On May 8 and 9, 2012, I took a giant leap in my evolution and broke through an almost 4 decades-long bout of stage fright, performing two sold-out performances of my Super Ball Bounce Back Review, a combo concert/sing-along/party extravaganza at King King in Hollywood.

Lack of performing has always been a raw, gaping hole in a long career that’s stretched across various fields of the arts, despite the fact that I’ve always had the balls to throw myself off cliffs as I periodically dive-bomb into pursuits I know nothing about. I’ve hosted multimedia theme parties where I’m perenially on mic so that even the conversations I have with everyone are blasted throughout my house or wherever else I host these beasts. And God knows I walk around in hair and clothes that makes peoples’ necks snap if they’ve never gotten a gander of me before. Throw in that I’ve sold 50,000,000 records despite the fact that to this day I have no idea how to read, notate or play music, and I sold hundreds of paintings before I realized that you mix colors to get different colors. So backing away from displaying myself publicly made absolutely no sense.

But then I realized that this theme of living fearlessly was at the heart of everything I ever created. View life as a creative process. You are the canvas. If you’re stuck with a weakness, for God sakes turn it into a hook. Nine times out of ten, you’re the bogey monster scaring yourself shitless so just get out the way! So I finally did.

So here then are four videos from my Super Ball Bounce Back Review.  If you like them and are going to be in LA on September 21 and/or 22, I’m rising again at NoHoPAC in a salute to “September”, the first line of which mentions the date of the opening night.

“September”:

“Boogie Wonderland”:

“Neutron Dance”:

And the whole enchilada:

Badeya!

Rehearsing is, indeed, a novel concept for me. I like to plan, plan, plan but then just let things happen as they may and field the few things that may go awry. This is part of my daredevil style being a completely unschooled artist. But when I tried that in my last show, supposedly my big  comeback after a 37 year bout with stage fright, the tech guy screwed up so severely that I realized that could never happen again. So I spent the last week in the rehearsal studio with a lot of amazing folks getting ready to hit the floor boards again.

These were all taken last week at rehearsals for my Allee Willis’ Super Ball Bounce Back Review live show in mere moments, tomorrow and Wednesday nights, the 8th and 9th, at King King in Hollywood. These are in no particular order, just a few of my favorites.

All the hits you can stand to hear!!! And the last time in an architectural treasure.

https://www.alleewillis.com/detroit/mumford-last-call.html

In 1974, Allee Willis walked off stage in the middle of her own show. Now she’s finally coming back! The Grammy, Emmy, Tony and Webby award-winning and nominated songwriter, artist, singer, technologist, collector, and party thrower comes to the El Portal Theater in beautiful North Hollywood for one night only of songs, stories, and party games. Sing-along to Willis’ greatest hits like “September”, “Boogie Wonderland”, “Neutron Dance”, “What Have I Done To Deserve This” and “I’ll Be There For You (theme from Friends)”! Win valuable prizes! Watch her as she attempts to get through the evening without walking off stage for another 37 years!

Show starts at 8:00PM, Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Doors open at 7:00PM with kitschy food + drinks, beer and wine available

TICKETS
So reasonable it’s crazy!
$24.99 and $34.99
(tickets are limited and they’re going fast…)
http://www.elportaltheatre.com/events.html
https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/pe/9248165
or call 1-866-811-4111

El Portal Theatre
5269 Lankershim Blvd.
North Hollywood, CA 91601

“Ms. Willis…considers party-giving an art form” – New York Times

“Allee Willis’ parties are the campiest hot tickets in town” – People Magazine

“..A rare look inside the process of one of the most prolific and tenacious interactive media artists working today.” – salon.com

“Willis is the spokeswoman for this grand dance of junque nouvelle and vérité… as if Ozzie Nelson had acquired a sick and sudden taste for Surrealist poets. Her own interest in kitsch typifies the dichotomy that makes her interesting…The silliness, un-self consciousness, sense of whimsy and innocence are reflected in the absurd designs and bright colors (that surround her). Even the themes lack pretension… Hopeful images of a powerful America and its future.” – LA Weekly

“…A singular vision by an artist, who if not limited by building codes, would be the Simon Rodia of the 21st century.” – Chris Nichols, Los Angeles Magazine

I was going to feature my Richard Simmons towel as my kitsch offering of the day:

But I decided to feature the real thing instead because of how far we go back.

I met Richard Simmons in 1981 when he first decided he wanted to cut a record. Bruce Roberts and myself wrote and co-produced  the entire Reach album. We worked on it with Richard for almost a year. With Richard singing lead and calling out exercise commands, it was filled with real pop songs and the hottest studio musicians and background singers around.

