Right, then---what's your take on filk? And what's "filk gone horribly right?" Inquiring minds (mainly mine) want to know.

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Filk Gone Horribly Right was Toyboat's tagline early on. We don't use it as much anymore.

Filk is a fascinating community that I am proud to be a part of. I think what I like best about it is that it includes people who are professional musicians as well as people who definitely are not. The range of talent is marvelous. There are certain people I have met over the last 10 years who are capable of reducing me to uncontrollable laughter, and not on purpose. There are also people who inspire awe, and not all on the pro end.

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When I was in my late teens a friend "discovered" the Bonzo Dog Band. I hadn't thought about them in a long time but have recently played "Urban Spaceman" at a couple of house filks. How did you get to know about them?

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Probably through one of my father's students, Mike Frisbie. Mike played a lot of music for me when I was a kid and is responsible for a lot of my attitudes musically. Urban Spaceman is in my book, as is Ready Mades (which I do fairly often). I'm thinking about working on Humanoid Boogie. I've been a fan for 40 years, maybe more.

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So who is this Bill Hicks guy, and what's so special about him?

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Tom Waits said it best

“Bill Hicks, blowtorch, excavator, truthsayer and brain specialist, like a reverend waving a gun around. Pay attention to Rant in E Minor, it is a major work, as important as Lenny Bruce’s. He will correct your vision. His life was cut short by cancer, though he did leave his tools here. Others will drive on the road he built. Long may his records rant even though he can’t.”

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Why can't I "like" this? LIKE TO INFINITY.

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Oscar Levant?

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Oscar was probably best known as the piano playing wise ass sidekick of Gene Kelly in An American In Paris, but he was much more.

He was a brilliant pianist, a marvelous wit and a horrific hypochondriac.

Harpo Marx tells the story about how, at a party, a famous trio (or maybe quartet) was supposed to play, but their pianist was ill. Oscar offered to sit in. They had been together for years and thought his offer was nuts. He talked them into it, and proved to be better at sight reading their repertoire than their regular pianist could play after rehearsing with them.

And if for no other reason one should love Oscar for a couple of comments that he made.

"I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin."
and
After she had converted to Judaism when she married, he said "Now that Marilyn Monroe is kosher, Arthur Miller can eat her"
and finally
"There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line."

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