A guy walks into a bar and recites poetry. People applaud. He gets musician friends to play behind him. He becomes a poet-rocker. On the strength of a single called " Jesus Was Way Cool", the band's indie-label debut album hits #1 on the CMJ charts. The band gets signed to a major label. The guy makes a video of a song called "Detachable Penis" that actually gets MTV airplay. The major-label thing does not work out. Instead, he goes to law school and becomes an attorney specializing in intellectual property law, which means he protects people like himself from getting ripped off by major labels and other venal music industry types. All the while, he continues writing poetry meant to be spoken and making music. His cult band from the early 1990s reunites, disbands, and reunites. He forms other bands. He becomes a living legend.

 

The guy is  John S. Hall, his original band was  King Missile, his current band is  Unusual Squirrel, and he brings it to  Club Helsinki Hudson on  Sunday, September 10, at 7pm, as part of the monthly  Rogovoy Salon curated by my pal, music journalist  Seth Rogovoy.

 

"They don't make very many like John S. Hall anymore," says Seth Rogovoy, explaining why he chose Hall to perform in the Rogovoy Salon series. "With King Missile, Hall took his witty, culturally trenchant spoken-word observations and gave them the punk-rock setting they naturally cried out for."

 

A profile of John in Vice Magazine called " King Missile's John S. Hall Is a Sensitive Artist (Who Works at a Law Firm)" is funny not only because John is a funny guy with a funny story, but also because it is written in the kind of deadpan style that Hall favors in his own writing. The New Yorker called John "an absurdist rocker turned corporate analyst: Hall seems to have traced the fitful arcs of his verses" in  a glowing profile last year.

 

Who else would name an album "The Psychopathology of Everyday Life"?

 

Seth continues, "John's new band, Unusual Squirrel, builds on the tradition of giving his work titles that most mainstream print media still won't print," including the opening and closing track of the band's new album, " Fuck Sandwich," which is itself proudly media-proof (while referring to the tracks that bookend the album), and which you can  stream in its entirety here.

 

"Mostly, John is an amazing storyteller. His narratives range from naughty to surreal to funny to morbid, but they always feature elements of surprise and perceptiveness. He's a cultural critic in verse. His new album even has a song explaining the inner workings of the financial crash of 2008. I like to think of John as a rock 'n' roll Walter Benjamin crossed with Andy Kaufman. Maybe he'll take us all out for ice cream at the end of his show."

 

Listen to " The Guy Who Coughs" for a sense of Hall's combination of acerbic wit and empathic humanity.

Hall's influence can be found in the work of Violent Femmes, Mike Doughty's band Soul Coughing, and in the rock performances of Maggie Estep, to whom Hall paid tribute in person at the memorial service for the late Hudson resident held at Club Helsinki Hudson in February 2014. Hall performed one of Maggie's most famous numbers at the 41st annual Poetry Project's New Year's Day Marathon at St. Mark's Church a few years back -  watch it here, as well as his complete performance that day  here.

As previously noted, Hall's obsessions, targets, themes, or what have you, include popular culture, hence the King Missile favorite, " Martin Scorsese." " Eating People" seems inspired by the movie "Soylent Green," and also raises the difficult question, how does a vegetarian navigate cannibalism? " My Heart Is a Flower" is send-up of romantic nature clichés, featuring scenes of goo in a cemetery with a bear playing keyboards. Sex provides plenty of material for Hall, including " My Lover," performed with a string duo, and in  two poems he performed at Bowery Poetry Club at a release reading for Sensitive Skin magazine: " I Hate This Guy" and " How They Fucked."

 

At Helsinki Hudson, John will perform a 20-minute solo set, featuring  some of his greatest hits - perhaps along the lines of  this set at LOVE FEST! - before bringing out Unusual Squirrel for the main feature of the night.

 

And also note: John was way ahead of his time with " America Kicks Ass," which preceded Donald Trump by more than a decade, and which he performed on HBO's " Def Poetry."