Wednesday Want to Live

By Found in the Alley

Suddenly I’m playing with three different bands on three different instruments and none of them are the band I’ve been playing with for the past six years.

Only one of these bands has a gig to look forward to and that’s this weekend with Grun-Tu-Molani at the annual Around the Coyote Art Fair. We’re playing in the afternoon on Sunday so Clara can come. It’ll be the first time she sees daddy on stage.

The phrase grun tu molani may be fictitious, I don’t know, but it comes from a Saul Bellow book, Henderson the Rain King, which I recommend. Grun tu molani means “man want to live” and it’s something Henderson confirms on a strange sort of African safari.

GTM, the band, names all their songs after animals though not all the kind you’d find on African safari. I play on Penguin for instance. They’ve also named at least one song (a synth laden prog rock piece) after a mythic creature – the Great Lakes water panther, Mishu Pishu.

GTM don’t do a whole lot of singing but I learned in rehearsals that their animals do have complicated back stories nevertheless. Par example, Wolf is a fearsome beast who may or may not eat her young. I don’t play on Whale but it should be pretty awesome with a lot of Fender Rhodes bottom end and an electric cello, inside the boomy Plumbers Union Hall where the event takes place.

Anyway all of this is pretty insignificant isn’t it? But it gives me a chance to upload this terrific flyer they made. I only play on one of the animals depicted. Rabbit (he’s a dub creature fat in the middle and bouncy all around).