John to Perform at One Pot's Night School, 7/6/2011

[pahouk]

John will be appearing along with Matthew Stadler at One Pot's Night School on 7/6/2011 : http://onepotblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/ ... e-and.html. Based on the previous footage of the Night School events this looks like fun.

[Liesbeth]

there's a link with Songs for Eating & Singing, right? That sounded absolutely fantastic.

[pahouk]

Quick recap of the evening. John opened by telling us that he had been planning on playing the piano but had just been told that it wasn't available. (There are a few meeting rooms available at The Sorrento but only one has a piano and that room was being used by a pharmacist convention.) Instead he was going to improvise on the ukelele. Also he had just found out they wanted him to open the evening with an additional song. He did Home on the Range (while reading the lyrics from his phone that he very carefully balanced on the ukelele). We joined in but most of us did not know the second verse. After Matthew read a few selections from the book we had a yummy dinner then John sat down with Matthew to ask some questions about the book. We were starting to run out of time so the Q&A got cut a bit short so John could sing. Matthew's book is a cover book of a John LeCarre novel so John did some cover songs. He did La Vie en Rose (in French), Gimme All Your Lovin', and The Rolling Stones' Sway.

[Liesbeth]

La Vie En Rose? Don't remember ever hearing he did that before...
Grew up with Grace Jones' version of the song, but I'm guessing John wasn't as extravagantly dressed as her.

[pahouk]

I think I read that John did La Vie en Rose as a duet with John Hodgman at MaxFunCon. Here's some footage of John doing part of Gimme All Your Lovin' and Sway (the videos are probably too dark to see much but the audio isn't bad): http://naftabooktour.tumblr.com/