Go back to Arts & Features pageSAN FRANCISCO -- It was billed as the "Rock Bottom All-Star Revue," appropriately subtitled, "A literary talent show of sorts." And what sorts they were.
The supernova was British lady of letters Jessica Mitford, billed as "Decca and the Dectones," singing a rousing version of The Beatles' "Maxwell's Silver Hammer," supported by striking Chronicle columnist Herb Caen on cowbell.
There were other assorted planetary presences at the show, presented in conjunction with the 5th annual S.F. Bay Area Book Festival at Slim's last Saturday: stars, ass-teroids, and musical space debris, including a veritable Milky Way of local literary talent -- most of whom shouldn't quit their day jobs.
We had country divas (yours truly and Kathi Kamen Goldmark); we had city divas (Cynthia Heimel, Maxine Wyman, April Sinclair); we got Elvis clones (Ben Fong-Torres) and Dylan clones (ditto, Fong-Torres); we got kazoo bands and jugglers, singers, dingers and even ringers like Gregg Kihn.
Surprise, surprise, we even had seasoned and capable performers like striking Chronicle writer Karen Liberatore's hubby, Paul, of the Marin I.J., whose whiskey baritone (or was that Bud Lite?) is in the best garage-band tradition.
Fong-Torres' natural diffidence disappears in front of a microphone. Ballantine/Dell book salesman Walter Mayes (7 feet, if he's an inch, in his heels), was boisterous and hilarious in a gender-tweaked version of "Johnny Get Angry" accompanied by a kazoo band.
It's not modesty or propriety that forbids me to include myself, as I was a kind of a ringer, too, having decided long ago that this writing game is a whole lot easier than singing for a living. Besides, I have a difficult time remembering lyrics.
Then there was novelist Amy Tan -- who, when she dons her Joan Jett punk wig and her serious leathers (including a spiked dog collar and cockroach killer boots), becomes someone her mama wouldn't even recognize. Mama Tan was in the audience, and we're not sure what she thought.
Tan has been coached into fearless showmanship by Remainders producer/originator Goldmark, who used to take her to the Yet Wah karaoke bar in Diamond Heights to cure her of stage fright. Tan is one of the original Rock Bottom Remainders (along with Stphen King, Dave Barry and Barbara Kingsolver) -- the super-star authors' band, to which this little show was a poor but enthusiastic second cousin. Not that there weren't some bonafide Remainders present -- at least Goldmark and most of the Bay Area contingent, aka the Critics' Chorus, which includes the East Bay's homeric rock critic Greil Marcus, humorist and folk poet Roy Blount Jr., "Louie Louie" expert Dave Marsh and Free Press rock critic Joel Selvin -- all of whom have more guts than brains when it comes to committing music. (Missing chorister cartoonist Matt Groening was there in spirit and bouquet, a gorgeous thing of lilies and birds of paradise.)
"We need some more in the Critics' Chorus," Goldmark barked out during rehearsal. "Who amongst you has ever written rock and roll criticism?" Up shot my hand, along with those of humorist and Village Voice columnist Cynthia Heimel.
So in the best tradition of "Chicks up front," we braved catcalls and leering looks an planted ourselves firmly in front of the microphones to screech out "Wild Thing" and "Louie Louie" -- besides doing girl-group duty on "Short Shorts."
Backstage at Slim's before the show, the dressing rooms were stuffed with sweating and nervous performers vying for the mirror. We all relaxed, or tried to, in the chaos, each in our own special way. Kihn, one of the few people on stage who really knew what he was doing, pulled out a mouth harp and started playing "Love Me Do," gathering a crowd immediately around him who not only knew the words but the harmonies.
In her dressing room, Tan clutched a squirming black velvet bag which turned out to be a six- month-old Yorkie named Zoe -- short for Zoetrope, which Tan says is an animal that thinks it's a person. (Or did I get that mixed up?)
Cybercynosure Howard Rheingold slipped into his gold lame sharkskin suit early, trying to hone his hand-eye coordination as one of the Poets Who Juggle. He was having a hard time with the apples, tomatoes and lemons, especially when someone told him: "Don't bruise the fruit."
Author Clancey Carlisle, who was to perform "Love and Pain," was carefully anesthesizing himself with 100 proof vodka. You needed a pair of very dark glasses to even look at him, so dazzlingly white a presence he was in a bonafide C&W outfit -- won, he said, off Porter Waggoner in a friendly poker game. Carlisle met Waggoner on the Nashville set of "Honky Tonk Man," a Clint Eastwood film based on one of Clancey's novels (for which he wrote the screenplay, also).
The vodka was making Carlisle friendly and garrulous and by the time he got on stage, he was so tweaked, he spent 10 minutes telling everyone how he'd taken this outfit "raht off'in" Waggoner. "Made him strip on the spot."
And then there was Decca, a bit frail and hesitant as she made her way with a cane slowly to the stage, escorted by a dapper Herb Caen. In her brown chiffon top, trimmed with black sequins and a black chiffon skirt, she looked like the Grandma of the Bride. But this lovely old curmudgeon has been vaccinated by a playful muse who just won't quit. "Maxwell" has never been done with better humor or more in tune.
Cynthia Heimel pretty much said it all: "She's my hero."
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