If you haven't had a chance to check out The Not So Late Show hosted by Johnny DiLoretto, you are missing out. Along with co-host Sommer Sterud and house band MOJOFLO, Johnny interviews all sorts of interesting folks from the 614. Taping is the last Thursday of the month at the Shadowbox Bistro, advance tickets are available or you can just show up at the door. The next show is Thursday, September 29th. Click here for more details. Below is an example of the good times rolling with Pencilstorm's own Colin Gawel.
An Interview with Johnny DiLoretto about Mooch and Pinsky
Mooch and Pinsky: The Shocking Story of Two Comedy Legends will be performed at Shadowbox Live on Tuesday July 21st at 8pm. Tickets are $5 and are available @ www.shadowboxlive.org or at the door. Johnny DiLoretto was kind enough to answer a few questions from Colin G. about the show.
CG) You and Jimmy Mak go way back. Do you remember when you first met and what was the first idea you guys performed together in front of an audience?
JD) Yes, absolutely I remember the first time I met Jimmy. How could I forget? He was sporting one of those Michael Jackson red-leather Thriller jackets, a spiked mullet, and no pants. Hard to shake, really.
Jimmy and I were best friends and creative collaborators through high school and college and we made a hundred silly video sketches, but until Mooch and Pinsky, we'd never performed an entire show - that we conceived of - together on stage. This is kind of a silly dream come true.
CG) Can you give a brief rundown on what Mooch and Pinsky is all about?
JD) The basic idea behind the show is a theatrical mockumentary. Kind of like This is Spinal Tap, but done live on stage and about a comedy duo instead of a heavy metal band. Mooch and Pinsky were a 1950's comedy nightclub act that hit it big in Hollywood. They made three of the greatest comedy movies of the 60's then vanished. The show is a search for the answer to their mysterious disappearance - and also an excuse for me and Jimmy to dress in drag a couple times...
CG) So at what point did Mooch and Pinsky transform from an idea that sounded good after eleven cocktails to "Let's really do this thing?" Was there one moment when the idea became a reality?
JD) This is exactly the kind of idea Jimmy and I would have had when we were 19. We were drinking one night and kicking around the idea of doing a live mockumentary. Once we settled on that it was just a matter of figuring out the subject. Being Steubenville boys, we thought Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis seemed like a good jumping off point.
CG) How difficult was it to decide on the names Mooch and Pinsky? Were there other names in the running?
JD) HA - great question. I think we sat around one evening and spent the better part of the night drinking and tossing around names. We wanted one Italian name and one Jewish name. Then we just started throwing them at each other until we started laughing. There were certainly other names in the running. Probably Poppatoozi and Bergman; Nippoli and Klein; Frappatelli and Gould... You get the picture.
CG) How did you decide who got to be Mooch and who got to be Pinsky?
JD) We just kind of fell naturally into those two parts. The smooth Italian singer turned comedian fell to me; and the wound-up goofball went to Jimmy. But somewhere along the line they both turned ridiculous.
CG) Does the show change each time you do perform or does it stay pretty close to your original draft?
JD) This is only the second time we've ever done it. There are only a few tweaks between this and the first performance. But we love the idea. And plan to keep working on it to see where it goes.
CG) Without giving away too much, do you have a personal favorite moment in the show that people should keep an eye out for?
JD) I definitely think drag turned out to be a surprise highlight of the show. There's a fun "interview" with Mooch's parents with me as the Italian mom that's a lot of fun. But later both of us play a pair of dancing sisters who used to open for Mooch and Pinsky and that bit gets out of hand pretty quickly.
CG) Do you and Jimmy have any future/bigger plans for Mooch and Pinsky or do you take it on a show by show basis?
JD) A part of the show consists of seeing "clips" from the three Mooch and Pinsky films. We tried to make them look like zany B-comedies from the 60's, but we didn't have the time or resources to pull them off exactly like we wanted. I think that element of the show has a lot of potential -- seeing scenes from the movies, maybe old interviews with the duo, or seeing video from their live TV show, The Milk of Magnesia Comedy Hour.....
Truth be told, midway through writing this show last year we thought it might be a little too out there, but the audience got the concept and loved the characters. Some people even thought they were a real comedy team! So, I think the plan is to just keep pushing the concept forward and see how far we can take it.
CG) Thanks for answering my questions and best of luck to Mooch and Pinsky.
JD) Thanks Colin! We appreciate the chance to shamelessly promote the show. By the way, tickets are only $5, so if it's abysmal just order a pizza.
Shadowbox Live Presents "Louder Than Love" (Grande Ballroom documentary) Sunday, July 20, 7 pm / Bonus Content by Mike Parks & Ricki C.
First the details, below that some great MC5 readin' from Ricki C. & Mike Parks.
