Wednesday, May 02, 2012

Art-For-Art’s-Sake Theatre:
John Gorka “The Gypsy Life”

Time once again for our usual midday Wednesday feature.

One of yours truly's favorite artists is John Gorka, who is the subject of a 2007 DVD documentary entitled The Gypsy Life. Yours truly had the pleasure of meeting him at a private reception back in 2001. His pretension towards shyness and absent-mindedness in his live performances, belies a man who is quite sharp, and very well read.

His onstage schtick is such that he limits the audience only to "mental requests." This does not stop them from expressing them out loud, however, and as one can see in the first clip, starting at 2:11, he is constantly reminded of songs he can barely remember from his early recording years, particularly the early- to mid- 1990s, and the "Fast Folk" movement out of which he emerged.

In the second clip, from an unidentified television performance, he performs the title song of the documentary with country recording artist Kathy Mattea.
 

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