{"id":211,"date":"2012-04-02T05:39:38","date_gmt":"2012-04-01T17:39:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldwidewas.com\/?p=211"},"modified":"2012-04-02T05:39:38","modified_gmt":"2012-04-01T17:39:38","slug":"spend-an-evening-with-don-was-notes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldwidewas.com\/?p=211","title":{"rendered":"Spend &#8216;An Evening with Don Was&#8217; notes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From fellow fan Robert Silverstein:<\/p>\n<p>For context, here&#8217;s a link to the concert: \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailytribune.com\/articles\/2012\/03\/22\/entertainment\/doc4f6b45c27979f142353679.txt\" target=\"_blank\">Spend &#8216;An Evening with Don Was&#8217;<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The show took place in a mostly full theater. Gary Graff gave an enthusiastic introduction to Don Was (noting that to fully describe DW&#8217;s accomplishments would take up most of the evening.) DW came out with an acoustic guitar and sang &#8220;Somewhere in America There&#8217;s a Street Named after My Dad&#8221; solo, a beautiful haunted version with occasional strumming of the guitar (as he noted to Gary Graff, &#8220;I&#8217;m not a folk singer&#8221;). He then sat down in a chair at the side of a stage, next to Gary Graff, and they had a conversation about his early interest in music. Then he brought out the other 2 members of the Saturns, his high school group, and the 3 of them played &#8220;If I had a Hammer&#8221; all on acoustic guitar. It turns out that a good portion of the audience were fellow graduates of DW from Oak Park High School class of 1970 (including Steve Brown, who put his hands on Zaz&#8217;s neck that day in the park!). After more conversation he brought out Was (not was):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Dave McMurray-tenor and soprano sax<\/li>\n<li>Randy Jacobs-guitar, backing vocals<\/li>\n<li>Luis Resto-keyboards, accordion<\/li>\n<li>Donald Ray Mitchell-vocals<\/li>\n<li>Sweet Pea Atkinson-vocals<\/li>\n<li>Terry &#8220;Thunder&#8221; Hughley-drums<\/li>\n<li>and of course, Don Was-bass<\/li>\n<li>(DW noted later that David Weiss was supposed to have been there, but &#8220;was stuck in Mexico&#8221;)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>first set:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Hello Operator<\/li>\n<li>Where Did Your Heart Go?<\/li>\n<li>Papa Was a Rollin&#8217; Stone (great work by Dave McMurray on soprano sax)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>second set:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>How the Heart Behaves<\/li>\n<li>Mr. Alice Doesn&#8217;t Live Here Anymore (per DW originally composed with Bob Dylan as &#8220;Shirley Temple Doesn&#8217;t Live Here Anymore&#8221; to be pitched to Paula Abdul)<\/li>\n<li>11 Miles an Hour<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>third set:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>From the Head to the Heart (sung by DR Mitchell, with DW on piano, Luis Resto on synth, Terry Thunder on drums, there&#8217;s a similar version on DW&#8217;s My Damn Channel)<\/li>\n<li>Out Come the Freaks (lead vocals by Terry Thunder)<\/li>\n<li>Knocked Down, Made Small<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>between the sets there was more conversation with Gary Graff which I won&#8217;t try to reproduce. A few highlights:<br \/>\nDW&#8217;s new post as president of Blue Note Records<br \/>\nBonnie Raitt&#8217;s management would have dumped DW (&#8220;for a real producer&#8221;) from the Nick of Time project if she had signed a record deal before he finished the project.<br \/>\nit was Milli Vanilli that had their tape break in the middle of song during the Club MTV tour.<\/p>\n<p>When Gary Graff asked him about future plans, Don mentioned that he is writing songs with David, and eventually would like to do another WNW album. If Ididn&#8217;t mention this, he was very complimentary of David Was&#8217; lyric writing, when Graff asked him if it was difficult assembling musicians to make the first WNW album, he said that the quality of David&#8217;s lyrics made it easy to attract quality musicians to the project.<\/p>\n<p>He also mentioned that they knew the 6 record stores in Detroit that reported to the dance charts, and a calculated effort was made to buy up the first record (the first 12 inch, I think) at those stores to get the record on the charts. They were then pleasantly surprised that it became a club hit in England.<\/p>\n<p>It was a great evening of music and conversation, I&#8217;m happy to have been there.<br \/>\nBTW, Terry &#8220;Thunder&#8221; Hughley is the drummer for the Detroit jazz\/rock\/funk institution The Sun Messengers, and plays with DW at the Concert of Colors revue he organizes every year in Detroit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From fellow fan Robert Silverstein: For context, here&#8217;s a link to the concert: \u00a0Spend &#8216;An Evening with Don Was&#8217; The show took place in a mostly full theater. Gary Graff gave an enthusiastic introduction to Don Was (noting that to fully describe DW&#8217;s accomplishments would take up most of the evening.) DW came out with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldwidewas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldwidewas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldwidewas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldwidewas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldwidewas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=211"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/worldwidewas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":213,"href":"https:\/\/worldwidewas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions\/213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldwidewas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldwidewas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldwidewas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}