I’m not one for resolutions, but it’s hard not to look back when the year ticks up another notch.
It was about a year ago that I started this blog. I didn’t want to at first. Why would the world want another blog? But I needed to write more. And so I did. My first blog post was about my newly acquired robo-vacuum. If you read that one and subscribed … what were you thinking? Seriously, I thank you and all those who’ve subscribed over the past year. Since then the blog has started taking on a life of its own. The interview series is one of the most enjoyable things I’ve ever done. Thank you Don Davis for being my first interviewee. The response has been overwhelmingly positive.
The interviews will continue of course, and I have two more almost ready to publish. One is with George Cartwright who you might know as the sax player and founder of the band Curlew. He also toured with NY Gong in France, and spent some time playing with Ornette Coleman. The next one that I’m editing now is with Michael Beinhorn. He played in NY Gong at the Zu Manifestival and toured with them all over North America. Then he co-founded Material, and if you don’t know the rest of his career as a producer you should look it up immediately. It’s amazing.
I will continue to try out new things with the blog. I’m in the planning stages of doing a live Zoom event with people who performed at the Zu Manifestival, as well as some who were in the audience. This event will be open to the public to participate in questions and answers. I’m still figuring out how to do this, so stay tuned.
The other anniversary I want to talk about is for Giorgio Gomelsky. Six years ago on this day he died. As I’ve mentioned before, at that time I had never heard his name before. Shocking, I know. I still find it hard to believe. I felt a little less embarrassed about it when I started asking my music friends and none of them knew his name either! This would have been less than 5 years ago, when I finally stumbled onto his name because I was looking up how Eddy Offord, the famous Prog engineer/producer, got involved with recording the first Material EP. In our defense, most of us have lived on the west coast our entire adult lives, at a time when Gomelsky was solely focused on activities in New York City. Still, his name was and is all over my record collection. You’d think I’d have noticed.
Most of you know that I’m working on a book about Gomelsky called “The Gomelsky Recordings”. I’ve been researching it quite heavily now for over 3 years. It’s been a fun ride and I’ve met some great people along the way. But since my book isn’t going to be out any time soon, I want to recommend 3 that I would consider essential reading for those who want to know more about Giorgio.
The first one is by Richie Unterberger, a well known author and rock music historian who lives in the Bay Area. I’ve met him a few times and we’ve talked quite a bit about Gomelsky. He had the good fortune to do a lengthy interview with Giorgio sometime before his book was publish in 2000. It’s called “Urban Spacemen and Wayfaring Strangers”, and Giorgio is in the chapter called “Unheralded Heroes”. It covers all the major points of Gomelsky’s music career in 24 pages. If you want to spend the least amount of time to learn the most about Giorgio, these are the pages to read.
The second book is called “Rock Til You Drop” by John Strausbaugh, a NY journalist and apparently a friend of Giorgio’s. He interviewed Giorgio in early 2000 for the chapter called “Steel Wheelchairs, The Historical Reenactment of the Once-Great Rolling Stones”. If you can get past the oozing cynicism, or maybe you’re into that, there’s still plenty of great stories told in a style that makes you feel like your at the bar with them. Strausbaugh used to write for NY newspapers, and maybe he still does. I hope to meet him one day.
The third, and best read, if you want to really get to know Giorgio the person, is an entire memoir written by his close friend Francis Dumaureir, a French ex-pat who moved to NY in the early 1980’s. They became close friends by the mid 80’s and shared many a romp together having fun in New York City. The book is called “Mon ami Giorgio Gomelsky”. It’s a memoir about their friendship written a couple of years after Gomelsky’s death. It’s fun and touching and, for me who never met the man, I got a very good feel for what he must have been like. I did meet Francis. A few months after I found his book and contacted him, I was in NY to visit a friend. I spent one sweltering NY afternoon in Strawberry Fields Central Park listening to Francis give me a crash course in all things Giorgio. One thing about the book … it’s only available online in French. I tried to help Francis find an English publisher, but no luck.
There are two videos I want to share with you to remember Giorgio. The first is one I just assembled yesterday. In my neverending Gomelsky research, I stumbled onto a blog about a week ago that has audio files of a performance at his Zu House, where he lived and ran an underground club. It was also used as a rehearsal space. I assembled the audio files and other info obtained from the blog and made this audio only video. Listening to it with the audience reactions easy to hear gives a great idea as to what it must have been like to attend these shows.
The next video is one I’ve share before, but is worth another visit, especially on this day. It’s the Giorgio Gomelsky Memorial Service - Feb 27 2016. The host is Dave Soldier, and there’s a wonderful speech given by Martin Bisi.