Shadowbox Live (503 S. Front Street, phone 416-7625) will present Louder Than Love, the acclaimed documentary about Detroit’s legendary Grande Ballroom this Sunday, July 20th, at 7 pm. The Grande (pronounced Gran-DEE) was Detroit’s version of the Fillmore East and West, Chicago’s Kinetic Playground or the Boston Tea Party, the great rock & roll ballrooms of the 1960’s. Produced & directed by filmmaker Tony D’Annunzio, Louder Than Love won Best Documentary Award at the Las Vegas Film Festival, Best Independent Standout Award at Hell's Half Mile Movie & Music Festival, and has had 16 consecutive sold-out screenings.
Shadowbox Live plans to provide a true Grande Ballroom experience with the award-winning film interlaced with authentic light shows, original poster art and artists.
Legendary MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer will join Shadowbox house band Bill Who? as they kick out the jams on tunes by not only The MC5, but also Led Zeppelin, The Who and more.
Some of the greatest bands in the world got their start or made their name at the Grande Ballroom in the late 60’s and early 70’s. Louder Than Love is the greatest untold story in rock & roll history as revealed by the musicians, artists and people who lived it.
Schedule of Events:
4:00pm – Doors Open to the Backstage Bistro. There will be a gallery and sale showcasing authentic rock art and photography
6:30pm – Doors Open to Shadowbox Live
7:00pm – Louder Than Love Begins
For ticket prices and more information on Louder Than Love, Sunday July 20th, please visit www.shadowboxlive.com.
The MC5 and The Grande Ballroom by Mike Parks
The MC5/Grande Ballroom symbiotic relationship: linked together forever.
Detroit and Ann Arbor in the late 1960’s were violent, high-voltage and dangerous. The MC5 was the response, referred to as “The fathers of metal & punk,” but they were in a category by themselves.
My involvement in the 5’s story happened by accident: a fork in the road. To celebrate my expulsion the last day of my senior year of high school, my hitchhiking partner and fellow musician Phil Stokes and I decided to go to Chicago to a Spooky Tooth and Bo Diddley concert. En route we were tossed off the Ohio turnpike by a patrolman who suggested we go to Detroit where we might find satisfaction.
That night we ended up on the doorstep of the Grande Ballroom, where the MC5 were playing. This was a pivotal moment. After the show we met the sole member of the road crew who offered us a road gig and a floor to sleep on at the MC5’s Hill Street house. We accepted and turned one night into a summer of electrifying shows.
Fred “Sonic” Smith and Wayne Kramer were two of rockdom’s best dual guitarists – tight and damaging. Rob Tyner was a fearless front-man. The rhythm section of Dennis Thompson and Michael Davis: NUCLEAR. Each live show outperformed the last, and obliterated the politics and bad management that surrounded them.
The MC5 was like no other band.
A True Testimonial. - Mike Parks / July 17th, 2014
THE MC5 IN 1968 by Ricki C.
“I was 16 in 1968 the first time I heard The MC5
Rock & roll was, at that point, the only thing keeping me alive”
Ricki C. / “If All My Heroes Are Losers” / © 2000
I first heard of The MC5 sometime in 1968. I can’t remember exactly how, it was just part of that Teenage Jungle Telegraph that existed back in those days. There was no real Rock Press to speak of back then, Rolling Stone had just started publishing, and you could only buy it in head shops on campus, not in every Meijers and Kroger’s. There was certainly no internet or YouTube. If you wanted to see a band you had to GET IN YOUR CAR, DRIVE TO A VENUE AND PAY MONEY TO WATCH THEM. (How very quaint.) And there were no Smartphones, Spotify and Rhapsody: if you wanted to hear a band you had to go downtown to Marco Records or Lazarus and BUY A SLAB OF VINYL. (Grandpa, what was vinyl?)
Anyway my rock & roll best friend Dave Blackburn and I somehow discovered The MC5 (I’m betting by some connection to The Who) and became Instant Raving Fans. We were lower-middle class West Side boys – although attending a rather genteel Catholic high school, I must admit – who had mortal blows delivered to our beloved jagged-edge Power Rock & Roll by the Summer Of Love bands in 1967. I mean, I’m sure Jefferson Airplane and The Grateful Dead meant well, but let’s face facts, they were hardly delivering the likes of “My Generation” or “Get Off My Cloud.” (And indeed, it was during soundcheck at Detroit’s Grande Ballroom that The MC5 – who were opening that night for rather lightweight Boston folk-rockers The Beacon Street Union – first issued the timeless invocation “Kick out the jams, motherfuckers.”)
Dave & I and our West Side compadres were hippies for about 20 minutes, but even as early as ’68 we were looking for something a little wilder and a lot louder & harder, ya know? And The MC5 and all the other Detroit bands fit that bill to a tee. Plus they were only one state over from Ohio, so they played the Midwest like the local bands that they were. (I saw the Bob Seger System at the Sugar Shack on 4th Street more times than I can count.)
