OUR Larry Gus – you can also call him Panagiotis Melidis– hates audio messages. He hates their “bitter” frankness, says the remoteness of the written word relieves him. Of course, he is hard to stop when he starts talking, he is eccentric, but at the same time very shy.

He continues to “humbly” apologize for letting you hold his bag for the duration of the photo shoot, he more and more humbly apologizes for dropping his water glasses on the table. He sits cross-legged and slouched, looking down, rarely looking at you. He chews on peanuts and, with his characteristic ease, throws baroque composers and detective series of the 70s into one conversation with Peter Falk. You say something to him and you think that he doesn’t hear you, but after a while you realize that his reasoning ends exactly where you hoped, but thought that they would not go. He just grabs the thread from afar, with a readiness that would only make sense if he knew ahead of time what you were going to say (he didn’t).

He returned from the filming of the project, which he presented the day before. Of course, in a few days he will be on the Main Stage. Roof With Angelica Papulia per “George”, work he co-wrote with Eftimi Philip. This is the story of a sixty-year-old man who comes to the inevitable: death. The stage narrative will unfold with a prose narration and musical interludes from the church organ (featuring Larry Gus himself), percussion (Manusos Klapakis) but also Horus of Corfu. On the same day, this “spy story where the killer is inside you”, as the composer describes it, will be released on the US four four records, and in this “studio version” the narration takes over Ben Wiseau (an old acquaintance of Philippus from The Lobster).

When I came to him, I had 12 questions on a piece of paper with me. In the end, I didn’t even give it to him.

Ever since I returned from Milan to Greece, Efthimis and I have been communicating online. At that time I had a blog that I wrote all the time and one day he wrote me a message. We talked about Lucio Battisti’s record, he couldn’t find it and I promised him I’d bring it to him. But I didn’t find it either.

When I first met Efthimis, we had a date in a shop in Kolonaki. I approached, and he was already sitting. I was wearing a black sweatshirt, black jeans, black shoes. He came to greet me and was also wearing a black sweatshirt, black jeans, black shoes. We get up, shake hands, sit down, a girl comes up for my order, and I ask for green tea. And he comes and brings two because Efthymis ordered the same. I felt like he was my friend from Berea, which I don’t feel so easily in Athens because I feel provincial and sophisticated.

In 2018, he was telling me if we should do something, a text, and we were thinking how it could be done. That’s when we got the idea to make a record with words and music, and that’s how “George” started. “I mean podcast,” I told him, and he didn’t want to hear the word. The performance is closer to the theater, it turned out a lot.

One of the first steps was to come home and transfer my 45GB of music to my hard drive. I told him to choose. As a result, we didn’t use anything from there and everything was written from scratch. Because from the moment we saw the lyrics, we knew he wanted something simpler.

When we searched, Efthymis found a video of the Corfu choir singing “Kapoios Yortazie”, Song of the new wave. They were nice middle-aged people, it was very touching. And we thought it would be great if there was a song in “George”. We were looking for someone to say it, and we said about the choir. Producer Fani Skartulis also helped us a lot. Meanwhile, the conductor of the Corfu Choir is half Veriotissa, and I found out later that her cousins ​​own the gas station I worked at when I was little, the first job I ever had.

A story about a man in his sixties and someone else talking about the last days of his life. It has something of Efthymis’ Diafores Epiloges Petros, in which Petros told the story of his brother, interspersed with musical interludes with songs sung by the narrator himself.

We didn’t care if the narrator was a man or a woman, and since we made the recording that way, we said that it should be different live. It’s the perfect thing, it’s like a lie.

Drums played by Manousos Klapakis his father served in the Aegean troops. He also plays with Xydakis, who I mentioned in my reports on this project.

There are so many layers in the work of Efthimis that it is shocking. “George” is almost like Bernhard’s text. It’s like the Colombo series, you know the murder is going to happen and the mystery is to figure out how it happened. Music contrasts little, it seems to emphasize what was said.

Efthimis is called “strange”, this is his feature. So, “George” is a story that has the craziest stuff and you read it like it’s the most natural thing. And what shocks me is that you feel like he already wrote it with that naturalness.

