Andrew just posted an absurd list of musical favorites, so I thought I'd respond with my own choices, partly to balance his madness, and partly because I don't want to do what I'm supposed to be doing:

Favorite bands:
1- Cheese On Bread (I wouldn't do it if I didn't like it!)
2- The Moldy Peaches
3- Le Tigre, pre-2004
4- The Tri-Lambs
5- i'm not really into bands

Favorite musical genius:
1- i don't think i believe in musical geniuses
2-
3-
4-
5-

Favorite vocalist:
1- Bjork
2- Kathleen Hanna
3- Eartha Kitt
4- Toby Goodshank
5- Dashan Coram

Favorite musical personality: (for the record this is a ridiculous category but i can't help myself)
1- Kathleen Hanna
2- Laurie Anderson
3- Peaches
4- Lach
5- Dan Fishback -- Hey, why not?

Favorite music stories: (also ridiculous)
1- Helen Stratford (i'm hoping for a happy climax and ending)
2- Barry Bliss (likewise)
3- Ivan Sandomire
4- Courtney Love
5- Jewel. Just kidding - Kimya Dawson.

Favorite songwriter:
1- folk
2- whales
3- Tori Amos, 1994-1998.
4- Regina Spektor. huh. I think I actually mean that.
5- Christy Eldridge (where did you go???)

Favorite Songs:
1- Happiness - You're a Good Man Charlie Brown
2- The The Empty - Le Tigre
3- Finlandia - Finish National Anthem
4- Cabaret - Cabaret
5- O Superman - Laurie Anderson

After making this list I feel hollow and disgusting. I shouldn't make lists.

Love
Dan

I am amazed by this sentence from my new friend Anne's livejournal:

I am going to buy cleaning supplies and clean my room with the energy of a Zionist now.

come see me tonight at PS122!

love
dan

LIST OF THINGS I WANT TO TELL YOU:

1. Friday's fundraiser show at Cake Shop is going to be unreal. Some of the best bands ever. A kissing booth with your favorite anti-folk hearthrobs and pin-up girls. Cake. Records. A chance to win your own Yamaha synthesizer. And all proceeds go to our tour! Help us show middle America how to live! (as if we know)

2. I just booked a going-away party at Sidewalk Cafe on Wednesday, June 29, at 11pm. It'll be just me, playing some quiet, tiny, little, soft, wittle, wittle, wittle songs. I'm not advertising at all really, cuz I want people to go to Friday's show. But it'll be nice. The next morning, I go to Philly and get set for tour. I'll be away OVER A MONTH. Don't let this city go to shit.

3. I have so many things to do on Saturday, my head is going to fall off.

4. On Sunday, me and Betsy and Andrew and Tom and maybe some other cool kids are going to meet in Central Park to make anti-corporate, anti-hubris posters for the gay pride parade. Then we're going to march as our own group. I don't think we have a name. Cool Kids? We're going to point out everything wrong with mainstream gay culture. Even in our big celebratory weekend, we need to remind people that things aren't cool. That mainstream gay body culture hurts everyone by devalidating old age. If you cannot imagine being happy and old, then you don't want to get old. And if you don't want to get old, you basically want to die. And if you want to die, you don't care if you get AIDS. And if you don't care if you get AIDS, you'll probably get it. And that just makes the virus stronger and more dangerous to everyone in the world, not just to the psychologically wounded gay men of New York. As long as only ONE kind of body is the acceptible gay body, our very lives are at risk. I cannot have pride in a community that does not confront this problem directly and honestly.

5. I think on Thursday I'm going to see my friend and former teacher's new play, "The Rich Silk of It" at a short play festival here: Casa Cupcake (545 9th Ave, b/w 40th & 41st); 8pm, $10, reservations: 347-993-0258.

6. Yesterday I learned how to use my roommate's Garageband program, and I recorded a new song. Soon I'm going to touch it up a little and post it here. All I want to do now is record songs on that laptop. It's addictive.

