After almost four decades the torturous vice grip on my psyche has been chiseled open so that my little stage personality, the one that once cowered in a dark corner  but whose pleas to give it a chance never stopped rattling through my brain, has finally put on some clothes and come out to play!  FINALLY all the noise can stop!!

Of course, like I do most things, I remain scared of them for a hundred years, then I finnallly get my toe wet and then proceed to become obsessed and jump into things in such a big way it’s all I wanna do and costs me every dime I have pursuing it as I’m a self-funded artist and I live for my art. As such, in the space of seven shows over the last year I went from a piano and a clusterfuck  of technical mistakes to an if-I-do-say-so-myself-and-if-the-standing-room-only-sell-out-crowds-are-any-indication magnificent one-woman-extravaganza-with-25 musicians-dancers-masseuses-chefs-and-me-in-it show, well oiled to the point of being a rig, hit-filled, and more fun than 27 barrels of monkeys.

But my Ringling Brothers scale troupe is too expensive for mommy to mount monthly, which is what she’d/ I’d be doing if left to her/my own devices. So to keep my performer chops simmering lest they run back into the cave they’ve been atrophying in all these years, I’m getting up and doing my very first stand up ever this coming Sunday night, January 20, at UnCabaret.  My lovely and gracious friend, the ever-talented Beth Lapedis, whose creation this legendary comedy series is, asked me to alight the stage joining my other good friends Tim Bagley and Michael McDonald (he of Mad TV fame and not the singer who I’m also friends with and would be happy to take the stage with anytime!). Karen Kilgariff and Faith Tucker are also on the bill.

Here are me, Tim, Michael, and our good friend Jimmy McGill at my place a couple of years ago.

 

You can see that I was comfortable enough with these guys that I didn’t worry about putting on makeup or serving them  on paper plates (though please notice the exceptional plastic fish paper plate holders the spaghetti-smeared dinnerware sit in).  I hope that comfortable feeling carries over to joining them on stage. That comfortable feeling certainly worked for Tim, who bagged the free foot massage after  winning “The First Three People to Win Five Chunks of Soul Get a Free Foot Massage During The Next Song” game at my BaDeYa, Baby! live show this last November.

That show being what gave me the guts to get up and try this standup thing to begin with. So it’s all come full circle and I hope Tim remembers my generous gift of a foot massage and musters up a laugh for my routine even if some of it flops around like a landlocked fish. Which I pray it doesn’t.  Why don’t you buy some tickets and find out for yourself?

 

 

 

On November 8 and 9, 2012 I reprised BaDeYa, Baby!, my sold out one-woman-show-with-25-people-in-it at NoHoPAC in beautiful North Hollywood, CA. Just as the shows that preceded it on September 21 and 22nd, it was a salute to my very 1st hit, “September” by Earth, Wind & Fire, the first line of which is “Do you remember the 21st night of September?”.  All the hits, sing-alongs, dancers, games, prizes, Boogaloo Wonderland sandwiches from my hometown Detroit, not to mention the big ol’ greasy foot massages conspired to make these evenings no normal singer/songwriter fare! So enjoy the show and the next time I do this I hope you BaDeYa with me!

See all 450 photos here. November 8, 2012 show coming  SOON.  Until then. BaDeYa!

.

On May 8 and 9, 2012 I had one of the greatest experiences of my career performing my Super Ball Bounce Back Review at King King in Hollywood. It not only was only the second and third performances I’d done since jumping off the stage in the middle of my own show in 1974, but was an attempted – and I’m happy to say TOTALLY TRIUMPHANT – comeback after one of the worst experiences of my career seven months before when 90% of the technology my first attempted comeback show was dependent on failed. But I knew that I had to get back up and practice what I preach: From some of the worst situations come the greatest miracles and I had proven to myself time and time again that, if nothing else, I was someone who had the courage to make lemonade out of big, fat lemons.

So I’m happy to report that I have risen from the ashes and had two of the greatest nights of my life bouncing back as a performer in a major way. I can’t thank everyone who came enough. And I can’t thank everyone who worked with me on the show enough.

So I leave you with a whole lotta photos from both nights, videos to come and a big, loud Badeya-say-do-you-remember there never has to be a cloudy day as long as you have sunshine inside. ENOY THE SHOW!!

