Some have asked me about my "Lazy Bones" video posted at YouTube, wanting to know what I was thinking when I performed the tune in a recumbent pose. I am sure Perry Como would have seen nothing amiss in my approach. As evident in the clip above, he loves to bogey.

God bless Eugene Levy; here's hoping he's got a piece of the American Pie DVD action.

He sings pretty good. And Catherine O'Hara got her autoharp game on!

David Julian Gray at NPR got in touch late last year to report that he found my CD weeks before and bought it online. He said he'd like to pass them around and see if anyone else there got enthusiastic about it. It's hard to tell about genuine enthusiasm (a pretty reserved bunch by all accounts), but someone decided there was some good bumper music on the album. Here's a link to a page at NPR's site where you can see the tune used and follow a link to a player that will play a chunk of the music for you. I hope it helps more people find my music!

NPR Morning Edition music cues played on March 31, 2008

Friend of Friends of Old Puppy Galen A. Tripp has uninvited houseguests. Cute, though.

This weekend promises to be one filled with music played on the ukulele. This Saturday, March 15, after the weekly ten a.m. meeting of the Friends of Old Puppy at Nabolom Bakery in Berkeley, guitar hand Kurt Stevenson and I will decamp for a duet recital at the new Down Home Music Store (formerly Hear Music) from three until five p.m. We're there to promote my CD of ukulele instrumentals, UKEBOX. Come on by and check out Chris Strachwitz's new bundle of retail joy. :^)

On Sunday, March 16, Kurt will accompany me for a duet recital at Da Silva Ukuleles in Berkeley from seven thirty until nine thirty p.m. Admission is fifteen dollars (sliding).

I've added a link to an mp3 of Kurt and me as we take stock of "Chi Mi Frena" from Donizetti's "Lucia Di Lammermoor." I think the fact that Kurt learned the song from a Shirley Temple movie is somehow evident in his interpretation.

Chi Mi Frena - Kurt Stevenson and Steven Strauss

SWEENEY FLOYD

"Attend the tale of Sweeney Floyd
Of seven seasons he enjoyed
And though the series was not renewed
He left all the scenery properly chewed..."

Thanks to Cynthia Strauss for sharing this with me, Kerry Parker for sending it to her, and Nina Feldman for including it in her humor distribution. Genius shall be rewarded - with multiple postings.

Tim Fox doesn't really look like this, but he seems to like it better than his actual appearance. I can relate.

He hired me to play bass in his jazz quintet last year at the Hillside Club, and I just found out that there's a recording of my vocal turn posted on the 'net, through the courtesy of the man who put together the concert and engineered the audio, the spectacular Bruce Koball.

My song for Tim Fox

Here's the Hillside Club's writeup for the gig.

Dangerous Rhythm
In Concert
Friday, 19 January 2007 at 8:00 pm

The Berkeley Hillside Club is proud to present DANGEROUS RHYTHM in concert. This group of virtuoso players is a marvelous musical experiment performed to answer an intriguing "what if" question. Join us in the acoustically- wonderful Hillside Club for this evening of musical mischief.

What would swing have become had it not turned into bop? This is the musical premise behind guitarist Tim Fox's group, DANGEROUS RHYTHM. Playing mostly original compositions and the occasional not-so-moldy oldie, this group will get your toes tapping, your heart pumping, and your mind racing. Veteran bassist and vocalist Steven Strauss (Penelope Houston, the Hot Club of San Francisco, Old Puppy), vibraphonist and aspiring ukulelist, Gerry Grosz, accordionist extraordinary, Dan Cantrell (The Toids, Peoples Bizarre, Tom Waits), and percussionist Brian Rice (the Paul Winter Consort, Mike Marshall's Chôro Famoso, Wake the Dead, the pickPocket Ensemble) complete the group.
It's Twenty-First Century Swing, folks. Accept no substitutes.

Read my old post about Bruce Koball here.

I wasn't always this jaded thing you see before you. There was a time, so long ago, when I could be charmed by razzmatazz. I was young once, and doo-wacka-doo hadn't done a doggone thing to me. Before I even had a ukulele, I would get down a tennis racket and pretend to strum along with a record I got out of the library, an Lp by hometown gents The Goodtime Washboard Three. I noticed it was on Berkeley's Fantasy Records label, known home to cultural icons Lenny Bruce, Vince Guaraldi, and Korla Pandit. When finally I got my hands on a ukulele I couldn't wait to learn the chords to play their erstwhile local radio sensation, "Oakland."