7. Tomorrow I perform at the gay pride edition of PS122's blogger talent show. I'm gonna talk a bit about Michael Jackson, while Dibs and someone else (maybe you? email me!) play atmospheric music behind me. Cesar was supposed to come play clarinet, but then he became lame.

8. On Wednesday, Dibs releases his gorgeous new cd. I will be there, enjoying the good tunes and clapping loudly. Preston from Sewing Circle plays after him. Preston is the new cool guy.

9. The new season of Queer as Folk is D-E-P-R-E-S-S-I-N-G.

10. If they really do destroy NPR and PBS, I am going to F-L-I-P [space] O-U-T.

11. Last night I got to sing a song with the Tri-Lambs, my favorite band. I love singing with them. I especially love singing the part that goes, "AND I WANNA MAKE LOVE TO YOU! LIKE YOU WANT IT BAD! I COULD BE YOUR PRETTY MAMA, BABY! YOU CAN BE MY BABY'S DAD!" I would never write a lyric like that, so it feels good to sing it. Actually I probably would write a lyric like that. Actually I probably have.

12. On Saturday night, me and Cool Kid Betsy had a rad and cheap dinner at Kellogg's Diner. Don't you love it when you make a new friend, and you generally just see each other and scream and have fun, and then you finally get to sit down with them and have a serious conversation, and you realize they're just as grounded and serious and thoughtful as you hope that you are? That's a great feeling. Then we saw Clemence play at Pete's Candy Store with the Babyskins. They sounded great together. I really liked Clemence's songs. I like songs by French girls more than songs by French boys. I had a really lovely conversation about alternative medicine, food, and energy with Diane Cluck. I told her about how Benjamin called me from the pitch-black-middle-of-the-night dome of a Buddist temple in California, just to thank me for putting one of her songs on a mix cd I made for him. (The CD was labelled "Totally Buddha!") She gave me advice about different healers in NYC, and what to do with energy during and after a performance. I used to collapse after every Cheese On Bread show, until I started directing my energy through my body and to my feet, instead of through my feet and out my head. Now, my energy stays between me and the Earth, and it doesn't just get lost in outer space. And YES, Dad, I really did say that. I really am a freaking hippie. I love you! How was the rest of your father's day?

13. I think on Sunday, my dad is getting an award from PFLAG for being the best dad ever. I don't think that's the official title of the award, but that's pretty much what it comes down to. He's been fighting the forces of heterosexist oppression in Montgomery County for the last couple of years. In the last battle, they won, but only because they lied and cheated. My dad is remarkably unphased. I would have flipped out, but he's just like, "Well it's not over." Bravo. I cannot believe that my Dad is literally a superhero for gay children. It's true. He's like Batman, except without a costume, and for gay children, and everything he does is legal and not really weird at all. I would come down to Maryland to watch him get the award, but I have to work on tour stuff all day on Saturday, and wake up really early on Monday, and then travel non-stop for a WHOLE MONTH, so I think the same-day round-trip trainride would break me. Instead I'm going to preach the gospel of Dad at the Pride Parade.

14. I got a great email from Gregg the other day.

15. My roommate made roasted turnips last weekend, and they were amazing. I didn't know turnips were roastable. She made them with rosemary.

16. I'm glad they're going to destroy the abandoned houses in Gaza Strip to make room for Palestinian high-rises. I think the destruction itself will probably vent a lot of pent-up rage that might otherwise get filtered into un-contained violence. Maybe we should stage acts of inconsequential violence all the time, so that people can let off some steam. Actually, now that I'm typing this, it's starting to sound like a GREAT idea.

17. Buy my ALBUM already!!!!!

18. I should do other things now.

19. I probably miss and love you.

All of those things,
Dan

-listening to josh malamy's new album, and really liking it. i listened to it several times over the past week or so, waiting to like it. i knew i would. now i do.