You all know of my love for the physical structure of my classic Deco baby blue high school in Detroit, Mumford, as well as my dismay that the wrecking ball is hitting it mere months after the concert I’m doing/hosting there THIS Thursday night. One of the MANY reasons the school is near and dear to my heart is also because it was made famous in the film I won a GRAMMY for, Beverly Hills Cop, when Eddie Murphy wore a t-shirt bearing its name throughout the movie.

So it upsets me even more that features like this, all over the school, are about to be nothing more than a pile of crumbled limestone:

One place inside Mumford I loved like no other was the auditorium.  Here’s a photo of when I was there last year watching rehearsals for when I conducted the marching band playing a medley of my greatest hits. I was sitting in my favorite seat, Row A, first seat on the middle aisle.

Here was Row A, seat 1 yesterday as wrecking ball syndroome has already hit the school:

Here I am leaving the school:

At least there’s some small concilation for the crime of classic architecture demolition. Now if I could only get that clock!

Anyone who doesn’t know my friend Luenell, run to Wikipedia right now. If you ever even have caught a glimpse of her, maybe as the hooker in Borat…,

…or opening for Kat Williams…,

… or maybe in my backyard at one of my voluminous parties…,

…you know Luenell’s hysterical and don’t take no shit. I know her to also be a kind and seriously loyal friend, the type that just rings your doorbell and is standing there with her half eaten cupcake-in-a-cup offering you the other half. I would’ve shot a photo of it when she arrived here a few weeks ago wearing her pjs but I sucked it down too fast. Which is too bad because it matched my shirt:

Last night Luenell threw herself a huge party. Maverick’s Flat, the club on Crenshaw Blvd. where it was held, is as legendary as the star herself, ground zero in the 1960’s for iconic musicians, comedians and socialites to party together in a Playboy Club-type atmosphere. As an example of the excellent decor, here’s a door that still remains:

The funky and psychedelic design of the club even inspired the album art for one of my favorite LPs, the Temptations’ “Psychedelic Shack.”

Here’s an example of who used to perform at Maverick’s Flat:

But tonight it was all Luenell/all the time…:

… as we gathered “yet again to celebrate her 25th birthday”:

I arrived the same time as Luenell. Shitty photo of me but you can see the girth of the Paparazzi.

Lots of great friends in the house.  Here I am with Abraham Mc Donald, who I met at Jenifer Lewis‘ one Christmas and who won the Oprah show’s National Singing Competition right after that.:

Then MAxi B, from The Mary Jane Girls…:

…and Norwood Young…:

…and William Papa Lee Handford Jr…:

I hope you can see the ultra expensive bling I wore. Here’s a slightly better shot of it on the red carpet:

Apparently my lips had a wonderful time giving an interview to WorldVideo.tv. Look at them leaping  off my face!!

It got soooo crowded that we retreated to the roof, where we shared some smokin’ fried chicken and general frivolity. Here are me, Snappy P., Constance Tillotson and Michael Ruvo:

And then my camera battery died.  I NEVER travel with just one, but seeing as I lost two cameras and four batteries this week alone, I was traveling solo with only one new cheap camera and the battery it was born with. Oh well….. Happy birthday, Luenell, and to 150 more magnificent 25th’s!!

New Year’s Eve, 2011. I’m coming down Sunset Plaza, a really windy road with million dollar homes right above Sunset Blvd. in LA. I’m in my Green Beetle, which is a lean and fast machine.

Sunset Plaza’s a pain in the ass to drive under any circumstance but nightmarish should you end up behind a slowwww driver, which is what fate dealt me this New Years when I was in a big hurry to get to my destination, my friends Nancye Ferguson and Jim Burn’s pad, an ultra modern built-for-Brian-DePalma-in-the-70’s house that teeters on stilts overlooking the city. Here’s the view from the balcony:

There are very few parking spaces to accommodate a small fraction of the 50 people on their way up there. If you don’t get one of those spaces you have to turn around in a teeny tiny cul-de-sac and drive a quarter mile out the little windy road with hardly any shoulder and a drop-down of hundreds of feet. And then you’re back out on the main winding road where there are about two parking spaces for every fifty people. No way am I limping back up that hill on foot! So I start leaning on the horn behind this little black car driving at funeral speed. To my credit, I only honked when there was enough room for the stupid driver to pull over so I could pass. Finally, after five minutes the car hugs the curb and I whiz past, gunning it extra hard to show my annoyance even further.

I get to the house and thank God there’s a space left. I pull in, put some lipstick on and send a few emails on my iPad before I go in. A couple of cars pass me and I don’t see them coming back down the hill, which means they must’ve found parking spots too. I finally get out of the car and trudge the last 20 feet up to the house. Standing there is my good friend, Beverly D’Angelo, with a guy I don’t know. Beverly and I go way back and I love her. She’s also an excellent party guest, a criteria I have incredibly high standards for, and has been coming to mine for years.

Just as I’m getting in hugging range I hear Snappy P yell, “Green Beetle, that must have been Allee!”. “You fucking asshole, you almost drove us off the road!!,” screams Beverly as I approach. Oh shit, I rarely misbehave behind the wheel anymore and now I’ve gone and terrorized a friend. But then it gets worse, “Meet Sid Krofft,” she says, referring to the mystery man next her, adding that she brought him to the party specifically to meet me. Now I’ve been waiting to meet this guy since the late 60’s when his puppets, marionettes and insane live action shows started ruling TV and now I’ve almost killed him. “I wanted to get out of the car and tell you what an asshole you were” he says. Thank God the Beetle was turbo-charged and he didn’t have a chance. I ate a lot of crow for the next few minutes, but it was immediately apparent that Beverly was completely right. This guy was a kindred spirit and we hit it off like we had known each other for decades.


Though Beverly had told Sid he HAD to come to Willis Wonderland, I went to his place first, now a couple weeks ago. I took hundreds of photos but I can’t show any of them because Sid’s a really private guy. But it’s as handcrafted as my place is times 6 trillion-on-steroids.

In actuality, I didn’t really get full tilt into the Kroffts back in the day when their shows were on the air because by then I was way way way deep into records and the radio. As a fan and later as a songwriter, when my radio habit lurched into twelfth gear and I lived and breathed music every millisecond of every day, I was still aware of that Sid and Marty Krofft name and that it stood for something crazy. But it really wasn’t until so many friends of mine insisted I go to an auction of their props at the Beverly Hills Hotel in 1998 that I realized the extent of that craziness as well as the magnitude of its reach. As a kitsch lover, how could I have not been familiar with every single detail of the Kroffts’ career, the guys on the throne at the top of the kitsch mountain??

YouTube, of course, makes for an excellent crash course. So I’ve seen more of the Krofft brothers’ magic in the last month than I have in my lifetime. And my respect and discovery of the depth of influence their work had on me subliminally has been a revelation. H.R. Pufnstuf is probably their most classic:

I don’t like to wake up early for social visits but at 82, Sid Krofft is in REMARKABLE shape, jogging 9 miles a day + a couple hours in the gym, so he’s raring to go when the sun comes up. 10:30 bright and early a couple of Tuesdays ago he and Beverly were at my doorstep.

I even got it together to cut up healthy food for him.

This is a BIG step for me as this is what’s more likely to be on that table on a regular basis:

Sid was as fascinated by Willis Wonderland as I was of his hand-built abode. As my yard is part of my living room, we hit that first.

Although it was raining when I took the following shot, you need to see those GORGEOUS 1950’s fiberglas fish lounges sans people:

As we strolled around outside we were joined by Donny Molls, a great artist and Sid’s next door neighbor:

We stopped and chatted in every room:

My downstairs, where that shot was taken, is particularly packed with memorabilia, some of which is Krofft Brothers stuff I’m happy to say I had the good sense to collect even if I wasn’t sure exactly what it was when I bought it.

If you’ve never seen Electra Woman and Dyna Girl, double up your sedation and watch now! EASILY one of the greatest title sequences in the annals of kitschdom:

Thank god I had a few View Master disks of Electra Woman and Dyna Girl in my collection too:

Sid and Michael Jackson were great friends so I pointed out some of my primo MJ cheese:

You really need to see what I’m pointing at. Yeah, I got the doll and the puzzle like a zillion other people…

…but who else do you know who has the drink cooler?! This is easily my favorite piece of MJ memorabilia I own:

When we got to my dining room…

… Sid posed in front of Mr. Wah Wah, a stunning portrait painted by my alter-ego, Bubbles the artist.:

We spent a lot of time in my recording studio too.

Although Sid has a computer he’s not obsessed with them as I am of my 11 networked Macs. So what we really wanted to do was show him how much of his stuff is online.

And there’s gaggles of it – H.R. Pufnstuf, Land Of The Lost, The Bugaloos, Lidsville, The Donny and Marie Show, not to mention Electra Woman and Dyna Girl for starters. And no exploration of Sid and Marty Kroffts would be complete without the Brady Bunch Variety Hour:

The Brady Bunch is certainly coming up A LOT lately!

One of THE most classic and cheesiest shows EVER on TV was called Pink Lady and Jeff. 1981. I remember being so intrigued by that nutty title that I tried to catch the show whenever I could. Imagine the complete and total ecstasy-breakdown I had when I saw the Pink ladies immortalizing my song,”Boogie Wonderland”:

Watching this again with the creator of that show who was totally in on the cheese joke of it all was even more thrilling. As we were poking around doing searches on YouTube I discovered that not only did Pink Lady do that quintessential performance of the song, they also recorded it. I’m still gasping for breath:

What a day I spent with the gang. Here’s one last parting shot for the photo LP before everyone left:

I sho love me some Sid Krofft!!


 

And now, the  Oscar for Best Motion Picture…. goes to… The Artist!

As I hunkered  down to watch the Oscars yesterday, the first time I had ever watched it alone due to pressing deadlines on my end, I remembered the last time I sat down to watch a global event unfold on TV. It was when Carmageddon was predicted when the 405 freeway had to close for a day in LA last summer. I thought about it a few days before and decided to go through my vast collection of digital images of bad album covers and match them to the demolition/construction events as they occurred in real time. Last night, as soon as I saw Mila Jovovich be the first star to walk down the red carpet…

…I realized I could take the same approach to the Oscars as Carmageddon as the stars continued to arrive:

I pride myself on being a daredevil artist, ready to field any creative challenge thrown down in seconds. So as the Oscars were announced, I gave myself between the time the presenter walked on stage til the moment the winner was announced to scan through close to 5000 images and pick the appropriate stinker LP cover for each category. Here then are The Allee Willis Museum Of Kitsch Oscar winners, in the order I posted them but starting with the after party and  final award, and ending with the stars arriving earlier in the day:

Have fun at the after parties!:

Best Motion Picture:

Best Actress:

Best Actor:

Best Director:

Best Animated Film:

Best Original Screenplay:

Best Original Song:

Best Original Score:

The inevitable speech by the head of the Academy:

Best Supporting Actor:

Best Special Effects:

Best Sound Mixing:

Best Supporting Actress:

Best Foreign Film:

Best Makeup:

Best Costume Design:

Sasha Baron Cohen wasn’t the only one who arrived carrying something:

The actors are looking especially fabulous:

Fashions continue to astound:

The stars are in exquisite fashions:

Congratulations to all the Allee Willis Museum Of Kitsch Oscar winners!

 

As we speak, I’m racing out of the house to be on Dr. Phil with Sly Stone of Sly and the Family Stone fame. Normally  I’d be a little excited to be on TV but the show is all about saving another iconic singer from self-destruction. A couple of weeks ago I got a call from a mutual friend who’d worked with Sly back in the heyday to see if I was interested in writing with him because he was clean and sober and a comeback felt possible.

I can’t even tell you how much influence this guy had on me. One of the earliest purveyors of fusing together different genres of music, Soul, Funk, Pop, Psychedelic and Rock, and doing it in insanely wild outfits with a message of peace and celebration. And lets not forget that The Family Stone was the first group EVER to have female players in the band. The music was uplifting and life enforcing. But we all watched or heard about the life slipping out of Sly until there was no music anymore.

Having nothing to do with the phone call asking me if I wanted to write with Sly, I got an e-mail just as I stepped on the dias to honor Lily Tomlin last friday asking me if I would be on Dr. Phil. The show was to be devoted entirely to Sly. I was honored and, trust me, if I can be of any support to someone so influential on me and any other writer, singer, arranger or producer of popular music I’m there. So they shot an interview at Willis Wonderland where I just talked about why Sly was so important in music and that I believed he absolutely could rise again.

