Mr. Cosby is ready for you

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Pudding pops. Sweaters. Based on the reactions of some of the people I talked to about interviewing Bill Cosby — America’s dad, the savior of the sitcom, bestselling author and failed movie star — these are the things they first associate with the man who prefers to be called “Mr. Cosby,” even though, technically, he is Dr. William H. Cosby Jr., holder of a doctorate in education, and a trailblazer not only in entertainment but in all of modern American life.

In 1983, he released a landmark concert film called Bill Cosby, Himself, which defined his legacy as our greatest storytelling comedian. He recently discussed his approach to comedy, noting that he was willing to go out of his way to help sell tickets for this tour, as the economy was hurting advance sales. LEO was thrilled to have the chance to speak with the legend.

LEO: So, why should people come to your show?
Bill Cosby: (deadpan) I have no idea. (I laugh). Now, you have to write all this stuff down, you know, because it might be funny. I’m not gonna go through anything except: I know I’m good — that’s first of all. I know I’m a master at what I do. No. 3, I’m a performance … funny man. A storyteller.

Mr. Cosby then told a long, random story about a man who approached him on the street, laughing. The man said, “I’m not alone,” then continued walking. Mr. Cosby got in his car and was driven away. At a traffic light, he saw the man, still walking and laughing. The encounter stuck with him.

BC: I recently played a hall in Carmel, Ind. That’s “car-mul,” not “car-mell.” The driver turned to me about halfway through our drive to the airport and said to me, “I was listening to you work while I waited for you. How many people are in your show?” I said, “It’s just me!” He said, “Well, it sounds like four or five people are up there.” So that’s a part of the performance. I don’t do voices anymore. I may do attitudes, or I do characters ... I do what I’ve seen, and what I imagine. I’m my own editor, my own director, my own writer. And I’m aiming to make people feel comfortable.

Mr. Cosby then asked if I would hold for a minute. I said yes, wondering if he would return.

BC: (returning) OK!
LEO: You were talking about telling stories.
BC: Well, see, when I went out to perform in the second show, what he’s talking about, I decided to do something about our daughter, my wife and I, when she was about to enter college. So I had to do the character of my wife. I did the character of my daughter. I did the character of the president of the school, the president’s secretary, I did the character of the president giving the graduation speech, and then some characters going up and receiving diplomas. That’s what he was talking about.

I know what I’m going to do the last 10 minutes before going on, but once I get out there, I know what I want done. And that is for people to feel, as they leave, exactly what I told you before. Because I often wondered, in the beginning, the first 20 years of my career — maybe the first 30 — it became a question with comedians, that if a comedian, man or woman, goes on stage and they do rock-sock and people are laughin’, how they don’t have a shelf life that a funny play would have. That a funny play could come to town and play with, let’s say a star, who … could do that funny play, and it would be sold out! For a whole week! Why can’t a comedian who gets 50 times the laughs do the same kind of business? And I figured that the reason would be because there’s no performance, so to speak.

Comedians come up and they start talking and they, you know, do this and, “Why does the chicken cross the road to get to the other side hohohaha.” I’ve had people come to me after 30, 40 years — “We saw you in 1973 and we laughed so hard!” and then they start telling me about the damage it did to them — which may be the reason they didn’t come back — but they were laughing so hard and their sides were burning and their face was hurting, and I’m thinking, “And when did you see me again?” “Well, I think this is the second time.” How come you can’t remember? What is it that didn’t bring you back? … I decided 30 years ago, “OK, we’re gonna start forming and making these stories longer, and fitting characters in, so that there are things they will really and truly get to want to see and hear, just like a play.”

LEO: There have been so few comedians who have followed in that tradition. You’re kind of alone out there.
BC: (ruefully) Yeah.

LEO: Why do you think that is?
BC: Well, I think — look, it’s like the argument, “Can you teach comedy?” And the answer is, “Yes.” And then a big (roaring sound), “You can’t do that!” No, no, no — you’re talking about the people who can play Carnegie Hall. I’m talking about the ones you can sit in a classroom and you can teach them. Just like pianists who don’t make it to Carnegie Hall. You’ve got levels of people who can take lessons, learn, understand — but then it takes the special ones. And comedians are, many times, similar because it is show business … they’ll have a one-hit joke, or whatever, and never get another one … And I think there are more comedians than ever before because all these little clubs are around, and the source of entertainment is not necessarily “clean comedy.” It’s sort of like, “OK, people are ashamed, and putting their hands up to their mouths in embarrassment.” To just flat-out laughing out loud at the profanity and whatever, so there’s that level, which I sort of put not at … “burlesque” is not the word … yeah, burlesque! That’s burlesque comedy. Where you can actually say the curse words, for that reason. And until it was made legal, they couldn’t do it. Poor Lenny Bruce.