"Where did all those people go
When Frisco burned?
They all went to Oakland
And never returned..."

Oakland magazine has a nice little write up about the song, and the Three, and how it all came to be. The writer points out that appropriately enough it is no solemn civic anthem, but something along the lines of "fight - fight - fight!" There's even a link to an mp3 of the song (not the original recording).

If you learn it, too, we can sing it at Berkeley Ukulele Club!

GENIUS AT WORK -
My high school avatar of cool
R. S. Eisenberg at his latter day workbench

I checked in with one of my favorite music blogs today. "Music You (Possibly) Won't Hear Anyplace Else" has been a reliable source of lost and forgotten music, recovered and restored by hand, and presented with an earnest appreciation for the music itself. Lee Hartsfeld of Ohio is the man who does all the work, and in appreciation for that work I do now salute him, as I have done before in these pages.



Numerous other sites on the 'net have processed and posted their audio finds. WFMU's Beware Of The Blog holds days on end of listenable artifacts of our culture, but the hipper-than-thou commentary that goes with it makes me queasy. I've been depressed by the general lack of appreciation there for anything that does not rock. To me it evinces a naive terror of becoming a square, of risking one's reputation as a hip person, a fate awaiting anyone who fails to die young. An hour clicking links at BOTB is like hanging out with a clever, talkative guy who's been collecting rock records and wearing the same leather jacket since his twenties. (Here I really ought to explain that three of my favorite people meet that description head on. I love them.)



Pulling up examples of what can be thought of as other people's mistakes may be entertaining for a few minutes of distraction, when you're stealing 'net time from the boss; that specific demographic can only have contributed to the success of WFMU's blog. Having taken the time to look over a hundred plus entries, I'm struck by how often the entry seems motivated by irresistible urge to stick it to anything resembling the man. (Steve Allen's late eighties touring contract, including fresh fruit requirements and instructions on caring for his hairpiece? Irresistible, perhaps; admirable, perhaps not.)



Don't get me wrong. I understand entirely the urge to disempower the oppressive forces of one's own mind. If the Brady Bunch theme has an evil hold on your consciousness, by all means, cast it out, with extreme prejudice. These people bust their hump to prepare and present stuff they think is dumb. "Can we agree this is not cool?" It gets my goat, because a whole lot of stuff they post just to piss on there, I hold close to my heart.



Lee Hartsfeld shares my beef with the spirit of BOTB, and unlike me (known the world over to run from any fight), has had the stones to write to them about it, earning only their scorn, prompting the administrators there to block some of his comments. I think he's been most offended by the editorial assumption that all those visiting the blog would agree that any religious expression is misguided at best. The things they've said about Little Marcy!



Lee recently posted a batch of sides including a cover of John Lennon's "Imagine," sung by Andy Williams. He shared a couple of sincere and contentious opinions about the recording: that the lyric was not as deep as its fans have held, and that Williams' voice was "better" than that of the songwriter.



One visitor, commenting on his entry, must have presumed Lee's motive was to hold Williams, a hopeless square, up to ridicule (as would happen routinely at BOTB); subsequently he seemed blindsided by Lee's spirited defense of and genuine appreciation for the singing of Andy Williams. His rejoinder was a sputtering paraphrase of "how am I going to get laid if anyone sees me hanging out with you, Uncle Elmer?"

John Turturro wrote and directed a big crude singalong musical of blue collar New Jersey and somehow I missed it. I saw a couple of other clips a few weeks back on youtube, a funny song and dance with Kate Winslet, but when I saw this one today I put "Romance And Cigarettes" at the front of the Netflix queue. I can't wait to see the rest of this movie. Dreamgirls it obviously ain't.

I have had the chance to hang with some old world blue collar cats, bruisers and freight men, and their capacity to fall apart in the arms of song has made an indelible impression on me. The assumption that these guys are too tough to be soft hearted does them no service. In this clip, I wait for the shot of the welder pushing his visor up and extending his blowtorch as he sings.