I just found this on youtube.  I don’t know who posted it and it sounds like it was transferred inside a muffler, but it’s the first 2 and 1/2 songs on Side 1. Bear in mind that this was done in the midst of the very first wave of aerobic/Jazzercise/Jane Fonda exercise-mania.

I’m even on the album cover:

Let’s take a closer look at that:

That was probably the last time I ever went to an exercise class, other then when I met Richard at his studio, Slimmons, this last Saturday. I can’t say I was in sweats or that I even sweat at all. In fact, I went to meet him for lunch. But I answered a lot of e-mail and got a little writing done on my iPad as literally hundreds of folks who came to his Saturday morning workout class huffed and puffed and did the sweating around me.

In actuality, I did use my towel to wipe some sweat from my brow because it was hot in LA this weekend and there was no air-conditioning in class. I know that’s the way people do it if they’re serious about exercising or yoga or anything else where it’s good that your natural goodness pours out of you. But I, on the other hand, am the type who would rather have an air-conditioning chip installed in their body if such things were yet invented.

I know my outfit isn’t as pretty as Richard’s and I’m not as slim. If only I could shed as many pounds as I have great memories. But the memories and friendships keep me stuffed with joy and that’s what life (if not exercise) is all about.

Mere days after my first and only album, Childstar, was released on Epic Records in 1974, I walked on stage in front of 10,000 people to open in Boston for folksinger David Bromberg.

The only other time I had been on stage before was when I played a little fur tree in a school play when I was 8. Now here I was singing soul music, the first 10 songs I ever wrote, plus a Mary Wells medley and Brenton Woods’s “Oogum Boogum”. My band, the singers of whom would go on to become Chic, were dressed as sequined vegetables and I was in a satin suit that I’d autographed from head to toe. This is a really crappy photo of part of the costumes on mannequins but it’s all I’ve got;

Me and The Angle Babies aren’t in costume here but you can get a pretty good idea that between us and our costumes we weren’t what the folksinging crowd came to see.

I didn’t have a very good time on stage. I never could remember my lyrics and I always spent more time designing the sets and costumes than I did rehearsing or getting comfortable being on stage. After five performances on the East Coast we were booked into a lunchroom at Ohio State, the only way the college could also get Joni Mitchell to play in the main auditorium because we had the same agent. Our only audience were three people at a bridge table eating hot dogs and a psychology class being conducted in the back of the room, with the professor telling us to lower our volume after every song. I walked offstage after six songs and made the decision to just be a songwriter, where at least if I was being tortured it was in the comfort of my own room.

Through the years I’ve gotten much more comfortable performing – in my own unique way of doing so which doesn’t include singing live – mostly because I’m a big party thrower and walk around on mic the whole time.

Almost every conversation I have comes through the speakers and I’m literally directing and producing the party as I go. Throw in the thrift shop auctions and stupid party games that I lead the guests through and I’ve gotten very relaxed holding that cold metal thing in my hands.

But I still never have gotten it together to sing anywhere other than in the studio.

So the fact that in mere hours I will be up on the stage for the first time in almost four decades and I’m not sitting here throwing up is a MASSIVE ACHIEVEMENT! Me and five other well oiled songwriters will be singing our greatest hits and talking about how they were written. It’s just with a keyboard – Chris Price, who I’ve been writing and recording a song with and shooting a video all on iPhones, is accompanying me –  but I’m singing and remembering lyrics and lines nonetheless.

And if I can get through the evening not thinking about soul singers dressed as vegetables, psychology professors and hot dogs I will have made a big breakthrough.

I’ll be performing “September“, “Boogie Wonderland”, “Neutron Dance”, and “I’ll Be There for You (theme from Friends)“. At least radio has regaled me with these songs thousands of times over the years so I’m hoping that for once I can remember my own lyrics and be happy I’m up on stage.

Wish me luck!

As I’ve been blabbing about for weeks now, I had the extreme pleasure of conducting my high school marching band playing a medley of some of my greatest hits in the lobby of the theater I grew up in in Detroit with the cast of the musical I co-wrote, The Color Purple, singing along. I meant to post video of our performance as soon as I got home but to my horror, one of the three cameramen only shot the students from the back and the other both forgot to turn his camera on for parts of songs and babbled over the footage like he was the subject of a documentary. So it took quite a lot of editing to get something where you could even begin to see the  warm, wonderful and uplifting-higher-than-the-sky feeling that permeated the theater that day.

The performance was a benfit to buy new marching band uniforms for the Mumford band. The last time they got new uniforms was in 1984 when Jerry Bruckheimer, also a Mumford grad, bought them so they could play at the premiere of Beverly Hills Cop in Detroit. I got a Grammy for Beverly Hills Cop so this entire extravaganza was tied up in one fantastically organic bow!

