Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss

AN April TSing

Tonite I am producing a showcase with 30 musicians and 10 staff, on California Avenue, for 3rd Thursday, or Earthwise for 3rd Thursday. It went from a Brazil Showcase to a Latin Showcase to Latin and Local to Latin and Loco and finally Ants April Tsing. You know, like the Dave Matthews song “Ants Marching” but March gives way to April. And Tsing is like “thing” and “sing” and “Ching”. I Ching. You Ching. We all Ching for April TSing. 

I am medium cool on Dave Matthews. My wife likes him, so we saw him or them at Shoreline once, from the lawn. I’ve been medium cool on Dave Matthews longer than I’ve known my wife. I remember grabbing a cassette single of the then unknown Dave Matthews Band from a storefront not the Haight in 1995 or so. 

But its also true that when my mom was in hospice and I distracted myself or coped by imagining music at her memorial I suddenly heard —like for the first time in 20 years the lyric

Goes to visit his mommy

She feeds him well his concerns

He forgets them

And remembers being small

Playing under the table and dreaming.

And of course lights down you up and die. 

I cannot remember what I was going to do. I don’t think I knew Dave Matthews well enough at the time to actually ponder getting him to play the memorial; I remember thinking about, for example, Ben Goldberg and Sheldon Brown doing a jazz clarinet version of Lynyrd Skynyrd “Simple Kind of Man” — mama told me when I was young etc. I also left a vm for someone who worked with Boots Riley about getting boots and the Boot-ettes to do “Jesus the Pimp” a cappella because of the relationship between the protagonist and his tragically flawed mater. 

We ended up with no music at the memorial but we did have a U.S. Congresswoman speak and give us a ceremonial document of her also standing in congress in honor of a great American, Barbara H. Weiss. Thanks, Anna. We will miss you, Come on out to hear if not six versions or three simjultaneneous versions of “Ants Marching” or Ants April-ching then some samba, some salsa, some bluegrass and maybe “Losing my Religion” by Midtown Dreamers or maybe they know ants marching. 

On the other hand, don’t count us out: the daughter and the brother of the act near El Camino actually does have a version of Ants Marching with the actual Dave Matthews: