A Few Choice Words on ‘MTV Unplugged’

Dear Editor:

I’m proposing an article that is a snapshot of the burgeoning “spoken-word” scene, via a diaristic account of one man’s--one writer-performer’s (me)--ambitions and activities during a recent visit to New York from Los Angeles, culminating in the taping of an “MTV Unplugged” spoken-word special (pilot for a proposed spoken-word series), in which I was a participant.

Question: What on Earth (you may wonder--with a sneer of amazement?) is anything remotely literary doing in the land of Aerosmith and the bleep doctor, Dre--that land where Pauly Shore is king?

Well, in point of fact, not only is the business of writers reading aloud booming in the more highbrow realms of bookstores, literary series and books on tape, it’s also spawned the sort of hip-and-happening cultural creature that MTV wants in its theme park.

Coffeehouses and clubs and cafes East Coast and West have hatched a new run of performing scribblers who howl a beatnik (“Neo-Beat,” as the magazines tag it) world back into life through the cool fumes.

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Places like Cafe Largo locally have provided soirs for young Hollywoodites and confessional rock ‘n’ rollers to spill their poetic souls into the common trough of rhyme (sort of versified AA sessions).

The Gap pushes clothes with a poet-in-a-commercial, while outfits like Digable Planet and Disposable Heroes of Hiphopcrasy carry the flag of the cool and neo-poetic into rap. (Rap, in general, brandishes word back into the foreground. Right back into your foreground.)

Even the current “Lollapalooza” tour offers a sideshow of spoken doings on video, featuring soliloquizing pop-grungers and Allen Ginsberg and, of course, William Burroughs. Grandpa Burroughs and his drawl are everywhere .

MTV already airs snippets of club-voltage rhapsodizers and monologuists declaiming away for 30 seconds a shot. It’s the notion (inspiration?) of “MTV Unplugged” creator-producer Robert Small to present a whole MTV half-hour of spoken word in intimate concert. Just like Rod Stewart just did, over in his--genre?

Which brings me to my proposed article. It will be a kind of private on-the-road-to-MTV journal of some New York nights of a striver after spoken-word stardom--irreverent and (how shall I say?) self-irreverent. Someone with a foot somewhat anxiously in both spoken-word domains. (I am, after all, a literary type, with a couple of books of stories out. Carver and Bulgakov are my models--Peter Sellars too, I’m proud to say. But not Lou Reed or Tom Waits. Or Exene Cervenka.)

My insider’s account will feature, first of all, the Manhattan literary salon evening for an invited, prestigious audience (in the style of Wally Shawn’s salon eves of a few years ago) that I was invited out East to do in the living room of Alexandra Penney, best-selling sex-guide author, “Arsenio Hall” guest and editor-in-chief of Self magazine, who had seen my spoken-word act at an L.A. cabaret.

(In attendance too at chez Penney was my rookie playwright twin brother, aglow from the Broadway opening night of his show.)

Then, the article will include a session in the audience for Madonna’s “Sex” editor Glenn O’Brien’s reading at Fez, one of the Neo-Beat/spoken-word hot spots downtown (a particular highlight for me: Glenn knocking his pint of Guinness over his text halfway through--Freudian gesture of self-criticism?).

Following that, my own evening at another little far-SoHo joint of the moment, Skep, where I read the story (from my new manuscript, “The Sadness of Sex”), which I debated airing at Alexandra Penney’s and perhaps mercifully forbore from doing--the story about the vagina that escapes from its proper site and, after terrorizing a residential neighborhood, fetches up in a tree from which I--specifically I--am called upon by an anxious city to capture it. (And do so.)

And then the electrifying call re MTV. Rumors of a bill shared with . . . Suzanne Vega? Chuck D.? Lenny Kravitz? The return to Fez for dress rehearsal of the show. Sheer mortification. Heckled from the audience and appalled at my literary company--a klatch of pseudo-poeticizing--the exact sort of what?--claptrap?

I’ve long tried to disassociate myself from gooney bongoism, slick homeboyism, stagy art-rap monologuing cum musical accompaniment. Even middle-aged, white ersatz rapping! “Should I even be here?” I scribbled (oh desperate literateur ) on a note pad for the dazed friend I’d brought along. (Calmed down somewhat by James Linville, managing editor of the Paris Review, there as one of my guests. “Hey, it’s like . . . 1957,” he grinned.)

Then the taping itself--startlingly exciting. We use the Sony Studios sound stage and crew and equipment after Midnight Oil’s “Unplugged” taping.

My fellow artistes seem possessed of tremendous energy and presence. Maggie Estep shouts her three-minute epic: “This stupid jerk I’m obsessed with! . . . ,” in front of a churning rock band, a barefoot high-octane urchin under a single spotlight trained from 80 feet above through darkness and trick smoke. It’s electric .

Terrifically saucy, atmospheric monologue from long-limbed Afro-diva Dana Bryant; rambunctious subway “found poem” by portly, puckish, working-class white guy Pete Spirio (“This poem here cost me a dollar-twenty-five. . . .”).

Henry Rollins (our actualized rock ‘n’ roll celeb) is a prodigy of tattoos and pumped iron as he expatiates earnestly into the mike about Issues of Living (rock ‘n’ roller as garrulously philosophical and Maorified camp counselor?). No one heckles me. Creator-producer Robert Small is floating on air. He’s dogged the N.Y. club circuit for a year, sniffing for talent; all looks terrific on the monitors (in fact, the wealth of material will probably necessitate a second separate show).

I head back for L.A. with my purple “MTV Unplugged- Talent “ floor pass gleaming in my luggage and my brain fumed with anticipations of impending notoriety (contrasted with the chat I had backstage before show time re the annoyances of public recognition--when, say, slipping out to buy tampons with some of my female colleagues).

A new inspiration: Shouldn’t I do something in front of a rock band, it’s so . . . electric . (Must press Robert Small to do a show with just me and Leonard Cohen!)

A coda: I planned a return to New York in June for a reading soir at Limbo cafe in East Village, which would be the subject of one of fame-mongering Australian Clive James’ “Postcard From Abroad” pieces for BBC-TV. (International spoken-word stardom?)

(Post-coda: Couldn’t afford plane ticket back for Clive James’ do. International stardom temporarily deferred due to gap in operating capital?)

I’ll close by noting I’ve been flogging the spoken-word trail for a number of years and have something of a following on both coasts (see bio attached). I did one of those “Artbreak” pieces that ran on MTV a few years ago. I once even participated in a stand-up comedian’s showcase at the Laugh Factory in L.A., where I and my spoken words were introduced by--and I’m no longer ashamed to admit this (I lie)--by . . . Morton Downey Jr.

And what else, dear editor, is there to say, about anything at all , after an admission like that?