Way cool article in the morning paper about the Scorgies Reunion tomorrow. Cool picture of Peggi on the front page! And Frank DeBlase did a great piece in City. He used my Polaroids on the cover of this week’s issue.
We had this General Electric blaster that we used to duct tape up to the top of the wooden column in front of the bar at Scorgies and it made some damn good tapes. Arpad transferred a few of the tapes to cd.
Here’s Personal Effect’s version of Taana Gardner’s “Heartbeat” recorded live at the Peppermint Lounge in 1985 on our blaster. Personal Effects – Heartbeat
We pulled Personal Effects songs from our vinyl releases and put a compilation cd together for the Scorgies reunion. This song from 1987′s “90 Day In The Planetarium” didn’t make the grade but I’m posting it here because it is full of what is now ancient local history. And it is also one of the few songs I sang or yelled. Here’s the lyrics. I’ll provide annotation below.
It’s Saturday night
and I’m the designated driver again
but that’s alright
I promised I would be good
Nino’s Pizzeria or Vic & Irv’s
50 miles an hour through the Can of Worms
Uncle Sam or Tammy Whynot
First we gotta go to Moneymatic
Down to Bertha’s to pick up a six
Everybody’s going to the party at Dick’s
Steve is such an intellectual
Come on Steve, get in the pool
That’s Bart on the radio
MX-80 Sound from San Francisco
590 North dead-ends at Marge’s
When in doubt. Whip it out.
The girl in the bakery has silver finger nails
So Much. Tom Mercer Lives.
The girl in the bakery has silver finger nails
Bob loved Sara. Sara nevr did
Ninos’s and Vic & Irv’s are still around and the best in their class. The Expressway’s Can of Worms was reworked so driving 50 mph through it is no longer a thrill. Uncle Sam was Rochester’s best hard rock band and Tammy Whynot was Deb Clifford’s C&W outfit. They used to play Snake Sisters on South Avenue where Lux is today.
Bertha’s was around the corner on East Main from where we rehearsed. Bertha carried “Kiss” and “Darling” photo novellas and I remember buying “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” there but mostly she sold beer to the locals. The way over-sized Bertha was simultaneously chatty with her customers and abusive to her help. The party at Dick’s was a summer one at Dick Storms’. Everyone was in the pool but Steve Dollar, the entertainment critic from the D&C.
Bart was our favorite WITR dj because he wasn’t afraid to play MX80 Sound. 590 North will soon no longer be an expressway the comes to a dead end. They are tearing it up and adding four traffic circles. Calabrese’s Bakery on Culver is gone but not the memory of the punky girl packing my order with silver finger nails.
“So Much” was favorite piece of poetry. It was spray painted on a wall in the Can of Worms. “Tom Mercer Lives” was written all over town. I think Ted Williams knew Tom or tracked him down. And “Bob loved Sara” with “nevr” spelled like this was sprawled across one of the expressway bridges as you headed downtown nearby where Armand Shaubroak’s “Keep America Free. Let it Grow” billboard was.
I remember finding a pack of matches on Culver Road (I think) from Lucia’s Supper Club in Olean, NY. There was a gondola on the front and we were intrigued by the “Supper Club” name. We wrote a song about the place and put it on “It’s Different Out There” LP in 1985. The illustration I did for the cover sort of pictures Lucia’s the way we imagined.
Years later we found Olean on the map and drove down there for dinner at Lucia’s. We ordered Chicken Picatta and it was delicious. We brought an album with us and left it with the chef. I detailed our trip there on this Refrigerator entry. A few months later we received this letter in the mail.
Hi, I just had to write to you…
I was browsing the Internet this week and came across your info on the web. What prompted me to write to you is that I am Lucia Bardenett’s great-granddaughter. She was the “Lucia” of Lucia’s Supper Club in Olean. Oddly, this weekend we are celebrating my grandfather’s (Lucia’a son) 87th birthday. Nonna (as we called her) died in 1986, so my grandfather is really the last of the restaurant’s founding immediate family. My grandfather was her only child. He had 6 children who gave him 15 grandchildren and 2 of those have given him 3 great-grandchildren. I am the oldest of the 15.
So there’s a little info for you. I didn’t want to go on and on, but anyone who would be so intrigued by a pack of matches to write a song, design an album cover, and make a trip to Olean would probably be interested.
I am forwarding the link to your website to all of my family members (as you can tell from the above is quite a few). Could you tell me how to get a copy of that song? The mp3 version on your site won’t work for me. If you have a chance, could you even send me a copy of the lyrics. We’d be interested to see what you imagined about our family’s old restaurant.
By the way, I can guarantee Nonna would have gotten a kick out of your album cover; she was such a character! Marie Rakus Olean, NY
Jeff Spevak from the Democrat & Chronicle, Michelle from Freetime and Frank DeBlase from City newspaper all called today wanting to talk about the November 21st’ Scorgie’s Reunion. When I say “talk” I really mean they were looking for usable quotes. Jeff wanted a funny story because everyone else had one. I kind of didn’t answer that one even though I could think of a few. I did put put about fifty Polaroids from Scorgies days from those days up on the Scorgies site this afternoon.
Robert Slide sent this photo to us this morning. He played bass in New Math when I was in that band. I think he took this photo when the Hi-Techs played with New Math at Scorgies.There’s only about ten days left before the show. We had a rehearsal yesterday afternoon but we still haven’t been able to get throught the forty five minute set we have planned. We have two Margaret Explosion gigs between now and then. Ken Frank was suggestting that we try a few of the Personal Effects songs at those gigs.
I woke up early, like 6:30, thinking about how far behind I was in trying to get this Personal Effects cd out of here in time to get it back in time for the reunion show at the German House in a few weeks. Peggi and I did manage to pick songs from the six lps this morning and burn a copy in Toast with some cool cross fades.
We headed over to the Point Pleasant fire house at noon to cast our votes for Obama. Our route there takes us down Wisner to the dead end and through the woods to Culver. We ran into a guy with a wood splitter that swivels on its axle so you can split wood without lifting it. He told us he lived in a 500 square foot house near the woods and he offered to rent his splitter if we need it.
I took the car over to Jerome’s ignition Service to get an oil change and I put my bike in the car so I could take a cd to Bob Martin’s office to get his approval on our song selections. Bob was in the middle of a phone conference so I dropped off the cd and rode over to Parkleigh on Park Avenue to visit my sister at her new job. She was explaining the virtues of a $150 hair brush to a customer when I walked in so I strolled around the store and then stood near her while she closed the sale. A woman asked if she could help me and I said, “No”. I think she thought I was a shoplifter because a guy came out from the back to watch me. I picked up a small bag of licorice, a “Bridge Mix”, for my mom and Ann rang me up.
I rode over to our old neighborhood to visit Sparky but he wasn’t there. I rode back to Jerome’s and Sparky was there, in the garage, talking to Mike and Ted. He had a new three wheeled walker said he was gonna try to buy some of that Polish sausage and bring it by soon.
My ears are still ringing from rehearsal last night. We played for three hours but still didn’t get through the forty-five minute set we plan on doing at the Scorgie’s reunion. Peggi is playing her Farfisa and relearning the chords to the songs she wrote. And she ordered a new Electro Harmonix PolyChorus from Sound Source so she can do the crazy sax parts in “Low Riders” and “Love Never Thinks”. Rob at Sound Source told her they’re still making the box because Kurt Cobain loved it. It looks exactly like her old one.
We ‘re watching he World Series and rooting for the Phillies but they can’t seem to get anything going tonight. I really like the Lincoln MKS commercial with Cat Power doing Bowie’s “Space Oddity”.
Our painting teacher, Fred Lipp, is really much more than a painting teacher. And I don’t say that because he is also an extraordinary artist. He is a fly fisherman too but I have no idea what his skills are in this area. He is more than a painting teacher because his methods for teaching painting can also be applied to living your life. Last night in class I heard Fred give advice to a woman who was painting near me. He said, “Paint it as a whole, from start to finish”.
Say you are heading out for a drive. You might have a destination and you might even use a map. But if you really want to enjoy the ride you may decide to take a detour or a side trip or forget about your destination altogether.
“What we’ve heard is so disturbing
It takes time to settle in
Our destination doesn’t matter
This is it… life hereafter”
- Personal Effects, “This Is It” LP, 1984 12ThisIsIt.mp3
I’m trying to connect the dots here. I devoured an article on Elizabeth Peyton’s “Live Forever” show in Friday’s New York Times and then started a new crime face painting on Monday. I sketched a guy that sort of looked like a woman and in fact I switched the situation in my mind and thought I was sketching a woman that looked like a man. The people in class thought he was a man and Maureen Outlaw told said he looked like me. When Peggi saw the painting she said, “I like him”. I said, actually it’s a woman and I reached for the Crimestoppers page that I used for my source. His name turned out to be “Jeffery”. I had played up the lips like Elizabeth Peyton did in her portrait of Kurt Cobain and the clothing was loosely painted like her portrait of Piotr Uklanski. My crime guy was thin and more youthful than the source. He looked like a rock star.
We watched the “Life and Times of Frida Kahlo the other night and I was knocked out by how beautiful and exotic Frida Kahlo was. This documentary was so much richer and more interesting than the Frida movie. Frida Kahlo was her artwork. She lived her artwork and painted the whole from start to finish. I have no idea what Elizabeth Peyton is like but I love her work.
While I was applying paint to my sketch of this crime guy and developing his attitude, it suddenly became clear that each move was not helping so I stopped. I was painting the whole from start to finish and this was the finish but I didn’t recognize it at first. The finish could come at any time regardless of my plans. I should live my life this way and then painting would be a breeze.
The weekend zipped by and I never found time to paint so I’m thinking of taking Columbus Day off (just like the mail man) and getting some painting in then. I also want to fix the leak in our skylight if I can. It’s supposed to be warm again. It was almost eighty today but we spent most of the day down at the pool fixing the leak in our our pump.
Personal Effects was asked to play the Scorgies Reunion on Friday, November 21st at the German House in Rochester. We got our first rehearsal in last week and we dug up a bunch of old songs to teach Ken Frank (the newest PE bass player) and relearn ourselves. Most of the songs were fast! I found this slow one to try next week.
Pete and Shelley kept us up til two last night or maybe we kept them up. I don’t remember. They left Rochester this morning with their new laptop and my old Kodak digital camera. They should be able to generate enough solar power up there to keep these two electronic devices going in the woods.
Peggi and I met the other members of Margaret Explosion at the Little Theater at noon. We were asked to be a prop for a photo in the cafe that will be used in an upcoming brochure. Were played a few improvisations while they set up the shot and then started talking about the upcoming Scorgies Reunion. We tried acoustic versions of Personal Effects songs, “Zeke’s Baby Girl”, “I Had Everything”, “Baby, Baby”, “Bring Out The Jazz” and one where Bob was playing “Porch” and Peggi was playing “Fascinating Game”. Ken didn’t really know the songs but he sounded great. It was the first time we had done these songs in twenty years or so.
Water temperature in our neighborhood pool reached 68 degrees today. If it was warmer out I’d be in there. I read Thursday’s and Friday’s New York Time this morning, brewed a cup Yogi Rejuvenation tea and headed down to the basement to paint. I got one that I like a lot. Again, I had plans for it but I didn’t get there.
I have to look around for an alternative to Yogi Tea. They changed the graphics on the boxes. It’s now glued shut like a small fortress and the tea bags are sealed in a type of paper that is almost impossible to tear open. I started to do the yoga stretch that is pictured on the box and I read, “Before doing this exercise or participating in any exercise program, consult your physician”. My doctor would live that.
We rode downtown with our neighbors last night to hear a band of Eastman students outdoors at the Village Gate. We sat down in front of Bodhis Cafe and Monica and I both ordered hummus and cucumber sandwiches. Peggi ordered chicken and I think Rick had something called “Big Bertha”. After dinner we rode over to Abilene where a Cajun band was playing on the deck. Danny has a pretty comfortable spot here. And the juke box is a sight to behold with Colorblind James Experience and Personal Effects first two record. We were checking it out with Mrs. Colorblind. There is a pretty cool podcast of the CBJ’s Dylan night from 1992 at that Colorblind link. Brian Horton does a version of “Dark Eyes” shortly before his heroin od.
