My name is just plain 'berdalee'.
Vital Stats: Left-handed Halloween baby with active inner elf.
I moved to Guerneville four years ago from The
City
(San Francisco), where I was born more years ago than i care to
count. Living in Guerneville is an amazing community
experience. My family
spent summer-vacations here in my childhood and we now continue that
tradition into our third generation. 'The River' is in our blood and
prolly vice-versa.
I seem to have a genetic disposition for performance: I come from a big family of the theatrically inspired and, as kids, 'putting on a show' was our idea of play. We grew up on 50's movie musicals and were ready to burst into song and dance at the slightest provocation.
In the early 70's I joined an all-girl gorilla performance troup called Les Nickelettes, which started out with two or three feisty women as sort of cheer-leaders for the Nickelodian midnight movies at the O'Farrell Theatre that actually only cost 5 cents if you can believe it. The Nickelettes grew in number and material and over time became a performance entity that lasted through the 70's. Perhaps more glitter than talent, Lily Tomlin called us "witty and irreverant".
My companiera and sister Nickelette, the late, great Bonnie Solomon and
I left the 'Nics" and teamed up with the irrepressable, jaw-droppingly
ahead of his time Ralph Eno (aka Freaky Ralph, Ral Pheno), who
annointed us the "Pointless Sisters", because it seemed to characterize
our style, as well as a goofy reference to the actual Pointer Sisters,
who were in their hay-day at the time. Bonnie and I sang back-up
on
Ralph's peerless original songs as well as developing our own style of
whimsy and musical endeavorings. NOTE: No relation to
the current Sonoma
County
cover group of the same name and the truly pointless spelling...you
go!.
By the mid 70's, the Pointless Sisters had morphed into a 4-sister musical act, consisting of the pre-ubiquitious key-board whiz, composer, arranger and wit, Joshua Brody (aka Jim Schwartz, Righteous Raoul and J. Raoul Brody), the multi-talented artist, Maria Manhattan (aka Short Schwartz..."4 ft, 22"), Bonnie Solomon (aka AnnaMaeTed Schwartz), and yours truly, berdalee (aka Bermuda Schwartz). Our enthusiastic brand of harmony and humor we referred to as 'comical musedy', thereby skirting an obvious classification...if folks didn't exactly know what to expect they'd therefore have no expectations which we felt quite capable of exceeding.
Later in the early 80's, a few years after the Pointless Sisters had scattered to the winds, my good friend, musician, composer/song-writer, Matthew Perifano and I joined back up with Joshua, as keyboardist/arranger, and for a few years we performed our original songs (written individually and together) as well as any other odd, old and obscure music fancies), as 'In a Nutshell'.
I have had the good fortune to have known and worked (played) with some really talented and fun people during San Francisco's salad days of 'anything goes' performance artists, and archival music of those I've mentioned (and others) occasionally appears in my mixes for 'Themepark'.
berdalee's shows: