Pop Music : Lhasa Club Spirit Brought to Life

Doing a reading Friday night, local poet Doug Knott pointed out that in the days when screenwriter Michael Blake used to live out of the back of his car, Blake would read at the modest shows Knott put on at the late and lamented Lhasa Club.

Now that Blake is a Golden Globe winner, Oscar nominee and all-around toast of the town for his “Dances With Wolves” script, he can return the favor and present similar evenings of acoustic music and verse himself, albeit with a much higher industry profile.

Friday and Saturday nights, in otherwise separate bills, Blake was the centerpiece of two programs dubbed “The Race Is On,” in which the Lhasa spirit was successfully transplanted to the cafe at Raleigh Studios in Hollywood. The Southwestern-styled cafeteria at the film studio where Blake and comrade Kevin Costner have long held fort turned out to be an appropriately charming and intimate venue for this sort of live performance.

Actually, more than the Lhasa, even, it was possible to imagine oneself transported to a secret literary nightspot in Montana, given the denim spirit and environmental concerns of the proceedings. At the late show Friday, chanteuse Julie Christensen sang a soaringly lovely song about driving through the majesty of Idaho to visit Exene Cervenka (not present this time), and John Doe invoked the ghost of Woody Guthrie in dedicating a duet with Tony Gilkyson to drought-stricken farmers.

Exactly which race the participants consider to be on was not entirely clear, beyond the general onus of anti-war, pro-environment progressive politics; this was one benefit where more time could have been spent on the soapbox. (A card given out to departing attendees pitched the Mountain Lion Preservation Foundation.)

Blake’s climactic reading of an excerpt from “Helmut,” a Hollywood-themed novel in progress, was much anticipated. But the clear highlight and crowd favorite Friday was the four-song set from Christensen, a knockout pop-jazz crooner and inspired songwriter who has everything it might take to revive the torch-song tradition among the rock crowd.