LEO: Don’t you think there’s been some merit to the ways George Carlin and Richard Pryor were able to use that language?
BC: OK, now, so that’s two (laughs).

LEO: Right.
BC: And they were vanguard. They were vanguard. Then came people who just heard that they could now curse. (Mr. Cosby sings a vampy fanfare).

LEO: Like you said, it’s a form of burlesque. It’s a different style of entertainment for a different crowd.
BC: Yeah! Yeah!

LEO: And you think it sets comedy back as an art form?
BC: No. No. The art form is unto itself. There are great performers who can say those words and they have the material to match. And they’re wonderful. I don’t name them. And then there are others who will always be at that level, where the guy walks out and says, “Do 15 minutes,” and they come out and they curse (laughs). “And now, ladies and gentlemen, we have a strong line-up of professional cursers …” And that’s entertainment!

Mr. Cosby then spent eight minutes teaching me more about how to be a good comedian, a lesson I will always treasure, if not necessarily use professionally.

Bill Cosby
Saturday, May 12
Kentucky Center for the Arts
501 W. Main St. • 584-7777
kentuckycenter.org
$42.50+; 7:30 p.m.

Photo by Erinn Cosby

c. 2012 LEO Weekly

Pierced Arrows’ old-time rock ’n’ roll

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The golden garage rockers finally hit Louisville

At the age of 63, most rock musicians are expected to be retired, dead or continuing to desperately hit every state fair possible to bleed pennies out of those two hits from 1966. Most people aren’t Toody and Fred Cole.

The happily-ever-after couple are best known — to the very small group who know them at all — as the duo behind Dead Moon, a band from rural Oregon who lasted for 20 years and was the subject of a full-length documentary film in 2006 called Unknown Passage. While even most rock fans with some intact social skills can be forgiven for not being aware of Dead Moon, or the Coles’ latest band, Pierced Arrows, Pearl Jam are fans and have performed some of their songs. A Dead Moon song can be heard in the video game “EA Skate 3,” and Vice Records released the latest Pierced Arrows album, Descending Shadows. Their din of psychedelic garage rock might scare the average Pearl Jam fan, or inspire them.

Guitarist Fred Cole has been performing since his teens, scoring a minor hit with a group in the mid-’60s, in fact. He and Toody ran a music instrument shop and made their own records for many years, living simply out in the country with their three kids in what she refers to as “a creepy old place” when they weren’t touring Europe repeatedly, where they built a following they couldn’t locate in the United States. “We’ve got way too much shit to ever move again!” she exclaims.

Today Toody, the bassist, continues to work on many of the tour details, booking vehicles and hotels and maintaining their website and correspondence. Having never played Louisville before, Toody included Possibility City on her wish list when looking at routing for their current tour. “It’s always really exciting to hit a new town,” she notes, citing “the people, the club, the vibe of the thing” as what they seek out on the road.

“In the Dead Moon era, we were amazingly popular in Europe, we did extremely well. Now with Pierced Arrows, over the past five years, Europe doesn’t have the incredible turnouts that they use to. We’re playing smaller clubs, so it’s not too much different, at this point, from touring in the U.S. — except that it’s to see all the people we’ve grown with over the past 25 years, that’s still incredibly cool.”

Drummer Kelly Halliburton, whose father played in a band with Fred in the early ’70s, came back into the Coles’ lives shortly after Dead Moon broke up and kept them from retirement. Not that they needed much encouragement.

“I think that self-motivation, self-drive, is something you’re just born with,” says Toody. “As far as doing something for this long, loving it enough to go through the pain for the hour of fun and glory.”

The Coles have literally done it themselves for years, homesteading, building their store by hand, and hand-manufacturing each of their early records. “There’s a great sense of accomplishment to dabble with enough different things to where you know how to do a little bit of everything. When we first started doing it, it was an economic necessity, there was just no other way around it. Fred happens to be one of these renaissance kind of guys who loves learning how to do everything.”

The years are catching up, slowly but surely, for the grandparents (their oldest grandkid is already in college). “You get to the point where going up and down stairs, lifting heavy equipment, carrying gear and stuff, gets to be real old. But that was always a stress before. It bothers Fred more than it does me. We’re pretty lucky — Kelly’s a big strong kid, so he takes care of the big stuff, I take care of all the small stuff, and Fred takes care of 90 percent of the driving … We each have our own roles.”

So, at 63, how old do they feel?

“Probably about 50,” Toody replies with a hearty smoker’s laugh.

Pierced Arrows
with Don’t and Old Baby
Wednesday, May 16
Headliners Music Hall
1386 Lexington Road • 584-8088
headlinerslouisville.com
$10; 9 p.m.

