Back in 1988, I used to perform this version of Hamlet’s soliloquy, in which each word is followed by a cartoonish sound effect.  It was, I recall, fun to perform, difficult to memorize, and took a long time to set up.  Here’s how it begins.

The “Nocturne” is based on the randomized diatonic four-pitch chords I’ve used in several pieces. Seven of these chords were used for the left-hand part. A set of seven numbers gave the number of repetitions of each chord (6215734) and the key of each chord (7623154: BECGFAD). They were then arpeggiated, in the familiar nocturnal 12/8. The right hand part was written from the three remaining pitches in each key, plus the flatted seventh, thus giving the eight pitches of two adjacent keys (B+E, E+A, C+F, etc.). The second part of the nocturne repeats the process with different chords, repetition sequence, and key sequence; with the key sequence darkened by dialing it over a couple of stops on the circle of fifths: E♭+A♭, A+D, G+C, F+B♭, B♭+E♭, D+G, C+F.

You can hear it on Bandcamp, over here.

This photocopied dossier collects 49 pages of my music for keyboard.  Let me know if you want one.

The pieces are:

The Muscatel Suite
Pay Attention
Gilding the Pyrite
The Guidonian Hand Applied to a Tracing of a Plaster Cast of a Yeti Footprint
This Honeycomb Matrix of Atoms Known as the Material World
Bill Irwin’s “Marionette”
Prelude
Oh
Jag
Fiction
Misapprehension
Hapax Legomenon
The Hand Without the Fingers Is Just a Spoon
Dodecaphonophenakistoscope

Michael Smith and I used to open every performance of “Doug & Mike’s Adult Entertainment” with this little ditty.  Mike was on pocket trumpet, and I played banjo uke.  We also made a karaoke tape, now included on our DVD.

Back in the early ’90s, I used to do a ventriloquism routine about alien abductions, called “Quest for Lost Time.”  The subject was then just crossing over into popular culture, due to the efforts of Strieber, Hopkins, et al.  I performed it at Caroline’s, and, most memorably, on a Martin Mull Cinemax special, where I was assisted by an orchestra and chorus girls.  I also brought it out for a FortFest, one of the conventions held by the International Fortean Organization.  And now, Dave Singer of INFO has posted it on YouTube, over here.  It seems slow to me now, and not as lively as the TV version, but it was so long ago; so I might as well link to it.  It also includes a pseudo-mentalism bit I cooked up with the late John Keel, who helps secure Eddie’s blindfold.

They’re Roller-Sheep!  They’re here!  They’re everywhere!  They’re coming to your town!

From 1976, a sketch for “The Parliament of Fowls,” a proposed installation in collaboration with Doug Winter.  We often discussed it, but it never went beyond a few sketches.

This little reminder appeared in the INFO Journal.

The third string quartet consists of five of the erotic sonnets of Piero Aretino, translated into Solrésol. (There’s a preparatory sketch here.) In the first movement, the first four sonnets are offered simultaneously, each played by a different instrument. The translation is isorhythmic, with one beat of rest between words, two between lines, and four between stanzas. Each sonnet is a dialogue between a man and a woman; for each player, the male part is pitched an octave lower than the female. The second movement is based solely on the fifth sonnet. The first violin takes the woman’s part, the ‘cello the man’s, and all join in for the last word of each line, which is either cazzo ( sol-sol-la-mi) or potta (sol-sol-la-mī). The translation for this movement is more rhythmically varied.

Here’s the beginning of the first movement.

In 2001, White Knuckle Sandwich — Jennifer Duffy (now Perez), Anne Shapiro, and myself — contributed to a program of 10-minute musicals under development at New York Theatre Workshop. Our selection, “The King of Ukuleleland,” was inspired by the island musicals that proliferated in the early 1900s; it featured my dummy, Eddie Gray, in the title role, me as his assistant, Anne as a lawyer, Jen as a missionary who went native and got hooked on ukulele juice, and a chorus of ukulelians. The plot involved a Christian scheme to cut down all the ukulele trees, an inheritance, and mistaken identities; and ended with everyone on the island marrying everyone else.

The man who organized the project had a penchant for mainstream folk-rock that affirmed religious and family values; and a scenario mocking missionaries, marriage, temperance, and the work ethic didn’t quite fit his agenda. I don’t know where the project went after this, but we bowed out.