PopWars

Wreckless Eric and Amy Rigby have taken a liking to Rochester. They’ve been here four times in the last few years and came up tonight to play a benefit for Tom Kohn and the Bop Shop. Amy told the crowd that when they decided to move from France they considered considered moving to Rochester but Eric interjected “it would have been a good choice if it wasn’t for the weather and it’s proximity to Canada and the the fact that it is so far away from everything else.” “It’s better than France” Amy insisted.

They played a fantastic set. They are perfect as a duo, with piano, guitars, bass and harmonies. Thoroughly seasoned performers they somehow manage to sound like the first band your friends put together. If only they would fire that drummer, the drum machine on Eric’s laptop that flattens the songs they use it on. They finished with a beautiful version of Johnny Cash’s “I Still Miss Someone.

Chandler Travis opened the show before driving to Trumansburg outside of Ithaca for another gig tonight. He brought the house down with a version of Pete LaBonne‘s “Turning The Page.” Amy told the the crowd she felt like she was tripping when Chandler and his bandmates came out into the crowd to perform this gem a cappella.

Pete LaBonne – Turning The Page
Pete LaBonne “Turning The Page”

I was headed out to pick up the paper but met Rick Simpson at the door this morning with our paper in hand. He said he had already grilled Bob Mahoney about the trophies that someone left in our yards over the weekend. Rick got bowling related ones and I got basketball trophies carefully arranged in the horseshoe pit. This is the second visit from the “midnight trophy prankster”. We found a bunch a few years ago and suspected Rick and Monica of planting them. I’m thinking Rick planted this new batch in both yards to throw us off the scent.

Rick is a bowler and a good one at that. I was not much of a basketball player. I’m still open to any new clues.

Watch Pete LaBonne’s “Trophy Bowler“

There seems to be no limit to the supply of fresh faces to paint. This one and another are currently in the biennial Finger Lakes Show at the Memorial Art Gallery. They asked me to record a brief statement about my work and you can hear it by calling 585 627-4132 and then 8 when they ask for the “stop number.” Click the photo above to view the whole piece.

I just listened to it and I can’t believe how dry it sounds. Geez! And I can see myself reading the statement from my notebook. I hate those typewritten artist’s statements and don’t read them unless I’m totally taken by the piece. Somehow I thought these recorded notes would be different and they are but mine doesn’t add much to the work. For kicks you can call back and push random stop numbers for some disjointed artist’s statements.

Pete LaBonne – Artist’s Statement

It seems miraculous that the chipmunks are out. We watched them pack their small caves with nuts in the Fall and now they’re out darting around on the piles of snow. We hadn’t seen any deer in weeks and we were speculating that they too were hunkered down in the cold but today we watched a group of eight up move across a hillside. There was a pileated woodpecker up in one of the trees too but we couldn’t spot it. Sounded like a jackhammer. We interrupted a hawk who was devouring this squirrel right in the middle of our path. On the way back the squirrel was gone.

Pete LaBonne has a song called “Code Of The Great Outdoors” with the refrain, “better out, better out, better out than in.” It’s on his “High Time” release, same album as “Punk Rock Dressing Room” and only seven bucks for the download!

We approached Pete and Shelley’s mountain kingdom by sea on the Port Henry ferry that is temporarily replacing the Crown Point bridge which is currently being rebuilt. Lake Champlain separates the two states but there is a whole lot more at play. We spent some time looking at the New York mountains from the Vermont side and then the snow capped Vermont peaks from the New York side and we couldn’t quite put our finger on the difference in the two states. It is mostly perception but that is a lot.

There was so much snow up there we kept skiing into three feet of powder and getting so bogged down that we were tempted to take our skis off but we knew full well that would be the last anyone would see of us. We sat around the stove enough to learn what a condition called “Granny’s Tartan” is all about.

We came home without driving on the Northway or the New York State Thruway proving the adage that it is not the destination but the journey. We whizzed by a sign that read “Highway Hair Cuts”, hand painted in all caps. I pictured a brush cut with a flat top.

Rick Simpson played Pete LaBonne‘s “We Live Like Kings” on his radio show last week. I plan to request it this week.

Pete LaBonne – We Live Like Kings

‘We Live Like Kings,” “Somebody Must Praying For Me,” “Pajama Pants” (Baby, you know what I mean), “Let The Weeds Take Over,” “High Time” and “Supermarket Employee.” There so many Pete LaBonne songs stuck in my head. The songs are stored in a place where they are easily accessible and it doesn’t take much to trigger them. Pete has digitized twenty two cds worth and he’s giving away a track from each on his website.

I heard Rick Simpson tell a listener he’d play a Pete LaBonne tune next week on his Thursday afternoon radio WRUR show. Pretty soon you’ll be walking around with lines like “You’re the 5th line on the eye chart,” “What am I gonna do when they turn me into a verb?” and “You gotta treat your woman like a sack of potatoes” floating around your head. Lucky you!

Arouse The Thunder
C
They call her Miss Divisive on the street.
She put the spit in hospitality
Strandy hair parted around the ears
under her sweater’s a purple chiffon brassiere
F G
She turns me on flips me off
E Am
she’s not a hag puts me in a vacuum cleaner bag
F E
whips it out plugs it in
F G G
hits the switch and I hear the roar
C G G7
she could surely arouse the thunder
C
of the mighty Thor.

Pete LaBonne – Arouse The Thunder

Most of the birds are getting out but the smart ones are hanging around for this beautiful Fall weather. It’s not Indian Summer because we haven’t had a frost but that’s only a technicality because we live so close to the lake.

