Thursday, September 13, 2007


Kevin Carpenter was my first friend when I got to high school in 1972. We've kept our lives congruent for about half our subsequent lives, but not so much recently. We talked on the phone last week and made a plan to go back to the Broom Bush for pancakes, like we used to during the Clinton administration.

He told me he'd seen me playing ukulele and singing on YouTube. You could have knocked me over. I racked my brain but finally it occurred to me what it was - a strange low budget video show I performed on a couple years ago in a makeshift studio on Old Bayshore Highway in San Francisco. Everything will eventually wind up on the 'net, so why fight it?

The hostess finally gets around to introducing my performance after about five and a half minutes of willfully obtuse behavior. I had no idea the feral girl was going to crawl across me while I played.

Malaka Mo Kalu - Steven Strauss And His Ukulele
I definitely had the David Seville haircut that week.

A friend wrote to tell me that in this picture I look like the cat from Shellac Shanty.

4 comments:

Howlin' Hobbit said...

I ran across Dollya some time back on a search for "burlesque" and turned it off a couple minutes into the video.

I remain underwhelmed but this time I let it load all the way and scanned forward to your part. Good stuff and cool under fire yet!

HH

Anonymous said...

Steven, that is way past priceless. Interesting way to get leied.

t

Lee Hartsfeld said...

Yes, great performance. I'm not sure who or what the hostesses are parodying, though. Which sort of puts them in SNL territory!

Thanks for the fine music.


Lee

Steven Strauss said...

A mutual friend tells me Dollya is the artist's caricature of her very own mother. This explains why you couldn't tell the subject of her parody. I haven't met the woman, either.