Posts Tagged ‘Recording studio’

The Popdose Interview: Marti Jones

Marti Jones Dixon's painting Self at 40-SomethingLast week Marti Jones was back in Washington, DC – the city where she and I had our greatest moments together during her career in pop music. (Actually, she was always on a stage with a band and her husband, while I was in the audience with my wife, but whatever – we’ll always have DC, Marti.) This time she wasn’t in town for a concert; she was preparing for the display of several of her paintings as “ambiance” (her word) on the set of a new play, After the Garden: Edith Beale Live at Reno Sweeney. The play re-creates a series of cabaret-style performances given in 1978 by the eccentric Beale – whom you might remember as “Little Edie,” the younger half of the peculiar mother-daughter duo portrayed in the 1975 documentary and 2006 Broadway musical Grey Gardens. Jones, serendipitously, had chosen the Beales as subject matter for her painting a couple years ago, and as a result she’s now receiving some of her biggest exposure to date as a visual artist.

It’s been a long time – nearly 20 years — since Jones had a major-label record deal, and nearly as long since she and Don Dixon ceased being regulars on the touring circuit. Over the last couple weeks Popdose has cast a spotlight on her music career, including a review of her recorded output last week and a recollection of her tours with Dixon the week before. Jones recently agreed to rehash her career during a phone interview, while sitting around her home outside Canton, Ohio. Perhaps because far too few music writers have sought her out recently – or perhaps because she (like Dixon, who’s also been quite generous to Popdose in recent months) is simply a terrific human being — our conversation resembled a reunion between old friends more than a run-of-the-mill interview.

Popdose: Are you in your studio today?
Marti Jones: No, but later I’m heading off to a recording studio. Dixon roped me into putting a generic female voice on a recording of our friend Jim Wann’s new play – it’s called The Great Unknown. [Wann is a longtime colleague of Dixon’s – the two performed with Bland Simpson as the Coastal Cohorts in their musical King Mackerel and the Blues Are Running.] I have to sing a song about climbing Mount Everest in my high-button shoes! His songs are always fun to sing, and this one’s great – Dixon keeps singing it to me as he dances around the room. And I’m getting paid – this time – which is nice.

Marti Jones Dixon's painting Edie (screaming)Painting takes much more of your time than music these days. How did you go from pop star to painter?
My whole life, I wanted to be a painter. My grandmother was a painter, and my parents would always encourage me to take after her. I majored in art at Kent State, but meantime I had also started singing in clubs, and I did that for a livelihood through college. Then, you know, the music thing happened, and I had to put off the painting. I was actually very frustrated by it, and I would think all the time about picking it back up. But when I’d come home from a tour I would only be in one place for a couple days, and it was hard to grab onto anything and stick with it. (more…)

Way Out Wednesday: The Three Stooges, “Madcap Musical Nonsense at Your House”

stoogesmadcap2-frontToday’s Way Out Wednesday nugget of joy is brought to you by the Three Stooges. The Stooges made a number of popular short subjects in the 1940s. Later, when television was new, stations needed lots of material to show. This brought out a Stooges resurgence, especially among kids. This album featuring Larry, Moe, and late addition Curly Joe, was put out in 1959 to answer that need. As opposed to the album The Nonsense Songbook (since released as simply The Three Stooges or Sing-a-Long with the Three Stooges) where they sang popular songs, this album features the Stooges doing skits and singing new words to old songs.

The first song on the album is called “We’re Coming to Your House”, wherein the boys want you to be excited about their arrival, despite the fact that they’re going to “break up the joint”:

Three Stooges – We’re Coming to Your House

In “Let’s Cut a Record,” Larry, Moe and Curly Joe are invited into a recording studio to do a record. Moe tells Curly Joe that after they record their song he’ll be on a piece of plastic. Curly Joe is very excited about this prospect. Things turn surreal when somehow or other Curly Joe gets stuck on the piece of plastic and Moe and Larry try to catch him each time he goes around. We’re told that if we turn the record over we can get him off of it. I never did figure out how that was supposed to work!

Three Stooges – Let’s Cut a Record

The next skit, entitled “Three Chipped Monks,” features the Stooges wanting to get into a theatre to see the Chipmunks. Someone mistaken believes that the Stooges ARE the Chipmunks (Sorry, I can’t explain that one), and they perform for the audience. The audience enjoys their performance even though their voices are an octave lower and they don’t sing nearly as well:

Three Stooges – Three Chipped Monks

We finally end with the heartfelt “Goodbye, Auld Lang Syne!” stating that the Three Stooges will always be my friends. Hey, not that long ago you wanted to tear the place up and now you want to be my friends? Who do you think you are, the Cat in the Hat?

Three Stooges – Goodbye, Auld Lang Syne!

If you’d also like to hear the Stooges foiling a toy store robbery, appearing on Click Dart’s Bandstand, and going to a baseball game so they slug the umpire, you can give it a listen right here!

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