camera. We’ll see what (if anything) comes of it.

Yesterday, Vanessa and I met with Dave Musial up on the campus of Stevens Institute of Technology here in Hoboken. He thinks we can use some students at their Multimedia Institute to make animated videos. I’m excited about the possibility, so stay tuned for details of that too!

Oh, and Happy Easter!
~ Dave

Rising video star Jeremy Fain shot this for The Fuzzy Lemons in January, and now it’s edited and online! Woohoo! Thanks, Jeremy!

The Fuzzy Lemons “Jump, Wiggle, and Shake” from Jeremy Fain on Vimeo.

Here’s some random awesomeness for today:

Apollo 11 Saturn V Launch (HD) Camera E-8 from Mark Gray on Vimeo.

This video by Spacecraft Films shows the July 16, 1969 launch of the Apollo 11 mission that landed the first humans on the moon. The camera was rolling at a whopping 500 frames per second, allowing the first 30 seconds of the launch to be slowed down into this 8-minute narrated video of pure awesomeness. [from Boingboing via petapixel]

And now for something completely different…

Fellow Hobokenite Bruce Ornstein, who knows me from his little boy’s Music Together days, approached me at the Hoboken St. Patrick’s Day parade and asked me to help him out with a film project he’s working on. It’s about a gay vampire and it has a musical number, and would I help him record the demo to help the actor learn the song?

How could I say no?

The song, “Ha Bloody Ha,” was penned by the incomparable Enid Levine, seen here as she appeared some 27 years ago in the early days of nu-wave pop…

I’m pleased to say that she’s lost none of her verve and her hair is still an impressive mop, though the tassles seem to be long gone.

At Bruce’s urging, I took the bus to NYC last week to meet Enid and hear the song (I’d seen and heard a version captured on a cell-phone camera but that wasn’t going to be enough to go on). She and her dapper husband (also named Bruce) met me on west 51st street, an address that housed, according to Enid, a little club where we could use the piano and work out the tune.

Well, the “little club” turned out to be The Lambs, “America’s first professional theatrical club, established in New York in 1874. The Lambs was named after a club by the same name in London, England, which flourished between 1869-1879. The club’s name honors the essayist Charles Lamb, and his sister Mary, who — during the early 1800’s — played host to actors and literati at their famed salon in London.” [from the Lambs website]

So suddenly I’m standing on the same ground once trod by W.C. Fields, Lerner and Loewe, Fred Astaire and Irving Berlin, hanging out with this luminary songwriter and her husband, the club’s former president. And I’m there to learn a gay vampire anthem. I’m not making any of this up.

Needless to say, I was slightly intimidated. I’m a children’s entertainer from Hoboken who burnt out his vocal chords in college singing in a frat-rock band. What the hell was I doing here?

Bruce put me at ease a little by announcing that he was headed down to the bar to see if there were any drunken actors hanging out. At the time I thought that was a no-brainer — try to find a bar in NYC that DOESN’T have drunken actors hanging out. But looking back now I think he actually meant Drunken Actors, like Peter O’Toole maybe.

Mercifully, Enid was able to shift the song down a few steps into a key that my worn-out pipes can handle. And when I tried a few bars she was full of praise and enthusiasm. And the song is actually fun to sing, it has some dirty words and innuendo and I could hear someone like Freddie Mercury doing it justice (as opposed to li’l ol’ me, who’ll just be doing it).

I met with Enid again this week to make a usable recording of the song, using Garageband. I now am using a Mac laptop, and so I packed it up and trundled it into the city along with my MIDI keyboard. I met Enid in the lobby of the Hyatt next to Grand Central Station, and we found a table in a ballroom where we could set up. So much for security in post-9/11 Manhattan.

So now I have a MIDI recording of Enid’s piano part. With a few clicks I can drag the lower notes out to make a bass part, and a few more clicks turns the piano into an electric guitar, and whammo, a rock song. Doing the vocals will be the hardest part. I’ll post more about the finished product and the movie it’ll appear in, watch this space….

This sort of thing gives my wife the existential willies, but I LOVE it!

This was a fantastic event featuring local musicians and performers including The Fuzzy Lemons, Big Jeff, and the kids from Garden Street Music and Be Vocal. Kipley was absent so Dan McLoughlin sat in on keys and we had a blast. Plus, I had the honor of serving as MC for the event! Woohoo!

Everyone did a great job and we raised a few grand for Haiti. Later in the evening there was a grown-up show too, featuring even more bands! Here’s what Geri Fallo wrote the next morning:

On behalf of Mayor Dawn Zimmer & the City of Hoboken, I want to thank you for sharing your time & talent and helping us make the Hoboken for Haiti benefit concert such a wonderful success. Your generosity & support are so appreciated. Please send my regards to your other band members as well.

We raised $4,433.00, twice what was anticipated. The money will be divided between the American Red Cross & the Clinton Bush Relief Fund.

Thanks, Hoboken!
~ Dave

By “scored” I mean I did the music for my friend Guy’s video:

[caution, some language not suitable for minors]

The opening bit is something I did for another of Guy’s movies, ”My Grandma Killed Seven People.” The guitar under the Wes Anderson bit is me picking the chords to “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” a la Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bleecker Street.”

You know those cheesy MIDI files that pop up on websites from time to time? Turns out you can download them and drag ‘em into GarageBand and actually make them sound good. That’s how I got the version of “The Liberty Bell March” (a.k.a. The Monty Python Theme) that you hear here.

Fans of The Fuzzy Lemons may recognize the music during the “Quentin Tarantino” segment. It’s the first demo I did of “Sunburn” in GarageBand, before it even had lyrics. Kimberly Perry, drummer emeritus, helped out with the MIDI drums. Hi Kim!

Sure, he takes his shirt off for no reason. Sure, he has a cold and isn’t a native speaker of English. It’s the tempo change at the chorus that sells this thing. Say what you want, this guy does more with his little keyboard than I ever did with mine. 

Caution, explicit lyrics.