And now today, after the show being on-again and off-again all day yesterday as Sly decided whether he could commit to Dr. Phil staying on him to make sure the path stays straight and narrow, I’m racing to throw myself in the shower, find a couple outfits that I don’t have to iron, and throw them and myself into the car that’s coming to take me in mere minutes to take me to the Dr. Phil (sober) House. I have no idea what I’m walking into, both in the near future with Sly’s family there, and in the little farther out future when we (hopefully) start to write. But no one is rooting harder for Sly to once again Dance to the Music and be an Everyday Person ( know I took liberty with People). He’s a noble and just cause and soon I hope to be talking about us co-writing a nice big, fat hit for 2012, The Year Of The Sly.

I’m sure any kitsch lover has a similar dream – having dinner with the kitschy-kitschy-cuchi Charo and bonding like you have been best friends for 30 years. Such was my evening at composer Pietor Angell’s pad with the aforementioned singer, actress, Flamenco guitar virtuoso, CHARO!

Maria Rosario Pilar Martinez Molina Baeza a.k.a. Charo was very nice when we met, no star attitude detected at all, but I knew she had no idea who I was. I made my move when she walked into the living room alone to get a sweater. I told her I loved her spirit and undying devotion to being herself. I also told her I knew of what I spoke and started spitting out a list of songs I had written. Usually people go full-tilt bonkers when I get to “September”,“Boogie Wonderland”, or the Friends theme, but it was “Neutron Dance” that did it this time. Charo went firecrackers, indecipherable words spilling out at 120 mph as she told me she’d done the song in her act. Throughout the evening she proceeded to sing little pieces of it to me. I had no idea what lyric she was actually singing as the accent makes most words undetectable but it was Charo, so who cares?? It was fantastic!!

Seeing as I never knew that this iconoclastic kitsch Goddess did my “Neutron Dance” I almost had a heart attack when she broke into dance as soon as dessert was over.

If you were expecting the entire choreographed number we all can safely assume that that will be coming as the friendship progresses.

I actually prefer intimate moments to full blown peformances. It’s like being privy to Roddy McDowall‘s private footage of Natalie Wood, Paul Newman, Jane Fonda and the hundreds of other stars he filmed casually whenever he went anywhere, including here at Willis Wonderland. I don’t have the footage handy but on evenings such as this one that included the likes of Roddy, David Arquette, Lipsynka, Paul Reubens a.k.a.Pee Wee Herman, Lynne Stewart a.k.a. Miss Yvonne, Debi Mazar, me, Snappy P and Pamela DesBarres, you get a much better idea of who the star really is than watching some interview or performance with them on tv:

I hope you have a happy Monday that includes your own personalized version of Neutron Dance as I offer a toast to Charo with the champagne that was served at our dinner with actual flecks of 22k gold floating in it:

I’m toasting that more adventures with Charo be coming in the very near future!

 

 

On Friday I had the honor of sitting on the dais and speaking at the Pacific Pioneers Broadcasters luncheon honoring my friend, mentor and sometimes collaborator, Lily Tomlin.

It was thrilling being surrounded by so many Laugh-In alumni and friends. (L-R) Leslie Jordan, Kat Kramer, Gary Owens, Sally Kellerman, Lily, JoAnne Worley, me who I’m always surrounded by, and Bruce Vilanch:

Sally, Bruce and I go back to 1974, when I first started writing songs and tip-toed on to the stage:

I just met Leslie, who I had been a rabid fan of since I first saw him on Will & Grace, for the first time a couple of weeks ago when I saw his one man show, Fruit Fly, at The Celebration Theater, where my musical, The Color Purple, is about to do a four month run. Trust me, he will be gracing these pages often.

Alas, a no-show in Eileen Brennan. Though as I was seated next to her it meant I got an extra dinner roll:

Lily gets her award:

Lily and I are about to go back to our hometown, Detroit, to, among other things, attend the first high school performance of The Color Purple, at her alma mater, Cass Technical High School, in April. We’ve done a lot of things together, though this high school thing is about as exciting as it gets to me as I’ve been waiting for high school performances of TCP to happen since I finished (co-)writing the show in 2005. But here’s an earlier instance of us being joined together, when my head served as the model for Lily’s character, Kate, in her Tony award-winning show, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe:

So I’m looking forward to much mayhem in the future with our honoree. Love you, Lily! MUCH deserved.