-yesterday i bought a copy of lolita and i'm sort of frighteningly into it. nabokov is one slick mother. i'm reading it for my new one-man show, "please let me love you." a lot of the show will be about pedophilia, so i'm making a pedophilia reading list. the next book i want to read is about the fake "sex ring scare" in the 80s, by that lady who was in capturing the friedmans. i've been wanting to read that for a long time.

-i'm going to a diner with betsy now. betsy's my favorite new friend.

-why are sara and kevin in portland? i would like to know

-lippe lent cheese on bread a car-lighter-adapter for the tour! lippe is the best!

-tomorrow i will clean my house and finish making presskits to send! i will also call my AWESOME DAD because it's FATHER'S DAY!!!!!!!

love
dan

great show at sidewalk last night. as betsy and i were walking away, we were talking about toby's great set, and that prompted me to talk about kimya's great set the other night, and then betsy's like, "speaking of the moldy peaches, the other day i saw adam green for the first time in like three years!" and i said, "that's odd," and she said, "why?" and i said, "cause he just passed us." and she swung around and went, "ADAM!" and he came back and they hugged, and i got introduced, and then he went to go sing kareoke, and i said, "well that felt awkward," and betsy was like, "why," and i was like, "because yesterday i wrote a song about how much i don't like his last album," and then betsy fell down on the sidewalk.

love
dan

material undocumented from last weekend:

1) andrew's cd release was rad. i was the sound tech, which should say something. we sang a folk-pop version of "o superman," and have now decided to start a laurie anderson cover band called the o superboys. andrew opened for himself, as half of peppermint patty with betsy. i liked it much. i flirted with the idea of inviting myself to be the band's third member, but instead i proposed a new band entirely, an idea at which they screamed. we will be called "princesspool," which is a name i love, that all my other friends hate.

2) friday was gay day at stuyvesant high school! my adrienne mishkin came to see me, since she went to stuy way back in the early 90s. class of 99, man - like me. anyway, so i played some songs and told some really rambly stories. the kids who remembered me screamed for my "like a virgin/boi with an i" medley, which, though less topical than last year, still went over quite well. i couldn't believe it'd been a year since my last stuyvesant gay day. i totally remembered this girl whose name is, i think, calypso, who was very enthusiastic and friendly. i got lots of big eager high school hugs. i love high school kids. they have so much energy, and so few inhibitions. they're not afraid to get excited about things. anyway, most of the crowd left during the second act, which was called "the old queer improv troupe" or something. it was a bunch of elderly lesbians who performed skits about homophobia, and then asked the audience to discuss it with them. it was really geared towards older people who are vaguely uncomfortable with homosexuality, not a bunch of teenage kids who started puberty during the will&grace/queereyeforthedumbass years. it was all very awkward, and i felt bad for the old ladies, who nobody could really hear anyway. things picked up when the rad science teacher played "chidlren of the revolution" and a song about chemistry. when the last act, my dude regi c, didn't show up, they asked me and the teacher to come up with a medley. we played "rebel girl." the mere fact that this science teacher knew a bikini kill song is so beautiful -- those kids don't know how lucky they are! after everything was over i sold some cds and ate some pastries. my little friend gus, who graduated last year, appeared, prompting much flurry and awe from the kids he left behind. it was so cute -- i remember that feeling, when you're in high school and someone returns from college, and you look at them like they're the coolest person ever, and you just want to touch them so that some of their independence and knowledge will ooze onto your skin and infect you with awesomeness. i watched and giggled. yay high school!