Photo by Pod

c. 2012 LEO Weekly

Jumping on the Bridge

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After four years of playing together, Audrey Cecil and Amanda Lucas have made it official. Their first album as Bridge 19, The Fall Back, is being released this week, with a performance at the Kentucky Center on Saturday (8 p.m., $10).

“Fans kept asking, ‘Where’s the CD with you both singing together? We want that.’ … We are friends first, bandmates second. We’ve been pals since we were little kids. It just so happens we have the ability to make pretty music and run a business together.”

As kids, both listened to the country music their parents enjoyed, and Cecil was also exposed to bluegrass and classic rock. As teens, both fell hard for Alanis Morissette. Lucas was also turned on by No Doubt and the Dave Matthews Band, while Cecil gravitated toward early Sheryl Crow. In college, “I really started getting obsessed with the stuff that shapes me now,” says Cecil. “Fleetwood Mac, Indigo Girls, Sarah McLachlan, Paul Simon.” Today, in their 20s, both listen to a lot of singer-songwriters. Lucas also cites pop/rock, while Cecil loves “a lot of classic R&B.”

LEO: How many of your songs about relationships are “happy” songs, lyrically?

AL: About half of the songs I’ve written about relationships are “happy” songs, lyrically. Sometimes the “happy” songs don’t make the cut for the album for various reasons — too slow, too cheesy, etc.

AC: Amanda’s definitely the one to answer this question. She’s got the relationship songwriting covered. My songs tend to fall all over the spectrum in terms of topics. Sometimes about relationships, sometimes not, sometimes written using a relationship as a metaphor for something else.

LEO: If you got fat, would you consider changing your name to Fridge 19?

AL & AC: We considered “Refrigerate After Opening” for a band name, so, yes, we would — but only if “fridge” is capitalized. How about FRIDGE 19.5?

Learn more at bridge19.com.

c. 2012 LEO Weekly

MCA’s legacy

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Beastie Boy influenced and helped many as he evolved

When I was a young white boy, I hated the Beastie Boys.

In 1986, as their first album, Licensed to Ill, conquered the suburban world, the popular and/or stupid kids all around me constantly quoted them and tried to act as we saw them on MTV: drunk, crude and aggressive. They seemed no different to me than Mötley Crüe or Spuds MacKenzie.

Today, even a casual observer might know they evolved into a unique and genre-defying live band, and global ambassadors for freedom and tolerance. That first album was originally supposed to be titled Don’t Be a Faggot — and no one more than the Beasties themselves were glad, in hindsight, that their corporate bosses denied this juvenile notion. The trio came so far in their 30 years that one must imagine Snooki, at 50, as an internationally beloved poet, philosopher and our nation’s first female president, to fully comprehend what the Boys — Michael “Mike D” Diamond, Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz, and Adam “MCA” Yauch, who died last Friday — accomplished together.

Their initial success had led these well-educated sons of New York artists and teachers to forget that the frat boys they had become were not who they really were. The group, which began as a punk rock band before morphing into rappers, picked up their instruments again and started playing all the different music they loved: everything from punk to funk, pop to jazz, hip-hop to dub. Though their second album, Paul’s Boutique, was largely ignored in 1989, seen as a hitless attempt by a novelty act, it’s seen by many today as a defining, influential work.

Their third, Check Your Head, in 1992, was the album that, in many ways, changed my life. An unprecedented mélange of many different styles bouncing off each other while working together to create something entirely new, it opened my mind to the possibilities it presented. I read their liner notes and every interview to trace their inspirations to the sources, learning more about different cultures, from Jamaica to Japan, in the process. Their playful, subversive sense of humor restored, they started a record label and a magazine, both called Grand Royal, which furthered their view of the world as a big playground full of ideas and inspirations.

As Check and its even more popular follow-up, Ill Communication, took their place in popular culture, their success helped insecure college-aged me see that one can be successful doing what one enjoys, and thinks is right, even when others are telling us to do what we used to do, or what makes more sense on paper. Their apologies for past mistakes confirmed that I had been right to hate them, at the time, and was right to love them now.

Yauch, the oldest, was always the seeker, the George Harrison of the group. His yearnings and wanderings led to his embrace of Buddhism, which led to his work on behalf of Tibetan refugees, which led to meeting his wife, with whom he had a daughter. In his later years, he spoke out against war, and against stereotyping Muslims. He also, notably, rapped about respecting others and finding peace within.

When Yauch was diagnosed with cancer in 2009, at 44, it seemed unlikely that this mid-life scare could be more than that. But I have a friend a little under that age who has been fighting the same battle, and he, too, is one of the kindest, most gracious people I’ve ever encountered. This all makes me want to be more of an asshole, so I can live as long as Dick Cheney.

Photo by Phil Andelman

c. 2012 LEO Weekly