Photo by Daniel S. Burnstein
"Usually there's a lot more porn in what I read,” Toby Goodshank confesses before launching into
a dirty ditty loosely inspired by the Raymond Carver story “Gazebo.” A
capacity crowd chuckles at lyrics about rough sex and bodily fluids.
Mobiles made of ice skates and naked Barbie dolls hang from the
ceiling. And every 10 minutes or so, the elevated J train clatters by,
adding incidental percussion to the music emanating from the stage.
So far, the book club has tackled Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions, Raymond Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love and Edwin A. Abbott’s Flatland.The widely varied events feature just about every imaginable genre, from folk and country to cabaret and drinking songs; March’s Flat land performance even included Duck and Swallow’s catchy, Le Tigre–style dance track, “You Think That We’re Pointless.” Part of the fun of Bushwick Book Club, for Hwang, is never knowing what to expect.There is only one constant: “If you want weird,” she says, “I’ll usually give you a little bit of weird.”
The idea for the book
club came to Hwang last fall, after she wrote and performed four songs
about zombies for a horror-themed cabaret night. “I didn’t know a lot
about zombies, so I had to do some research,” she says. “I watched a
lot of George Romero movies and found myself writing about the stories
and characters. And it was really fun.” She liked the idea of writing
songs based on outside sources and pitched the Bushwick Book Club to
Steve Trimboli, Goodbye Blue Monday’s owner. “Of course, Steve said
‘yes,’” Hwang recalls. “Because he lets you do stuff.”
“I like
books,” says Trimboli. “We have thousands of them in the store. And the
idea of tying books together with music was intriguing to me.” He notes
that the book club has been more successful than Goodbye Blue Monday’s
open-mic events, its deadlines and constraints injecting an extra dose
of excitement into the musical community that surrounds the
venue. Trimboli likens the songwriters to students cramming for a test:
“They’re finishing their song 15 minutes before they sing it.”
But the
songs don’t seem to suffer from the frantic circumstances under which
they are created. The songwriters who participate appreciate the
structure the club imposes, and the book club has yielded some
surprisingly complete compositions.
“It can take my songs
months to gestate,” says Tom Curtin, who performs as The
Warbles.Writing so quickly was frightening, but in the end, he is happy
with his contribution to the Flatland event, a “psychedelic
children’s song” in which a mathematician and a magician struggle over
the nature of the universe. “So many of my songs are already inspired
by books, films and the news,” says Curtin, who, as a playwright, is
used to incorporating narrative elements into his music.
The
Bushwick Book Club is already planning to record a compilation CD and
has scheduled performances through the end of the year. Hwang’s
ambitious selections include everything from The Bible to Charles
Darwin’s The Origin of Species. Next up, on April 7, is Roald Dahl’s children’s classic, James and the Giant Peach, featuring
the accordion stylings of Amy Kohn, multi-instrumentalist Matthew
Varvil (who fronts a band called Marionettes of Satan) and Hwang’s
famous peach sangria.
And as for the queen of daytime TV,
while she might cringe at Goodshank’s lyrics, even Oprah would approve
of the effect the Bushwick Book Club is having. “These days,” says
Hwang. “I never leave the house without a book on me.”
Bushwick Book Club
April 7, Goodbye Blue Monday, 1087 Broadway (betw. Lawton & Dodworth Sts.),
Brooklyn, 718-453-6343; 7:30, FREE
