welcome, black
Stew and Heidi (and presumably some side-men or -women, but probably not Aaron Kierbel who could be in the Netherlands doing advance work for Rupa and The April Fishes) are playing the San Francisco Jazz Festival (aka SFJAZZ) Thursday night at the Yerba Buena Center and Andrew Gilbert wrote an excellent preview for the San Jose Mercury:
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_16380541
Although I had promised myself not to write impulsive blog entries — I am working on a longer, better-researched, more discipline potential entry — I could not help but comment on Stew on the Mercury’s website. I will reprint here verbatim my post but I strongly encourage you to follow the link to Andrew’s report — or GO TO THE SHOW.
(I am still curious whether Andrew was familiar with Stew during his LA days — he worked for the Jazz Bakery. Also, I am curious whether he would have written about Stew even if I had not left him a voice mail suggesting such, or will admit it).
Good story, Andrew. You might have added the South Bay local interest angles that “Passing Strange” workshopped at Stanford before opening at Berkeley Rep. Stew subsequently came back post-Broadway, in winter of 2009, to teach songwriting, at Stanford — not bad for a guy who never got his college degree. Also, in terms of the timeline, The Negro Problem performed locally in September of 1995, on a co-bill with Cake, at the Cubberley Community Center in Palo Alto. In terms of the interplay between the respective projects Stew, The Negro Problem and his Broadway oriented work, I believe this is the first time being billed as “Stew and The Negro Problem” which is a litle like saying, for clarity, Sting and The Police. There are still certain ways that Stew tries to obfuscate his identify and background, as part of his mystique.
I noticed that “Stew and The Negro Problem” list it as “STEW + HEIDI + the negro problem” on their site but of the nine venues on this tour all but one list it as “Stew and The Negro Problem.” Even in LA, their home town, the Getty gets it right but Echoplex disses Heidi with the ommission.
It kinda reminds me of The Donnas and the Electrocutes (Ragady Anne) taking the long way back to what they were, become what you are as Julianna Hatfield said.
Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss 
Presaging this post, but actually researching an upcoming post, I learned that John Corbett’s show about Sun Ra had moved to the University of Chicago Gallery (from its inception at Corbett v. Dempsey, I think) and that he was instrumental in a lot of papers pertaining to Sun Ra to be donated to the University for academic research purposes. He worked with Abraham Alton, the Sun Ra manager, to preserve a rich legacy of information about this fascinating work. I thought of Stew and The Negro Problem apropos of Sun Ra, Alton and their vision of black history — maybe Stew would benefit from learning more about Sun Ra and this archive. Maybe Stew could collaborate with Sun Ra some how some where some day. Maybe Stew should check out this archive while in Chicago, part of this tour.
http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/spcl/cja.html
special secret or added show at Oakland Metro (near Yoshi’s) which for a while was the only club that would book Stew in the Bay Area:
http://holdmyticket.com/event/18065
And this club is the only one who seems to have the billing correct: Stew and Heidi in big letters and “the negro problem” in small case; calling it “Stew and The Negro Problem” is a little like billing something as “Sting and The Police.”
i was pinged on my yahoo spam account by someone commenting on stewsez blog — i didn’t remember in august posting semi-anonymously on his blog. i could not help commenting again, something about fear the beard and george carlin. http://stewsez.artlung.com/2010/02/20/stew-review-of-jon-cs-review-of-making-it/
Mainly because I happened to catch part of Michael Krasny’s interviews with Sondheim and Lorents (pronounced like the common “Lawrence”) Terry and I will take in the matinee of “West Side Story” at Orpheum, presented by SHN; it is supposed to be grittier than original production and feature Spanish language.
http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201011111031
I meant to post something more about the interview, something about Sondheim criticizing Hammerstein “Sound of Music” lyric “lark, beginning to pray” which he thought was forced. Sondheim has a book of lyrics out. How did I get from a strict diet of Led Zep, Van Halen and Sammy Hagar to Sondheim, Noel Coward, Cole Porter, Sondheim, Bernstein, et al in only 30 years of ear training?
see
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&q=lark+learning+to+pray&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=
lark learning to pray
in actuallity, if you decide to take in a broadway show, you are minnows learning to pay