Entering the whirlwind anniversary wrap up!

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20th Anniversary Celebration in Full Swing

Poets Sunnylyn Thibodeaux and Michael Boughn read at the shop this evening, Thursday, May 16th, 7-9pm. It'll be a lively affair--so if fear of poetry doesn't have you in its bony grip, you'd do well to come!

Sunnylyn is a New Orleans poet resident in San Francisco, gained significant recognition when immersed in San Francisco's much-missed New College poetics program, was often praised to the stars by the late great poet David Meltzer, etc., etc.!

Her recent chapbook "What's Going On" is one of the most recent and most elegant publications from Bird & Beckett, the publishing concern that's essentially a one-man show conducted by "son of the shop" Nicholas James Whittington (himself a poet who will read next Monday with Micah Ballard and Rod Roland -- both sporting new books that Nick designed, printed & published... that event will be the concluding event of our weekend's 20th anniversary festivities).

Mike Boughn, reading with Sunnylyn, is out from the east. There, he writes, edits the blog "Dispatches from the Poetry Wars" and teaches (at Univ. of Toronto). Born in Riverside, CA in 1946, he left in '66 sick of the Vietnam war, went to Vancouver, B.C., Canada and studied with the legendary Robin Blaser, who introduced him to William Blake & the pantheon of modern poetry... from 1970 to '79 he was a Teamster, working the lakefront of Toronto and organizing against the war... then it was back to poetry academia... recently he's edited and written major books on the poet H.D...

Friday, 5:30pm - jazz in the bookshop!

The music ends at 8:00pm -- it's a party, but for musicians it's also a job, and when it's quittin' time, it's quittin' time! But do plan to hang for awhile after. We'll ask Jerry to make some food, but maybe some of you can bring desserts to share? Oh, and BYOB! You can share it with some of your old and new friends. And bring some money to pay the musicians! Always bring some money to pay the musicians! Need us to suggest a number? How about twenty for these seven fine musicians?

And who are these fabled musicians, you might ask?
These seven fabled jazz musicians??

Why, here comes Scott Foster O'Rooney McVouty, guitarslinger since 2002 on our stage and for a mite longer since he was a teenager in his parents' garage with a big amp, blasting power chords and shredding 'til the neighbors could take it no more! He can still do it all, but it's his lovely lines, lyrical conceptions and supple rhythm we love best...

And what a band he's assembled at our behest for the occasion...

Trumpeter and singer Geechi Taylor, for instance--an ebullient spirit who bespeaks the joy of jazz from its New Orleans roots to its Oakland soul... saxophonist James Mahone, solid as a rock, wise to the depths this music embodies, with the skill it takes to bring it out... saxophonist David Boyce, hip to the mythological dimension that is jazz, capable of channeling spirits that are always with us though too rarely perceived... pianist Grant Levin, summoning centuries of music past and yet to come with ten digits on eighty eight keys... bassist David Ewell, pulsing and tracing the architecture of every tune from the first beat to the last... and young Cairo McCockran weaving countless rhythmic skeins in and out of the lines has bandmates lay down.

It's gonna be exciting and a whole lot of fun!

The books will watch over it all, holding their thoughts 'til you decide to open them up and inquire of them... but we're quite sure they dig it as well, happy to fill the shelves of Bird & Beckett to bursting 'til such time as you furlough a few...

That's enough for one email... the birds are waking up outside & I gotta get some sleep! Tomorrow, I'll fill you in on Saturday's show with Invisible Guy (Ben Goldberg, Michael Coleman and Hamir Atwal), Sunday's show with the Grant Levin Trio, and a bit more about Monday's reading with Nick, Micah and Rod... 20 years! On it goes!

Remember, we're at 653 Chenery Street, in Glen Park! You can call us at 415-586-3733, or email us at birdbeckett@yahoo.com. Take BART! The station is just a half a block away... and there are about five MUNI bus lines that come through here. We open every day at 11a.m. We rely on your tax-deductible donations to keep our head above water. And we rely on you to lure your friends in, and to buy books and help pay the bands!

See you in the shop soon!

/s/ Eric, prop., since May 1999

unproofed! please forgive me! double check all dates and times. besides, as the New Yorker used to famously say, "Musicians and night-club proprietors lead complicated lives; it's advisable to check in advance to confirm engagements."

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