Turturro's master stroke at the end of this clip is what to do after a big heartache song and dance. The shirt pocket pat.

http://www.romanceandcigarettesfilm.com/

Do you drive a car? Do you want to transform the roads you drive on into sane and efficient lanes of smooth traffic? Do you want to help reduce the wasteful use of auto fuel, not only for you but for the drivers with whom you share the road? Please read the 1998 article TRAFFIC "EXPERIMENTS" AND A CURE FOR WAVES & JAMS by William Beaty. Take about ten minutes to read it over; once it's absorbed, you won't forget it. And it will make you a happier driver; I'll bet money on it. Comments posted on a page linked there offer additional observations that will enhance your experience. As 2007 draws to a close, and ways of making 2008 a better year fill my thoughts, I'm convinced it's the best thing I got to read all year.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Electrical Engineer and transformative driver William Beaty

Charles Wakefield Cadman was an American composer who was fascinated by Native American culture. He wrote a successful series of atmospheric song cycles inspired by his studies of tribal music, which today are typically dismissed as naive, romantic misapprehensions of a strikingly unfamiliar world.

If that isn't a good blanket description of the entire musical genre of Exotica, it isn't far from the mark. For my current project, UKEBOX EXOTICA, I've been rummaging around the discard bins of popular music for lost threads of this enduring fabulist tapestry, one dominated today by the legacies of Martin Denny and Les Baxter. The work of Charles Wakefield Cadman proves to be a rich source of melody and mood.



For a little while I'll be posting here a GarageBand arrangement of The Rainbow Waters Whisper, the third in his 1913 cycle of four songs, "Idyls Of The South Sea." As soon as I figure out a ukulele part for me to play, I'm taking it down, so check it out now.

Charles Wakefield Cadman "Idyls Of The South Seas" III The Rainbow Waters Whisper - arranged by Steven Strauss

Here's a 1937 TIME article about gum chewing Charlie Cadman.

Kurt Stevenson will accompany me on guitar when I appear on KALW-FM in December. I'll have forty five minutes or so to play music on the ukulele and talk a bit about it. And flack the record.

The program is KALW's A Patchwork Quilt, Red-bearded Kevin Vance's delirious weekly plunge into sensuous handmade music that defies category and resists exploitation. Tune in on Saturday, December Eight, or listen online. The program runs from 5:00 p.m. to 6:30; I'll appear at about the half-way point and go until the end. Kurt and I are planning something as musically expressive as we can execute.

If you're not tuned in by 5:45 p.m. you might miss something. If you have ukulele nuts in your extended family, encourage them to tune in.

In jazz news, Connie Doolan Quartet, of which I am roughly a fourth (more by weight), is almost ready to announce an east bay house concert on December 30, the day before New Year's Eve. When times are set, terms are known, and directions have been drawn up, I'll post about it at Connie Doolan Quartet's stately web log.

Deborah Robins just sent me an email with this photograph attached. She snapped this at The New Zealander in Alameda a few nights ago. I'm shown playing my RISA Uke Solid, accompanying Regina Maria Pontillo, one of my very favorite performers ever. Regina and I willl be angling hard to get another gig there come January.

Click here if you think you'd like to hear a sloppy but swinging electric ukulele demo!

DaSilva Ukuleles is participating in Berkeley Artisans Holiday Open Studios every weekend in December. Folks coming by can watch work on ukuleles in various stages of completion, test drive new ukes, and check out Michael DaSilva's forward-looking ukulele programs.

Mike got a lot of nice ink from the San Francisco Chronicle last Sunday. Want to read Ian Lendler's take on the current enthusiasm for the ukulele? It's here at sfgate.com.

Mike's asked me to come play acoustic ukuleles on stage during the open house, and with such great sounding ukes on hand I can't resist. On Saturday I'll be there just as soon as I get everything put away from my usual 10:00am-1:00pm session on electric ukulele at Berkeley's venerable Nabolom Bakery. So expect me to be playing ukuleles at DaSilva's shop from three until six o'clock or so Saturday, and the next morning from 11am until about 2pm, at which time Al Dodge's Sun Dodgers will be ready to crank up the gramophone era sounds. (Faith Yang of Oregon took the picture above at DaSilva's.)

Hey friends of the UKEBOX thing

UKEBOX is now available at the iTunes Store. It's a foot in the door. If you'd like to see the door wedged open a little wider, there is a way you can help.