3) after gay day, i went to the big shiragirl/warped tour launch party at the knitting factory. me and hilarious elaine sat around a lot and bitched about how we don't really like punk music, which was funny cuz she had a pink mohawk. marissa made an appearance and talked about dyke march, and how some genderqueer people want to change it to "queer march," to make room for folks in the community who don't identify as women. pro: people shouldn't feel excluded or homeless. con: the women who created dyke march shouldn't have to change the paramaters of their own movement or their own identity to make room for anyone. i'm conflicted about the whole thing. i understand wanting to be in on dyke march. dyke march is a great idea. i wish I had an radical alternative to the pride parade in which i could take part. as a radical queer boy, the radical dyke community is sorta the closest thing i have to an organized home, and yet i know that i have no business really setting up shop there, or in having any say in anything they do. if i wasn't doing anything else, i'd try to organize some radical queer boys together, but i think i know deep down that would never work. especially since i know like...two. what do YOU think? (emailsR4faggots@danfishback.com) anyway, so the show: shira was in top form, though all her electronics fell apart, and the band had to play the songs live. this was all fine by me, as i think they sound awesome with just guitars and bass and drums. it provides a lot of energy on which shira can just coast and improvise. some dude spilled his beer on me, which was not cool. luckily, it was hot as balls in that room, so it all evaporated real quick.

i think that's everything i did last weekend. i can't believe it's almost this weekend. rawk!

love
dan

In late 2003, I often performed in make-up, a tutu, boas, velvet blazers, and all sorts of edifying homosexual finery. It got me lots of attention, and I started to make a name for myself in the downtown performance art and folk music worlds. But, after shows, people would come up to me and talk about my hair, and my make-up, and my clothes...

And no one ever said anything about my songs.

So I packed up my Wet n' Wild lipsticks and my pink tutu, and I assumed a more stripped-down, less glaringly-constructed stage persona. It was still just as methodical as before, only now I was methodically constructing a conventional-but-quirky folksinger, as opposed to the glam/Weimar/punk/ballerina/businessman/minstrel I had previously developed. There was nothing dishonest about either character. Both were simply contexts within which I could manipulate myself emotionally on stage, to excise something useful and beautiful for the audience. And for me.

Still. I like make-up. It can look beautiful, and I like looking beautiful. I missed it. I felt so crunchy, so granola, and that's nice, but it can only go so far. So I decided to bring back my cosmetics eventually, but only in the right context -- a context where my appearance would contribute to and not define my aesthetic. A context where the audience wouldn't get fixated on my eyeliner.

So, last Tuesday, when I rehearsed with Dibs, Chris, and Gregg for the debut (and potentially only) performance of Dan Fishback & the Faggots, I figured that, if we were good, I'd get glammed up for Saturday's show. If it was just okay, I'd wear a t-shirt and parachute pants.

It was good.

Saturday morning, I shaved my face. Then I shaved my head. I wore a yellow tshirt that said "Blondes Have More Fun," with a tattered blue dress-shirt (cut off completely from the armpits down) and a purple tie. I put on some grey parachute pants just for the hell of it. With purplish lips and blackened eyes, I looked like a sort of preppy/gothic Michael Stipe.

Performing with The Faggots was one of the most satisfying things I've done, on stage or off, in quite a while. I was determined to lend my songs a seriousness that my own rambliness and lack of guitar prowess tends to foreclose. Judging from the audience response, I think that came across quite well.

I'm still riding on a performance high. I wish I wasn't doing so many things at the same time, so I could explore this project more thoroughly. I doubt The Faggots will be more than an occasional indulgence. But what an indulgence!

In the meantime, I feel less uneasy about my make-up bag, though I will never use these tools gratuitously. These products are probably the holiest things I own. Lipstick can generate more transcendence than most of the books on my shelves. When I understand that more fully, I will try to articulate that understanding here.

Until then, know this: I look like G.I. Jane!

Love
Dan

-I'm at Dibs' now, listening to the final mixes on his new album. It sounds amazing. Full. Soulful. Plentiful. Thoughtful. Beautiful. Full. This CD will be my new companion for the next month or so.

-Came here from Jason's apartment, where we made preparations for tour, and played with the dog, and drank iced coffee.

-Came there from a bountiful brunch at Kate's Diner, with Dibs, Dashan, Yoko, Casey, and Chris Maher. My brunch came with a bloody mary, so I gave it to Yoko. She said she wished she could have brunch with each of us as little children. We all pretty much replied, "That's what you're doing." I love my friends.

-Came there from Phoebe's house, where we all woke up on floors and couches.

