LEO:

This is the first time I...I'm starting small you see.  I'm usually flat on my back when I play this instrument but...

[Leo plays "Theme from Doodles"]

[Applause]

[Leo plays "Last Steam Engine/Stealing/Theme from "Rick and Bob Report" medley]

[Applause]

[Leo plays "Ojo"]

[Applause]

[Leo plays "Airproofing II"]

[Applause]

LEO:

I know it's time I said something to welcome you all here and introduce myself.  Takes me longer and longer every night to do that and I'm always filled with regret afterwards.  I never do it quite the way I'd like to.  I've been playing some stuff from a movie that I wrote, the score for a film called Little Treasure.  And this is a scene in the movie where the romantic interest looms before you.  So I found a piece by Aguato that was written 300 years ago and grafted something of my own on to it, shamelessly.  Aguato, along with four or five other guys is responsible for -- along with four or five other sadists -- was responsible for the guitar being what it is today.

[Leo plays "Piece 17"]

[Applause]

[Leo plays "Rings"]

[Applause]

LEO:

Thanks.  [Leo starts to play introduction to "Julie's House"]  I should be riding something when I play this.  Yup yup yup, giddy up.  Excuse me.  One of the things that held me back on the guitar [Leo stops playing] was that I was quickly and easily amused with whatever I could come up with.  And it took me six years to get out of [Leo plays an E chord and lets it sustain, then does it again.  Then he starts playing Julie's House again]. And it took me, it must be another 20 to figure this out.  Just think if I had done this right.

[Leo plays "Julie's House"]

[Applause]

LEO:

Thank you.  [Leo starts to play "I Yell At Traffic"]  This is a song I wrote for my daughter, who was imitating me one day in the car when we were driving along in traffic.  She started calling other drivers around us things like "asshole" and "son of a bitch" and she was about 3 years or 4 years old at the time.  And it reminded me that I was...I saw a book on a plane once, I've only seen this once, very glad of that, called "Training Up A Child."  Whoever that was is just a dynamite parent I"m sure.  "Training Up A Child."  Well, what am I saying?  My 3 or 4 year old is maledicting every where she goes.  I thought...at any rate, that the only think I could do if I wanted to see her rid herself of this kind of language when she got mad was to stop doing this myself.

And I've learned that yelling at traffic is...may be my hobby.  It's at least one of the more sustaining things that I do.  I don't think that it's harmful to me or anybody else..maybe a little to me.  But the best thing you can do when you're yelling is to run up against somebody else -- or drive up, hopefully not that -- drive up beside them when they're yelling at traffic.  And since I can't yell anymore I get my thrills watching other people do it.  And my biggest thrill comes when they turn their head and realize you've been staring at them for about 10 minutes.  Love and pain.

[Leo plays unusual version of "I Yell At Traffic"]

LEO:

[While playing:] A little fast... [continues playing until break]  In this section I'm supposed to think of something to play.  I thought I'd leave a hole for some improvisation.  It hasn't worked yet.  It's terrifying enough that I'd like to go back to it.

[Leo finishes playing "I Yell At Traffic"]

[Applause]

LEO:

[Leo starts to play then stops]  Naah...wrong guitar.  Yeah, what is this?  It's a modern-day version of a tenza or a testa....a guitar turned a fourth above concert.  It was used in duets at the turn of the century -- short-lived because electricity hadn't caught up with them yet.   These were put out I think as a joke, like a key chain or a watch fob, by a company in Japan.  I took it deadly seriously. [Leo starts playing "Theme from the 'Rick and Bob Report'"]  Did I play that?  I already did play it, didn't I?  It sounds better on this guitar. [Leo stops playing]

This is a song that I wrote for a ...that was part of the theme song for the "Rick and Bob Report."  I've been trying to delve into the media and peddle myself is what it amounts to....it's the music for a segment called "Love Born in a Drum" [?] [starts playing "Rick and Bob" again] Every show ends with the word, from one of the characters, "ASS-hole."  