We were headed home from Peggi’s mom’s apartment with the last load of stuff to get rid of and we head this clanging under the car. I couldn’t even see out the back window because the big, green ,overstuffed, lift chair took up most of our cargo space. We stopped at the bank and I crawled under the car. Our tailpipe had broken off where it meets the muffler so I stopped in Jerome’s to have them take a look at it. They put the car up on the lift with the lift chair inside of the car and reattached the tailpipe. Further up the exhaust chain we noticed the heat shield on the catalytic convertor was falling off. I find these in the road all the time while on my bike but I’ve given up collecting them.

We don’t really have a piano player in our band unless Pete LaBonne is in town. Fred Marshall sat it a couple of weeks ago and he sounded great. Jaffe from the old Colorblind James Experience used to come all the time but we haven’t seen him in months. James Nichols threatened to come last week but didn’t. Maybe he’ll stop by tonight. He always sounds great. There’s no piano in the song below but the Little Theatre Café’s grand piano was sitting right next to us when we recorded the track so if you listen closely you’ll hear it vibrating sympathetically.

Margaret Explosion – Ritual

Peggi’s mom was using her fingers to name her five aunts. She was having trouble coming up with the sixth name and said, “I’m afraid the hereafter is going to be very confusing, trying to reconnect with everybody.” Her sole known cousin had called and it was his mom’s name that we trying to think of. I was thinking how I have about fifty first cousins and I could never name them all.

Sparky stopped by to check up on us. We keep talking about doing a repeat performance of Polish sausage lunch we did a few yeas back. The woman who made these magical sausages died and Sparky hasn’t found a substitute. It gives us something to talk about, sausage and Pete. We gave him a cassette of Pete LaBonnes’s music years ago and he always asks about him.

When Jeanne Perri was in town this summer (she moved to Nashville in the music boom days) we sat around calling out our favorite Pete songs and then playing them on our laptop. One that stuck with me is “Punk Rock Dressing Room” with the refrain, “We’re living in a punk rock dressing room”. I was thinking of that song last night when we got home from Peggi’s mom’s place. There was an unlabeled cd in a white envelope taped to our door with “4 U” written on it. I popped it in to my desktop computer and 19 untitled audio tracks popped up so I gave it a spin. It was a live Ramones’ recording from San Francisco from the “Road To Ruin” tour. We saw them many times and this brought it all back. They rescued rock and roll and were true performance artists. Rick Simpson stopped by this morning and asked if we got the cd. I never would have guessed it was from him.

Our NetFlix movie selection of the night was The Runaways movie. Even the extras were good except there was only still photos of Joan Jett and no current video of her.

Pete LaBonne – Sound Of Doom

Steve Hoy posted a comment to this blog a few weeks back asking if anyone had recommendations for some good fiction.
STEVE: “i just finished reading john irving’s last night in twisted river, and while it was good i kinda got antsy to finish it, unlike thomas bergers ‘ (my main man) 2nd little big man book, which i was sorry to come to the end. can anybody recommend some good american fiction?”

I’m the wrong one to ask because my favorite books are all picture books. I did, however, know who to ask. Pete LaBonne sent back a list that should get you through the summer.

PETE: “Sorry for not responding sooner, but I picked up a few Donald Westlake books and didn’t get around to it. Let me make it clear though, I don’t advocate the buying of books. Except maybe for Alaska Bear Tales by Larry something.
If you have to read anything other than William T. Vollmann:
From the old school there’s The Wild Palms by Faulkner, East Of Eden by Stienbeck, & The American Claimant by Twain.
I don’t know if you can consider Conrad & Nabokov american, Hugo was sure french though. While, and you can quote me on this, Flannery O’Connor left the nastiest and most beautiful legacy in the Catholic language, you know, except for the Petticoat Junction theme song.
Tristan Egolf (Lord Of The Barnyard) killed himself, as did David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest). Saul Bellow died on his own. I haven’t seen anything new by D. Keith Mano (Take Five) in a long time or come to think about it or by Pete Hautman (The Mortal Nuts) but you never know unless you go to the trouble to find out. Thomas Pynchon is still alive and getting better. Mason & Dixon is great and so is Inherent Vice.
We do know all about Richard Bachman (of The Regulators fame).
Paul Theroux has written several great books, O Zone, Picture Palace, The Family Arsenal & probably something else I’m forgetting. While Theodore Rozak wrote only one masterpiece which would be titled Flicker.
Then there’s Robert Coover’s wonderful novel Gerald’s Party which I read three times. In fact I read most of these three times. While you’re in “C”, You might want to check out Cormac McCarthy if your library sometimes throws first names into it’s alphabetization scheme.
Then the shit starts getting nasty with Chuck Pahlaniuk which might have a misplaced “H”. Then it gets downright EVIL with Nykanen’s The Bone Parade.
But. There are two books which scared the HELL out of me; L.A. Rex by Will Beall and Alaska Bear Tales by Larry something.”

I remember going to the zoo at the top of Zoo Road in Durand Eastman and looking out over the hillside full of deer. That zoo is long gone but the deer are still here. Rochester didn’t need two zoos anyway. This set up with them wandering freely around the whole town seems much more civilized.

Peggi and I seem to have been buried in an endless amount of tweaks to sites we thought were done. A lot of this is mission creep and a good bit of it extras. That line however is pretty fuzzy.

When we do get caught up the first recreational project on our to do list is creating a shopping cart for Pete LaBonne’s “Gigunda” digital box set. Pete has been remastering the tracks in his Adirondack studio and the last of the reworked tracks arrived in today’s mail. Pete has added the original cover art for the full blown download experience and he selected tracks from each album to giveaway as teasers. The full albums will be available as downloads for chump change. I noticed that “Antique Revolt”, a project I played on along with Bruce Eaton, was not included in this set. With good reason.

Margaret Explosion – First Snow
Title song from Godiva Records cassette, “Antique Revolt” Recorded by Arpad in 1992