His works at first glance seem charitable and heavy, and they are all so funny. At one point, it talks about someone who is eight and a half years old and goes into the kitchen and cooks. And every time we get to this point, I think my son can’t cook at all. This image of a child who can do something is ideal.

I learned how to make records, sat for 8 months, wrote 150 tracks, chose 15, corrected them. And then one day Eftimis came to my house, I told him that I wrote these 25. He said, let’s listen to them, we will do this, this and that, that’s all.

If I have always been on my own in everything, then for the last 4-5 years I have only had partnerships. When I do this, I feel very good, but I always want to get back to my work. It’s very difficult, other people, you have to trust someone else, I’ve learned to have 100% creative control.

It’s nice to do different things and enjoy them. Get out of your comfort zone. It also matters whose hands you are in. I’ve been through both, there are those where they tell you, “Here’s what you’re going to do,” and there are others that are more collaborative.

My problem has always been that I didn’t feel good enough to work with people. Years later, I realized that it doesn’t matter, because it’s important just to be around others. And it’s hard.

Of course, at the same time, my big disadvantage is that I am very naive and think that I can do something. and many times I realize that I can’t make them. I always think, if I looked from the outside, would I like this thing? Would that make me happy? Many times I have been handicapped by circumstances because I come in with a hole. It’s like going through a job interview and saying that I know these things, and whatever I don’t know, I’ll learn over the next month and be the best.

There is one thing you want to do and also how good you are what does talent mean, what does it mean for someone to have it or not. Someone has more, what can you do, it’s easier for someone to write a song.

You are shocked when you realize that in front of you are people who are also open to your mistakes, that someone takes you for something that you are trying to be good at or not good at. I also try to find out about my partners this.

I am not strict with others. This is one of my problems, I’m still afraid to speak. You choose partners and they bring things. Everything else is micromanaged.

I hate voice messages. Because think how well we have found the conditions for asynchronous communication in recent years. To be able to say: “Good evening, I want to tell you something, I’ll leave it here, take it when you want, and calmly come, say what you want”, to think, to have time. So we got away with phones, especially me, who never fought her. And now we’re once again forced to listen to someone for four and a half minutes as if they were podcast employees, and that distance is lost. But, of course, how to alienate yourself? Especially we who live in the Mediterranean are by nature phone in hand. Launching SMS has been a lifelong dream for me. I organize my thinking better in writing.

I would like to find a way to overcome the concept of creativity as an end in itself. For many years I thought that creativity meant nothing, because all people are capable of anything. We have grown up in a way that we welcome those who are better, we have made them role models and consider them archetypes. And I’ve always thought that the nicest things are the ones that don’t have a name, that’s why they’re good. That’s why folk architecture or folk songs are beautiful.

I wish Kubrick could torment Shelley Duvall and call it cool that he makes it dead. How important it is, how important this or that. That’s why we need to stop taking it as a gift from God that some people have talent, put them in a box and worship them.

When I see Bowie, I don’t want to write music, because it’s something elusive, alien. I feel better because I can do something too. That’s why in recent years I’ve been crazy about Bolano, because you read it and think that you could do it too. And of course you can’t. There is nothing more important than making others feel they can do it too.

I only listen to the Beach Boys for six months I immersed myself in the life of Brian Wilson.

They make me happy and I identify with things that are honest, I don’t care about anything else. When you’re younger, you’re in the phase where you’re fishing, you see it differently, growing up is just being honest.

In recent years, there is nothing else, this is fatherhood. Of course, sometimes it’s bad. Parenting is just stress and stress, stress and stress. By its very nature, it is a matter of “serving” a person so that he becomes a great person. You are present and then you say what is the point of everything else?

About ten days ago, I woke up and thought for the first time, “I’m old,” I’ve never felt that before. I told everyone who asked me that I feel like I stayed at 23. And one morning I got up and thought: “I’m 40”, not exactly a number, but I’m already a big man.

I remember because I’m 40 and I’m in Athens where it’s sunny and I miss the rain. I miss Berea so much. I wish I could magically go back, even if it’s next to impossible.

“George” with lyrics by Efthymis Philippou and music by Larry Gus will premiere on Stegi’s main stage on Friday, January 27th. Narrated by Angelica Papulia.