-Came there from last night, when we were at Phoebe's house, playing Chris Maher's "Your New Boyfriend" in the style of all of our friends. Some of us sported some dead-on impressions. We were joined by the genius Lippe, the lovely Bernard, and the inimitable Gregg Mervine. We drank beers.

-Came there from Sidewalk. I'll get to that in my next post. I gotta go to the Andrew Phillip Tipton CD release!

My First Burlesque Performance:

Okay, so I didn't really take off my clothes. It wasn't reallly even a burlesque. It was a "cyber-burlesque." I sat on stage with my laptop and pretended to type, while the sound guy played a CD of me and my friend Andrew reading a fake cyber-sex conversation, in which my character undresses himself on stage at an artsy performance venue in Williamsburg. (To which Andrew's character exclaims, "Oh my god, Williamsburg gives me a boner!")

As the piece progresses, my character makes many indirect jibes at burlesque culture and the Whitney Biennial.

I thought it was a scream, but the (mostly straight male) audience was expecting titties. Compounding this conflict of interests:

a) I went on first.
b) The (very sweet, honest to god) booker invited me and the other performers to "play with the genre," but no one told the audience or even the host to expect a line-up of performance artists.
c) The host, Murray Hill, heckled me into the microphone during my piece, so the audience couldn't hear some of the funniest punchlines.

Anyway, the crowd yelled things like "KILL YOURSELF!" and "JUST DIE ALREADY!" throughout the whole piece. Afterwards, however, several people came up to me to say they thought it was successful and fascinating and all sorts of other nice adjectives. Thank goodness for thoughtful people! I've never done that kind of performance before -- where everyone either LOATHES it or LOVES it. That's supposed to be a sign that I'm doing something right, yes?

(Poor Homo Catalano actually had some drunk girl rush the stage to beat him up. At least my taunts remained verbal.)

I was at Galapagos again last night for Phoebe's amazing set, and the hot bartender was like, "That was some night, the other night." I was like, "Yeah that certainly happened."

Anyway, I'm mad psyched for:

FRIDAY: Gay Day at Stuyvesant High School! Then a free Shiragirl show at the Knitting Factory!

SATURDAY: Surprise Personal Cosmetic Revolution (you'll see)! The debut of DAN FISHBACK AND THE FAGGOTS -- Sidewalk Cafe at 11pm! Be there!

love
dan

details of my burlesque experience forthcoming. for now...


You are Percy Bysshe Shelley! Famous for your
dreamy abstraction and your quirky verse,
you're the model "sensitive poet." A
vegetarian socialist with great personal charm
and a definite way with the love poem, you
remain an idol for female readers. There are
dozens of cute anecdotes about you, and I love
you.


Which Major Romantic Poet Would You Be (if You Were a Major Romantic Poet)?
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I want tour to start right now. It isn't starting fast enough. It has to start now.

Tonight is my big debut as a stripper. I hope everything goes well. Come cheer me on and throw dollars.

Love
Dan

my parents think that my half-assed star wars post is evidence that i should return to aggressively pursuing a "writing career," whatever that is.

it's funny, cuz some people say, "mom, dad, i want to be a writer," and their parents go, "shut up, go to law school."

whereas i say, "mom, dad, i want to be a performance-artist/singer-songwriter/rockstar," and my parents go, "have you thought about WRITING?"

i guess i'm just a hobo's hobo.

i'm also apparently a stripper, because i'm performing this monday at galapagos' "GALOPAGAZONGA AMATEUR BURLESQUE NIGHT," along with neal medlyn and some other performance artists. i'm taking my cue from gypsy rose lee, however, and not julie atlas muz, though i love them both equally. and although i know it's bad form, i have to say: i hope i win! it'd be nice to have an extra $300 lying around. and it'd probably make my parents pretty darn proud. "look mom, look dad! i'm not going to be an artist OR a writer! i'm just going to take off my clothes for money! when can we tell grandma!?"

love
dan