Also organic was my shoes and socks combo in the Mumford school colors.

I had an excellent time wearing my hat, color coordinated to The Color Purple, the matinee of which started immediately after the closing notes of the marching band. Though my hat ecstacy only lasted a couple of bars. Too wobbly on my head.

If the music was wobbly at all it’s only the charm of a high school band and a songwriter who’s never learned how to read, notate or play music despite her songs selling more than 50 million records.

That’s the innocence of youth. I hope you enjoy our youth as much as me and the kids did. It was a VERY special experience indeed.

My intentions were good. I was gonna wake up and spring back into action as I haven’t blogged regularly in over a week but my body still feels like it’s broken into 13 million pieces and I need a recuperation day from one of the greatest weeks in my life in Detroit that included giving a speech about the rejuvenation of the city, conducting my beloved Mumford high school marching band playing a medley of some of my greatest hits and, for the first time since my musical, The Color Purple, opened five years ago, conducting part of the show. My spirits are HIGH, like being powered by a hemi engine, but I need time to decompress, not to mention unpack my seven suitcases, go through the thousands of photos that were taken, begin transferring the close to 75 videotapes that were amassed, and somehow attempt to get back to my everyday life of music and mayhem in Los Angeles. So give me 24 and I hope to be back with something soon…

 

My friend and hysterical TV comedy writer, Maxine Lapiduss, has done a brill job on the just-released-and-going-exceptionally-strong video for a song I co-wrote with her, Mark Waldrop, with whom Maxx started the lyric, and Michael Orland, musical director and accompanist for American Idol, good friend, and neighbor of mine who came over with Maxx and with whom we banged out the music in a few hours.

I’m not traditionally big on parody songs but this is the cherry of the bunch. Maxx called a bunch of her friends to help and, if I do say so myself, we all performed masterfully. Wendy and Lisa, yes Prince Wendy and Lisa, produced the song and Jane Lynch, my favorite comedy actress and Sue Sylvester on Glee, does an hysterical cameo.

The melody of “Scared About Life Without Oprah” reminds me a lot of of my earliest songs,…

…totally Pop and slightly theatrically inspired, with bouncy Carole King/ Laura Nyro-ish inspired background vocals.

Maxx has true love for Oprah.

I, too, have true love for Oprah.

We met when she and her TV crew surprised the cast of my musical, The Color Purple, about a month before we opened on Broadway and told us she was joining the show as above title producer. Far from “Scared About Life Without Oprah” I was “Elated about Life WITH Oprah”! Although you never could tell that from this photo where, when most people wait their whole life to be spoken to by her, I wasn’t even aware she was standing next to me attempting to make conversation:

If you live in LA, Maxx is doing one last performance of her hysterical comedy act, “Mackie’s Back In Town” at Sterling’s Upstairs at Vitello’s in Studio City this Sunday night, featuring a live performance of “Scared About Life Without Oprah”. And if you’re on Facebook, join the fan page,  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Maxine-Lapiduss/186264481403869. And here it is on itunes: http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/scared-about-life-without/id427623190?uo=4. I swear you will love this, so hit Maxx’s nose now!

 

…come see me and my latest piece of technology, this 1960’s wrist transisitor radio, on the “Indie Success: Caching in on Collaboration” panel, Tuesday March 15, 11:00AM at the Hilton, Salon C, 500 East 4th Street. Here’s what me and my wrist accessory will be talking about:

“Since the web began we’ve been talking about artists having a career without a label and going directly to fans. We finally have examples of this working, so what does it look like?

SXSW Veteran Heather Gold sits down with successful collaborating indie artists including: Allee Willis (September, Boogie Wonderland, The Color Purple, Theme from Friends, over 50 million albums sold), Mary Jo Pehl (Mystery Science Theatre 3000, RIfftrax, NPR) and Kenyatta Cheese (Know Your Meme, Rocketboom). The Net links almost every form of artistic making, so it makes sense that we’re in an era of increasing collaboration and creation in many forms. We’ll find out how limitations and openness serve them in an era of “personal brands” We’ll find out how they deal with rights, friendship and creating the best space in which to collaborate. We’ll also dig into their collaborative process in making social experiences, music, video and comedy and find out how they’ve succeeded creatively and in every other way.”

Arriving in Austin tomorrow night.  See you there on Tuesday. My biggest message: As much as it’s about technology, it’s about a charming personality…

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(Photo with my Royal typewriter, bought with my allowance money when I was 13, by Jennie Warren)