Well, as I continue here I'm realizing that my ouevre is a little polluted.  All right, in deference to the people I've worked with, I shouldn't put it quite that way.  But I seem to have gravitated towards, when it comes to scoring things, towards subjects that are less than pleasnat to most other people, if not downright offensive.  I always find this out a little late.  

[Leo starts playing "A Trout Toward Noon"]  This is a song that was -- or a piece -- that's in the movie called Zeister's and in this scene...  There's a problem in the movie which is that the lead character is objectionable.  The hero is somebody that you're supposed to like, you think, but the movie knows that you're not supposed to and you never could but the movie doesn't make that clear to you.  The reason is that this guy is spending his time trying to release a homicidal about 500 pound guy from a mental hospital, the one near La Guardia, because he's developed a friendship with him over the last few days.  

There's some dramatic import to this film that you just won't believe.  There are some nice scenes...there's a scene where the brother-in-law of the hero that we can't like is playing chess with the homicidal nincompoop.  This guy has no gravity whatsoever, despite that fact that he's a killer which should lend some glow to your character.  And this recurs, this song, and the first time you hear it is when the homicidal maniac, whose name is Mooka, is met by our hero, who's snarling and sleazing through the bushes nearby, so I play this tender tune.

[Leo plays "A Trout Toward Noon"]

[Applause]

LEO:

Yeah, this is a 28-inch string scale.

[Leo plays "June Bug"]

[Applause]

[Leo plays "The Bungle Party"]

[Applause]

[Leo plays "Saginaw, Michigan"]

[Applause]

[Leo plays "Machine"]

[Applause]

LEO:

This is one of the first songs that I wrote.  I wrote it when I was rooming with a guy named Jack Fashbar.  He came back from the brink somehow.  I mean, back then he was hearing looons at night, coming from his teeth.  I'm sure he, I don't think I'm compromising Jack anyway...he went on to get a doctorate in medieval literature...he sonneted his way out of dementia prycar.  Of course..well.. [Leo tunes and starts to play "Little Martha"]  Ahh, slow that down. [Leo starts to play "Echoing Gilewitz"] This was written by a guy named Richard Gilewitz who once drove something like 900 miles to see a set of mine, here in Philadelphia as a matter of fact.  And when I met him he couldn't play and then..he can play now.   This is a tune he wrote, if I can remember it, I will...[while tuning] I will play it.  If I forget it, you'll know right away and I'll go on playing something else [Leo starts to play and hits some wrong notes]  Let me try once more [Leo starts again and hits some more wrong notes] Naah... [Leo breaks furiously into "Cripple Creek"]

[Leo plays "Cripple Creek"]

[Applause]

[Leo plays "From the Cradle to the Grave"]

[Applause]

LEO:

Thank you.

[Leo plays an excerpt from "Ice Fields"]

[Applause]

[Leo plays "Bean Time"]

[Applause]

[Leo plays "Louise"]

[Applause]

[Leo plays "Embryonic Journey"]

[Applause]

LEO:

Thanks a lot.  Good night.  Thank you for coming.  See you next year.

[Applause]

[Leo comes back for encore]

LEO:

[As he starts to play:] Oh shit, I'm in the..  What I'm going to do instead of exploding in some furious encore is tune for a while.  This is supposed to be somewhere else than where it is [starts tuning]  Take my time?  It took me a while to get there.  

[Leo plays "Pamela Brown"]

[Applause]

LEO:

Thanks a lot.  [Leo starts to play "Jack Fig" then stops]  Oh!  I can't go on with that.  It would be cruel [starts tuning.  In response to audience comment:]  Oh I know, I know, I know.  This is awful.

[Leo plays "Jack Fig"]  

[Applause]

LEO:

We'll see you.  Nice to be back.  We'll see you next year.

[The End]