MUSIC
A look back st some of Spencer Livingston's music projects
MUSIC HISTORY

Spencer Livingston began playing electric guitar at age 14, playing in local R&B bands in Philadelphia and South Jersey, and sitting in in clubs with such performers as The Soul Survivors, The Platters, and Wayne Cochran and the CC Riders. In 1973 he formed Nighthawk, an electric blues trio featuring Livingston's singing and slide guitar. Over the next few years he met and learned from such legendary artists as Son House, Johnnie Shines, James Cotton, Lucky Peterson, and Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup.

In 1974 he began performing solo blues shows, playing slide guitar and harmonica. Leaving Nighthawk shortly after in 1975, he formed the Spencer Livingston Band, playing Chicago-style blues around the Northeast for several years. In 1976 he expanded into playing Carribean music with The Ravers, an early New York reggae band, and the Spooge Kings, featuring Livingston on vocals, guitar, organ, and trombone in a variety of Carribean genres including ska and spooge.

In 1977 he formed Crawlin' Kingsnake, an acoustic swing-jazz-blues band featuring Livingston on acoustic guitar and vocals, and recorded his first album, "How You Play This Game, Anyway?". While working with Crawlin' Kingsnake he also joined the infamous artists band AKA, which included Richard Edson, who went on to play with Sonic Youth, Konk, and Beth B., and Richard Kelly, who later founded Club Foot in San Francisco and founded the Alter Boys and the Club Foot Orchestra.

Livingston relocated to New Orleans in 1978, playing solo blues shows until founding Ballistics in 1979 with drummer Bunny Matthews. Critics praised Ballistics as one of the most creative forces to appear on the New Orleans music scene in many years, featuring Livingston's songwriting, explosive performance style, and idiosyncratic guitar and sax playing. Shortly after the release of a single, "The Last Ride", and an EP, "Violents Are Blue", Ballistics stopped performing.

Livingston then formed a spoken-word band, The Erato Project, using a mixture of jazz, African, and South American music to frame the poetry of Livingston and Creole poet Linda Tucker.

Over the next few years, Livingston played publicly on rare occasions, primarily solo performances showcasing his songwriting. His most recent project, Spencer Livingston and the Little Sisters of the Protecting Veil, featured Livingston singing and playing acoustic guitar with vocal harmonies by five female vocalists.

Livingston's hard-to-find recordings include "How you Play This Game, Anyway?", an album of acoustic blues and swing featuring guest appearances by Richard "Doctor Scanlon" Lainhart, Kip Lornell, the late Mark Tucker on piano, Ramblin' Todd Lainhart, and the Sweet Magnolia Blossoms (Nellie Brown, Deborah Morrison, Suzie Worley, and Jean Anglin); "Violents are Blue", a four-song EP with Ballistics which includes his Dada-punk R&B classic "Naugahyde" (the inspiration for one of Ernie K-Doe's regular stage rants); "The Last Ride", a 45 that includes the very un-Ballistic title song about New Orleans' lost institution Ponchartrain Beach and the extremely Ballistic "Young Stuff", the standard opening number in the band's wild live shows; "Watermelon Man James Bond", released on cassette only by the Spooge Kings; and several CDs: "Imagine Your Eyes Are Closed", a compilation of his original soundtrack music for his independently-produced films and his modern dance compositions; "Art Kills Babies", an oratorio; and "Pony Blues", Mississippi Delta and Gulf Coast music.

Photos
	Livingston at the New Barbershop Rainbow Lounge in North Philadelphia with Louis Jordan's former vocalist. June 2000.
	Spencer Livingston and the Little Sisters of the Protecting Veil circa 2001
	Albany, New York, 1977. One version of the ever-shifting lineup of AKA, the band that rocked Workspace Gallery's openings. Todd Lainhart, Mike Anglin, JC Garrett, Richard Kelly, and Spencer Livingston
	Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, Performance Art Festival Spencer Livingston, at left, plays sax and flutes with Doctor Africa.
	"Twenty years ago, when Spencer Livingston brandished a vibrating dildo on stage at Tipitina's, he was told he's never play the club again. On November 18, Spencer and his all-female band, the Little Sisters of the Protecting Veil", triumphantly return to Tip's, with Mr. Livingston declaring, "I knew they'd come crawling back someday." Bunny Matthews, Offbeat. Clockwise from top left, Marlena Decker, Lena Loh, Rapunzel Mendes, Anna Harris, Spencer Livingston, Diane Bosilivic.
	A hurricane Katrina-damaged photo of Spencer Livingston and the Little Sisters of the Protecting Veil at the Neutral Ground, New Orleans Before Anna Harris joined the band and on one of many nights that Diane Bosilivic couldn't get a babysitter. Spencer, Lena, Lanie, Rapunzel.
	Spencer playing bottleneck guitar at Cafe Lena in Saratoga, NY, early 70's, singing a song he learned from Son House The song was "Louise McGee", the guitar was a Gibson Dove that a bad girlfriend stomped into kindling.