And then in February 1969 the first MC5 album – Kick Out The Jams – was released and OUR FUCKING BRAINS EXPLODED! Really, I can’t overestimate to you the effect that album had on our teenage psyches. From the very first moments of Brother J.C. Crawford’s intro straight through to the last outer-space noises of “Starship” this record is one for the ages. (Is it the Greatest Live Rock & Roll Record of All Time? It was until the expanded version of The Who’s “Live At Leeds” was released in the CD era. And some nights at my house even now, 45 years later, the original vinyl edition of “Kick Out The Jams” still kicks Pete & the boys’ asses.)
Okay, okay, okay, I promised I’d keep this at 500 words, we’re rapidly headed for 900 and I could go on like this all night, so let me just say this: The MC5 were one of the five greatest bands EVER on this planet. They kicked out a truly fearsome noise, they had killer stage outfits and they did unison dance steps, like a punk/metal Temptations or Four Tops (they were from Motown after all). In some ways they were like James Brown backed by The Who, and what more could you ask for in a rock & roll band? The MC5 never made it big because they were just too loud, too smart, too uncompromising, too political, just flat-out too bad-ass to play The Great American Entertainment Game and become Big Stars. (It’s widely held that The MC5 were the target/inspiration for The Beatles couplet: “And if you go carryin’ pictures of Chairman Mao / You ain’t gonna make it with anyone anyhow” in the song “Revolution.” For a West Side boy like me, those whiny limey bastards putting down my Midwest crew was just too hard to stomach.) (sidenote – It was only five years from The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show to The MC5 at the Grande, five years from “I Want To Hold Your Hand” to “Kick Out The Jams.” Where have we gone in the last five years in what is today laughingly referred to as rock & roll: from Mumford & Sons to Imagine Dragons? God help us.)
The MC5 were, in many ways, their own worst enemies: they refused to play by the rules, refused to keep their mouths shut, made their fair share of bad decisions, managed to alienate both the Straight AND the Hip Worlds (The Velvet Underground in particular) and eventually tumbled down into Street Drug Hell. Does any of that make me love them less? No, it just makes me respect them more: because we were all lower middle-class boys and we were all supposed to be in this together. Kick out the jams, motherfuckers.
(ps. The MC5 is not in The Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame. And that is why I do not go there.) – Ricki C. / July 15th, 2014.
Jimmy Mak Wrote This The Morning After 9/11. You Can Read It Today.
Message: SEPTEMBER 11, 2001
I was supposed to be at work at 8:30 for a meeting, a meeting I had called, a meeting I was in charge of, a meeting … I had completely forgotten about. I sauntered into the office at nine and casually headed to my desk. My fellow manager immediately gave me grief about the meeting and how this kind of thing simply can not happen. “Shit!” Not a good way to start off the morning.
At 9:15 I was hard at work, a little depressed that people had come in early counting on me and I had let them down. Suddenly, I heard some talk outside the office of a plane that had hit one of the twin towers at the world trade center. It didn’t mean anything to me. I immediately thought, “Jesus, that sucks,” but thought of it in the same way I would about a car crash I hear on the news. I couldn’t believe I missed that stupid meeting. I kept working.
Someone suddenly called out, “Hey man, you should come listen to this.” I walked out of my office and saw staff members sitting there, listening to the radio. Another plane had hit the other tower. Then we heard that a plane hit the Pentagon. Then a plane crashed outside of Pittsburgh, PA. My eyes started darting back and forth. What the hell? We … we were under attack. Today. No warning. I caught myself looking up for no reason. What the hell was going on? One of the towers collapsed. Then the other one. People dead. Twin towers … gone. We all just … just sat there. Impotent.
I expected the attacks to go on all day, but they didn’t. Four planes. The rest were accounted for. Hours went by. It was over.
My wife and I work together and at about three in the afternoon we took a walk outside. Just to … to get away from the madness. We walked to one of the benches that outlined a fountain in the town square. The fountain was a large square on ground level where water would randomly spurt out at different places. Parents would always bring their children there in bathing suits and let them play. Today it was empty except for one older gentleman, easily in his late sixties, and he was walking a little girl, who looked to be about three, through the fountain. Every time the water spurt, the little girl would laugh-scream and the older man would quicken his step until they were safe outside the square. Then they would turn around and head back toward the danger, he walking right behind her, she reaching up and holding his fingers so as not to fall.
My wife closed her body into mine and rested her head on my shoulder. The sky was perfect blue, dark and bright at the same time, comic book blue. And the yellows and reds and greens of the surrounding buildings made everything a cartoon. Trees rustled peacefully and I closed my eyes, listening to the sudden sounds of water splashing and a small girl laughing and with my wife in my arms, I thought, “Everything is perfect.”
