More fun with puppets, and a fond farewell

Milking out the last few drops of "Play Me, I'm Yours," my brother Elan, his friend Paul and my other brother Elliot (manning the camera - a much better one - this time), we head out again on a Sunday night to Union Station to play the beloved street piano on its last night...and do another puppet show.

The piano is slated to be removed from the premises on Monday.

When I got there, there was one person playing some minor-key, gothic stuff. He seemed to be playing an endless medley, constantly going back to the same song. I don't know if he was homeless, but he was wearing socks instead of shoes and hung out with two of his friends in the passenger couches nearby in the station's waiting room. He was playing for a good half hour.

Then someone else started to play, he wore a tank top and a baseball cap. He was also playing for a long time. His playing drove me nuts since, although he was a more-than-decent player technically, he had absolutely no sense of dynamics. Everything was fortissimo. It was like the acoustic equivalent of The Loudness War.


Maybe it was good that "Play Me, I'm Yours" was coming to an end...some people had lost all sense of street piano etiquette, sad to say.

Elan, who wanted to go on with the puppet show and the video shoot, got a little impatient, so he politely told Mr. Fortissimo that we needed the piano for a video shoot, and he complied.

We did a reprise of our Staples Center puppet show, plus some new numbers.





I doodled around with some improvisations and a few other tunes, including Stevie Wonder's "Ribbon In The Sky."

It was time to bid goodbye to this piano, and to "Play Me, I'm Yours" in Los Angeles. Afterward, Elan and Paul wanted to film additional puppet scenes in the main waiting room of the station. I was called to do some puppetry as well for the video (I played the female puppet and spoke in a falsetto British accent).







I couldn't think of a more appropriate place to play my last street piano, the same place where I started at.

Despite the lack of piano etiquette and the irreverent puppet show, I was playing a street piano for the last time at Union Station after 11 o'clock at night. Just like the first time I got to play it.

Union Station is a place where journeys begin and end.