Our garage welcomed a new guest tonight: the illustrious “Liberace”, fabulously tassled playa-cruiser, legendary agent of dust-storm romance, esteemed pianist of the pearly gates. Liberace’s life in Black Rock City was fairly low-key last year, having been a handicap transit cart rather than a full-blown mutant vehicle. But that’s about to change…
I’d already bought my ticket to the Anon Salon Sea of Dreams New Year’s bash when I got lassoed into “Vasty Rumpus”, the near-legendary off-Broadway jazz burlesque troupe billed to perform on the Cabaret stage just before midnight. Actually, they weren’t billed to perform there (yet), since the band didn’t even exist until early December… but a few rehearsals, a booking connection, and a promo video featuring leggy dancers (most of them old friends of mine – y’know, from my off-Broadway days) landed us the slot.
Here we are stumbling through Duke Ellington’s Night Train, though I suspect like most of the audience you won’t be too hung up on any missed key changes.
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Well whaddya know, Burning Man kicked ass again. About 30 of us, hailing mainly from SF and LA, pitched in to set up and run the Lorax Lounge. As you might expect, a bunch of crazy shit happened both at the Lounge and elsewhere. Here’s an infintesimal speck of it that I stitched together using iMovie HD:
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And part 2: Continue reading »