Then I heard a new sound and when I opened my eyes I saw a plane in the sky and my heart started beating faster and I just froze, watching the white streak stain a scar across the sky and the sadness overwhelmed me because I knew. It was all different now. Everything was different.
Jimmy Mak is the head writer for Shadowbox Live, the largest resident theater company in America. Learn More at Shadowboxlive.org
Columbusland, or... The Abby Singer Show!
I used to be on TV. But, after ten years, I had to leave because of the man. And by “the man,” I mean this dick I worked for.
While I was pondering leaving my high profile, perk-riddled gig, my wife asked me if I could do it.
“Do what?” I asked.
“Not be on TV,” she said.
“What, are you kidding?”
Was she implying that I was some sort of egomaniac who needed to be on TV, like I needed the attention of an audience in order to be fulfilled?
Yes. She was.
“Of course, I don’t need to be on TV. That’s preposterous.”
It wasn’t long after I started my new job at the Gateway Film Center that I began plotting ways of getting my face on the screen. Why be on TV when you can be in the movies?
Yes, it killed me, but she was right.
The first piece I shepherded into being was a promo spot for the film center’s annual summer Double Barrel Western Series.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcWwHiXb6QE
Well, seeing my mug plastered across a 50-foot wide screen was all the encouragement I needed to do more.
As part of the Cinema Classics film series, a companion to the WCBE radio show of the same name that I co-host with my friend John DeSando, I saw another opportunity: comedy sketches that spoofed the movies we were showing.
They both feature an idiot studio exec who doesn’t quite get the geniuses who work for him. In the first one, he (me) tussles with Stanley Kubrick; and in the second, Orson Welles. Jimmy Mak, ShadowboxLive’s head comedy writer and an old friend, plays both directors -- brilliantly. DeSando turns up in a weird non-sequitir cameo in both.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48XxD4nDBek
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1w6T-Lna6Q
Fortunately, my boss, the phenomenally talented and brainy and not susceptible to in-print ass kissing, Chris Hamel, approved of these extracurricular activities. In fact, he’s so game he played the James Bond figure that my Nameless Cowboy guns down in the Western bit. What kind of a boss allows that to happen? An awesome one.
So, Chris asked me what I thought of the film center’s pre-show. For those of you not familiar with theater parlance, a pre-show is that generic package of trivia questions, ads, and animations that plays before the movie and is generally ignored.
We sat and watched the pre-show together. In its entirety. Afterwards, he asked me what I thought and I told him I thought it was crap. He agreed and asked if we could do better. Naturally.
And so, our new in-house show was conceived. After breathlessly kicking around different titles based on obscure movie jargon like The Cross Cut the good ideas began to flag. By the time we were seriously considering calling it The Abby Singer Show we were good and loopy. “But no one will know who or what an Abby Singer* is,” our co-workers cautioned. “Right!” we shouted back. “That’s the beauty part.” Eventually, having reached the nadir of our naming sessions, Chris blurted out Columbusland.
Abby Singer, for the record, is the second to last shot of the day on a movie production, named after 1950s Hollywood production manager and assistant director, Abner "Abby" Singer. When Singer's crew would ask how many shots were left to do he'd answer, "We'll do this and one more."
Fortunately, the "Abby Singer" show idea never left Chris's office. The basic idea survived though and that was to create a loosely formatted, informal talk show in which we would interview Columbus prominents about the movies while drinking. And the city would be our playground.
Kinopicz American, a hyper-talented production company in Grandview, agreed to take the project on and brought their insight and ideas. In order to keep the show from becoming me and Chris drinking and ego-jousting, Kino, as we affectionately call them, suggested bringing on a Girl Friday who would temper the testosterone and drastically drop the combined age of the two-man cast which if combined would approach octogenarian heights.
We immediately thought of social media maven and Columbus vlogging sensation, Amy "Schmittastic" Schmittauer.
We thought Amy would anchor the show, keep it grounded, but she quickly proved to be as strange as we are, and so the show quickly took on a life of its own. So far we’ve only shot 3 episodes, but it continues to evolve. We’ve worked in more scripted comedy and we’re playing around with the interview dynamics, and, quite frankly, I'm not sure where it's headed. As long as it continues to get better, which it has, we'll all be happy.
Each episode of Columbusland runs at the Gateway Film Center for 8 weeks and you can see the show 20 minutes before any movie we’re showing. Well, due to the constant cocktail drinking and frequent light cursing, you can see it before any PG-13 or R- rated movie.
The entire endeavor, it bears repeating, is the kind of project that can happen when a cool boss rolls the dice on a great idea and lets it ride.
Here’s episode two: