This Monday, June 8th, is a very special night for me, and my co-writer, Spencer Green (who is “Hal Philip Walker” on Facebook. Don’t ask.). We are premiering five songs from our new musical “Bumpersticker” at 7:30pm in Hollywood at Rockwell on Vermont. This is part of the Festival of New American Musical’s “Musi-Cal” series, which spotlights new works by theater composers and lyricists. Thanks to Linda Shusett and Bob Klein for this great opportunity. Rockwell has tasty food and drinks (and little buttons at each table by which you may summon your waiter), so please come and enjoy. Reserve your seats here.
And this Saturday, June 6th, I’ll be appearing as a part of the Make Music Pasadena Festival on the stage of the Pasadena Public Library. I go on at 1:30pm, but I’m also surrounded on both sides by good friends and great songwriters Dan Frechette and Laurel Thomsen, Aireene Espiritu, Shelby and Tieg, Lauren Adams, and many more. It’s FREE, so come and enjoy some of LA’s finest from 11am-5pm.
All of us in the music and writing community recently suffered a great loss: Taylor Negron, an actor and comedy performer who was able to combine the most scathing wit with the deepest emotion, making you cry and laugh at the same time. Taylor’s first well-known role was as the Pizza Guy in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. I got to know Taylor partly because of his appearance in the movie The Aristocrats, for which I wrote the music, and partly because of the 15-year phenomenon of Sit ‘n’ Spin, a show which, if it didn’t give birth to the current plethora of spoken word evenings, was certainly in the delivery room. I got to sit to the side of the stage and watch him captivate the room so many times. Here’s a TED Talk Taylor did in 2013 which will give you an idea of who he was and how he communicated his life to the world: “I’m not afraid to get older… I have muses that will help me… (But) It’s very, very hard to get older, especially when you’re a man…You can’t, you know, get a face-lift because the surgeon only gives you two choices: Siegfried, or Roy.”
I’m doing the show again on June 11th at 8pm, and it’s the first time I will have done it since Taylor left us. Maggie Rowe always orders pizza before the show. I’ll make sure to tip the pizza guy, in tribute.
Comedy Central Stage at the Hudson Theater. Call 323-960-5519 for reservations. It’s free, but it fills up fast.