Hey Jef

Super job on the website stuff!  I was going to write back to you personally, but decided to post to the list as well... just so people will know what kind of low-life they're dealing with here.  I mean me, not you, of course!

List folks, if you haven't been to Jef's site (and it's hard to imagine, but there might be a few - it's really terrific, and the collection of mp3s of Ishtar songs (a couple of them complete, the bulk of them sadly partial - along with a DVD of the movie, the soundtrack album, apparently recorded but in a vault somewhere - remains a holy grail to Ishtar fans) is a great resource to our community. I've always wanted to say that, "our Ishtar community," yow!

I'd be very keen to have my one piece of Ishtar fan music part of your project... this is where I go into meandering and possibly pointless Abe Simpson wool-gathering mode. 

Back in the late(ish) 70s, I wrote a number of songs with my friend Dave... two lonely bachelors, looking for something to enliven our humdrum lives, convinced our output was as good as anything Springsteen or Simon and Garfunkle ever did. By the time my friend hired a group of college students to record them, I was pretty sure these songs were as good as anything Leapy Lee or Clint Holmes ever wrote.  Now I'm convinced they're not as good as anything Rogers and Clarke ever wrote (I've posted the songs along with a fictional band bio, at  http://www.soundclick.com/thecringeworthies if anybody's interested).

But I've always had a nostalgia for the comraderie of the those old songwriting days, so I got in touch with Dave again, and we started writing new songs. In one of our early face - to - faces, he (not me, really!)  brought up Ishtar, and while not a fanatic like me, he likes it pretty good. I was pleased that it reminded him of our early days too (though I think he doesn't find our early efforts as risable as I do - he's after me to write lyrics for tune he's worked out, "My gal is a soccer queen" aimed at that high school set, you know how they talk with their hip slang and all.  But I shouldn't snark, I'm old and out of touch too. Anybody with ideas for lyrics for this song, get in touch with me!

Anyway, I told him about John Mitchell's "Waiting for Ishtar" documentary, and Dave said let's write an Ishtar-themed song for that, so we did.  When John interviewed me for the movie, he gave me the opportunity to perform it on camera, but I was afraid I would tip across the line from "weirdo" to "desparate and pathetic weirdo" like the guys in "Off The Charts", the song poem documentary (I highly recommend it - more information at www.pbs.org/independentlens/offthecharts/)

Now, of course, I'm thinking - what was I thinking?!?  What an opportunity missed! John wasn't really interested in an audio recording of the song, though I sent him an mp3, I figured, hey, he could play it over the end credits.  So that recording exists, but my restless and clumsy mind grabbed on the idea of hiring some real musicians to record it, I wanted to get some old black blues guy, about 130 years old, with filmy yellow eyes, and some mid-eastern percussionists, and film the recording, me in the corner beaming like a proud papa, looking like Bruce Willis, or Howie Mandell, or Uncle Fester, depending on which position you subscribe to.

But anywho, I've been slow to act on this, not knowing the right musicians, and concerned about being racially insensitive. I ran across a website that had yet one more reason to hate Ishtar... bad portrayal of Arabs. Yes, I think Ishtar does traffic in some stereotypes of Arabs... and New York Jews, and white Texans, and CIA agents, and show business agents... but it also finds palitable ways of exposing some uncomfortable realities of the Middle East - the dynamics of different interests, the role of the Western world in exacerbating (or creating) problems there.  Some of the most sympathetic and stand up characters in the movie are Arabs, on the whole I think Ishtar does better by Arabs than most US popular culture.

But it isn't my ox being gored, you know?  So anyway, Jef, if you can hook me up with the right musicians, I'd like to do this recording, I'd invest a few bucks into this!




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I want to play in your town for you and 2 of your friends.  Learn the details here:

http://www.xtranormal.com/xtranormal/episode.php?aid=303120&mid=20090419185438400