Friday, June 8, 2012

Road Trip! The Empire State, Part 2: The Inventors

How are you all today?  Today is the end of the school year for a lot of the U.S. so welcome to summer vacation.  Any cool plans with the kids?  We're doing a science experiment a day (today's involves spinach, nail polish remover and a coffee filter) in our house...how do you keep your kids entertained?

Okay, we're headed into New York City today and specifically to the corner of 53rd St and 6th Ave where if you listen really closely you can probably still hear Moondog playing his trimba.  Um, what?  Moondog was born Louis Hardin in Kansas in 1916, was blinded in his teens during a farming accident and died in Germany in 1999 but he spent about thirty years busking in NYC,  dressed like Thor.  He had some pretty high profile fans, among them Benny Goodman and Phillip Glass, and has been covered by Julie Andrews and Janis Joplin.  He invented a few instruments, too, including the trimba, the oo and the oo-ya-tsu and he composed things like his gorgeous "Ode to Venus."

   

Moondog may be gone but his spirit of playfulness lives on in a couple of blue headed guys.  Make that three blue headed guys.  Blue Man Group came together in Manhattan in the late 80s and if you haven't seen this show please please please do.  From making crazy PVC pipe instruments (leading to their Invent An Instrument YouTube contest) to founding the Blue School it's a Blue Man's world.  Okay, maybe not yet, but they could totally take over as far as I'm concerned.  They appeared with fellow New Yorker Moby and Philadelphia's Jill Scott on the Grammys in 2001 to perform Moby's "Natural Blues."



I think I'm going to call bccmee to meet me for coffee at this little shop over here and we'll get going again tomorrow.  Hmm, there's so much to look at here, where should we go next?  See you soon!

9 comments:

  1. I M U S T take my kids to the Blue Man Show, if only because my eldest favorite color is BLUE! that will be my excuse for wanting to go as it is next week when school is finished for us we have a ROBIN HOOD play!! Next best thing :)

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    1. LOL...you guys are still in school? When did your year start?

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    2. After Labor day luckily NOT before like some started doing around here, mid June

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    3. Mid June has been the end unless there are snow days but Easter break got cut short two years ago so as not to lengthen the year too far into June.

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  2. I remember staying up late to watch Blue Man Group when they were on the Tonight Show with Carson, occasionally, in the 1980s, and thinking they were SO cool. My hipster friends tell me they are overexposed now. I've never seen an actual show.

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    1. I don't know that I'd agree that they're overexposed. Are they everywhere? Yep, pretty much, but so what? If they want to share their outlandish vision with the world who are a bunch of hipsters to tell them that they have to stay off-Broadway? Pigeon-holing is pigeon-holing no matter who's doing it, you know?

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    2. I agree. I'm not interested in snobbery for the sake of creating distinctions. But I still have never seen a show :)

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  3. Oh yeah, baby! Gotta love New York, NY. It's a big hometown for musical geniuses.

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    1. LOL, we'll be here a while...can we all crash in your living room?

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Thanks for commenting!