Rockin'

Pics from The Little Death show Wednesday night. It was good. Hard. Rock. And very hot.
The rest of the week went by in a blur, work has escalated and I'm back to writing looooong papers, first time since college! Ah!
I'm sure some thoughts will surface soon, today I am thoroughly exhausted. :)
Love always!
Luci

Moby, donning the latest in lower east side moustache trends:


Cherie is my new back-up partner in crime!


It is absolutely impossible to get a shot of the whole band at once, but here's a good effort, with a LOT of action happening!


Aaron rockin' the kit


True romantic love:


My favorite part is when I get to play the tambourine!

Solstice Came Summer's In

Hello!
So what a fantastic day it is! It's SUMMERTIME! Oh just the word gets me excited! So some really fun things have happened this week. First, to take up where I left off last Saturday, I DID take the challenge and go down to the Seaport while thunderstorms were threatening in every direction. The show was at first postponed and then cancelled. But it was not a wasted trip! I got to see, while SITTING OUTSIDE, one of the most spectacular Thunderstorms I've seen in NYC! My backdrop was the masts and ropes of an ancient pirate ship (or at least that's what I was telling myself as I lived out this adventure).

Thick lightening bolts and loud crashes of thunder were happening right above this majestic ship for a good 20 minutes. I was sitting under the corner of a rooftop, but with the occasional gusts got pretty drenched in the power and fury from the heavens. Ohhhh exhilarating! I was completely taken away from the concrete jungle and thrust out on the open seas, like I was fighting the roughest tempest in history with my mates tying down the deck and running starboard to port, and foodbags sliding from left to right, furniture roving in every direction, a shout from the captain to tighten up the sails....... Just before my imagination got too carried away, Alison greeted me and said the show was cancelled. I was like, "really? I just watched the most riveting show I've seen in weeks!".

Us pondering the weather before it became the show - just look at that cloud behind us:


So Friday night was another maritime adventure! To the lost kingdom of Redhook. Brooklyn. Via water taxi! Why? To scavenge the uncharted territory of the newest Ikea in America. HAAA! I only spent 15 minutes in Ikea (not including the checkout line), so the water taxi was really the highlight. Here we go leaving at dusk with the skyline getting smaller and smaller.


So the solstice was on Saturday, and there was a big yoga day in Times Square. Although I didn't participate, I did walk past and snap this shot. Amazing that THAT can happen in such a mayhem overloaded tourist-filled area!


Finally, I was fortunate enough to experience the very best sunset I've seen on NYC streets EVER, on the very day of the summer solstice, how amazing. The sun was casting the orangest light on the pavement and walking in that magical orange light was my goal until the sun set behind a cloud just over a building. The sunsets from a street perspective in NYC are interesting. You have about an inch of skyspace view between the tall buildings and skinny streets. But I tried to capture it on the camera in my phone. It's not totally accurate with the COLOR of the orange. Imagine the light on the street as way more oranger, and you will get an idea of how unique and beautiful this moment was.


Finally, I came across an old clip of a fun event we played for during the lost, unblogged-about months between the LuciOnTour posts and these new ones. We were in Austin Texas at the South By Southwest music festival in March. The show was a tribute to Lou Reed, with many different bands playing creative versions of his songs. Moby was asked to be the final act, so we did 2 songs and the last one was Take a Walk on the Wild Side with Lou Reed himself. It was really special to watch the avid Lou Reed fans crying in the front rows, in all-encompassing awe as they watched their lifelong idol perform one of the best songs in music history. I was honored to be on stage with him, singing doot-da-doots. Click here to watch the clip: Lou Reed and Moby at South By Southwest


More to come as life unfolds!
Love,
Luci

Thunderstorm

Ok, so I have just been lying on the bed looking out the window at the flooding rain during a most pleasant New York City thunderstorm. Amazing. Here is a view of what I saw.


I tried to take a picture from exactly my vantage point, but the window was closed and it came out very muddy. So just for the sake of art I opened the window and took this one. It was flooding in, but as soon as I cracked the window that smell of summer rain burst into the room and it was all worth it that my pillows got wet!

So watching the rain plummeting down and hearing the thunder (which has such a unique sound up here, very different from the thunder over the coastline of Savannah) I started thinking about energy. It is amazing how much energy is conveyed by the weather. On a sunny day, especially if it hasn't been sunny in a few days, you can physically feel the energy from the sun rays. It is warm and if you stop to notice how your skin feels, or how your breathing feels, or how your heart beats when it's sunny, you can tell there's an energetic difference than on a cloudy day. I think that's why several days in a row of overcast drizzle really feels like it sucks the life out of me. I imagine that's absolutely as low energy as possible that the sky can convey in the daytime. The clouds block the sun's vigor, the drizzle falling keeps everything feeling "down", and there isn't any wind. Ohhhh, the wind is so energetic. Those days in March, or when there's a windstorm in the winter, what ENERGY is felt when air suddenly starts moving so strongly! Out of NOWHERE! I love wind. But a good downpour, even without lightening and thunder, conveys nice energy too - driving, beating, pushing, grounding. Ohh, and lightening, how exciting! Every time a flash of lightening happens it's like it zaps me with a little zing of power. And in the evenings, when there's heat lightening, or even streaks, ohhh I can hardly contain myself. It's as exciting as fireworks for a five year old on the 4th of July.

Speaking of fireworks, I was planning to go to the South Street Seaport tonight to see Alison play with the Brooklyn Philharmonic, where they shoot off fireworks at the end. Well, not sure about that now that the sky has opened up! We'll see.

Just a little insight to my afternoon ponderings. Here's a picture that makes me smile whenever I look at it.
Love! Luci

Lady Rizo's Girdle

It's a pleasure to be a part of the underground NY performer scene...
Click here to see a short clip of Friday's show

Hot times in NYC

It's hot and humid in the Big Apple. I LOVE it!! So, I have always wondered why NYC is called the Big Apple, and here is what I found out from an internet source:

"The term, the Big Apple, was first used by in the early '20s by stablehands to refer to the New Orleans race track, then the king of race tracks. The name was later borrowed by travelling jazz musicians to refer to Harlem, then the jazz capital of the world. The dance, "The Big Apple," was all the rage in Harlem nightclubs in the '20s and '30s. In 1971, the term "The Big Apple" was revived as part of a publicity campaign to upgrade New York's image and promote tourism."

It's amazing how much of language is dropped or forgotten or kept, and how it evolves over time. Wow. So this week a lot of crazy things went on, most memorably the first ever GIRDLE, a show featuring female performers hosted by the one and only Lady Rizo. It was a smashingly successful mix of comedy and music, I had the pleasure of playing a grand piano with such a great band (hopefully someone took pictures and I will post them soon). That was Friday night.

In between rehearsals, shows, and the music therapy job, I go to yoga. HA! I know that must sound so cliche-New-York, but I have to say, I love it! I am doing it more to get a grasp on my wild thoughts than anything. I have discovered many things about myself during yoga. One thing is that I hold tension in my face muscles when I do absolutely anything it seems! From the simplest yoga pose to washing dishes to painting my toenails! I saw an older lady at the pool in Cabo and was totally SHOCKED how she could not keep her mouth still while she reclined on her lounge chair. It was moving, chewing, tensed up into a frown, pulled into a tight smile, AH! It never stopped moving. I fear I'm headed in that direction if I don't CHILL myself out now! GUHTRUDE!! So, plan for this week, learn how to relax the muscles in my face while doing tasks.

That's about it for now, must get on with the muuuuuusic!
Love!
Luci