"A VIEW FROM THE PRECIPICE"

While in Germany in February I took the opportunity to shoot this casual video of me playing a new song called "A View From The Precipice" on a wonderful grand piano with an amazing history... 

The German composer Ernst-Lothar von Knorr (who shares my birthday) was head of the Music University in Frankfurt, Germany during the war. In 1944 when the university buildings were bombed, all the pianos were destroyed. The faculty and students brought all the bits and pieces of the instruments out into the courtyard and were able to reassemble a few grand pianos from the wreckage.  The piano I was playing in Germany is one of these "miracle" pianos!

The theme of the song fits very well with the images of the piano's troubled history, although I didn't know it at the time I wrote the song.  Don't let it get you down!

INTERVIEWED BY DAVE STREET

In 1978 I was living in New York City.  I had recently finished recording the Riff Raff album for Island Records and was performing in the club scene all around town. Anton Perich, who had been a contributing photographer for Andy Warhol's Interview Magazine, had just started Night Magazine and asked Dave Street, an avant garde writer and friend of mine, to interview me about "punk" and "new wave" music. I didn't know it at the time but they had expected me to bash punk music. They didn't get what they expected...  I had completely forgotten about this interview but it is another case of Lost and Found! After the interview there is an inpromptu jam session with me, Ned Liben (the guitarist from Riff Raff) and Ray Paris (the drummer from Riff Raff).

While I was in Heidelberg I got an email from Dave Street, making contact after 27 years.  Today, I called him and while we were on the phone, Anton Perich (who I introduced to Dave 30-some years ago) emailed Dave and told him that he was putting this tape up on YouTube. What an unbelievable coincidence... or was it?

Metaphysics or coincidence, no one knows. Hope you enjoy a flash from the past.