When you get to the iTunes Store you can search on Steven Strauss or UKEBOX and you'll get the album page. Listen to samples. If you've heard the CD and like it, consider saying something nice about it in the customer reviews. (I'd do it myself but there are people who would know instantly.) Even if all you hear is samples, feel free to say you like them.

Is this album in the wrong category (Easy Listening)? We don't come up among the recent releases in Easy Listening anyway, so what's the point of having that handle? Just makes ya fly lopsided...

You can help me pay for this album without any further outlay of funds, because I don't need to sell a million. But it'll take people unintentionally discovering UKEBOX while browsing. I just want a tiny fraction of that browsing market.

Have I mentioned we're at CDBaby, too? You can get a copy sent to your home or office. Samples there run two minutes, too, if hearing more of each tune would make a difference.

click to UKEBOX at CDBaby

Believe me, this is better than being signed to Warner Brothers.

SEPARATED AT BIRTH?



I'm just sayin'.

I ran across a discussion question on a classical music forum asking whether anyone passing though also really liked rap and hip-hop. From the wording it was clear that the person posing the question found such a thing unlikely and had no use for the stuff. I felt the urge to respond, and wrote what follows.



In the fifties rock and roll's ability to infuriate the elders was most of its appeal! Hip hop similarly knows whom it offends and is comfortable with that.





I can imagine hip hop that I can really enjoy - and there are rare instances in which a hip hop record's appeal makes it past my disinclination to the style, owing to the personality of the speaker or the potency of the message, or sometimes just the happy collage of sampled elements. Sometimes a real generosity of spirit emerges, sometimes a trenchant wit, or an obviously keen ear for sound or rhythm.





But most of the hip hop I hear is from a world I don't want to be in, a form of expression made of elements I avoid intuitively: boasting, threatening, brute force, gender tyranny. (I don't doubt they are integral to the artist's realm, as much as daffodils were in Wordsworth's.) Rapping came up as a competitive expression in a proscribed social order where I would not last a week. In this world, just as in that of the concert hall, stardom is subject to irrational and unfair accidents of weather and circumstance; musical distinction is but a tangential factor. (When I'm driving to a gig with bandmates and De La Soul comes up in the shuffle, the discomfort of my passengers is louder than even their disdain. I usually have to skip to the next track, out of pity.)





From my vantage point I sense that we are lucky there is any commercial music at all that we can really embrace. (If I saw an ad for it I'm bound to resist it.)





We like to think we have feelings and thoughts but I keep finding evidence that our thoughts and feelings have us! In high school I hated to hear the music bullies listened to ("Skynard!"), and the guys who wolf whistled my sister. If you think our musical tastes are primarily aesthetic I would suggest you're hiding from yourself.





Imagine what resentments the choral Ode To Joy might bring up in a kid from a tough neighborhood. What pictures do you think it conjures? Might it not evoke an authoritarian order bent on his oppression? Or at the very least a world in which he has no place and nothing to offer?





If I'd known before becoming a musician how rarely popular success results from a high level of musicality I would have skipped the trying-to-make-it phase entirely. The artist that succeeds in capturing the imagination of the public does so largely on the basis of emotional theater of some kind, not so much by concentrating on musicality. Emotional theater gives the non-musician a way to identify with the performance. A favorite singer, especially, lives for a fan more as an animus or an avatar than as a creator of expressive works. People bond with their ideas of the artists they follow, and the relationship is necessarily without much basis in reality. Verdad, it is so rarely about the music itself.





Please forgive my rambling! Thank God I ran out of words.

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.

I thought it would be a good idea to share an exceptional recording, a rare example of a uke-strumming singer whose appeal is almost entirely musical. He's not pouring on the charm in the manner of the master entertainer, but he's really delivering an adroit and nuanced performance. He makes it sound mighty easy.

No Wonder She's A Blushing Bride - Art Fowler And His Ukulele

"Aaow, sompn just pote me in the nayeck!"

(from 11/30/05)

I came home from playing bass with Failure To Disperse (old timey music) at the Solano Stroll Sunday at about six. We made pretty good tip money. It was my forty-ninth birthday. I went out on our tiny porch balcony to see my wife Cynthia, who gave me our little yearling cat, Geoffrey, to hold. A friend in a neighboring apartment took a picture. It was a good day.

"Amy, the calamari was superb." - Vern Agoyan