PopWars

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

Our friend Rich used to write the obit column for The Herald Telephone in Indiana. It was about that time that I put it together that people actually died.

Friday’s obits really got us going. I didn’t realize I had been so manipulated back when I wanted to sleep with my Davy Crockett coonskin cap on. Turns out, with over 3000 Disney/Crockett toys on the market, most kids in America had the same desire. I don’t remember having any of the other products though.

On the same page, right below the Fess Parker obit was Alex Chilton’s. I loved the songs he sang in the Box Tops and bought those singles but never caught on to Big Star. We absolutely loved the Cramps first singles and I knew Alex Chilton’s name was on those as producer. In fact, Peggi drove down with some friends to Max’s Kansas City to see the Cramps during that time period. I was in the studio that night with New Math recording our first single with Howard Thompson behind the boards so I missed the show. And I knew our friend Pete LaBonne played with Alex and would regularly send him his own releases. He and Shelley visited Alex backstage at one of the recent Box Top reunion shows. I played a few gigs with “Pete’s Rock Band” with Bruce Eaton on bass. Buffalo Bruce is a big Big Star fan and wrote the 33 1/3 book on “Radio City”, Big Star’s second album. Bruce wrote the Chilton obit for Salon Magazine.

So now that he is gone, just what was he all about. We downloaded about ten songs from various blogs and put them them in our iTunes library. The songs were pop and grungy and country and bluesy and all over the map. “September Gurls” is stuck in my head. And then I remembered Pete had given us a solo Chilton lp called “Like Sherbert on Flies”. Since he doesn’t have either electricity or a record player he asked us to keep it for him. We played both sides of this particularly odd record. It sounds sort of like Pete’s “Antique Revolt” and I know how that recording went. Pete bought some big cans of malt liquor and instructed Arpad to roll the tape.

On the editorial page of today’s paper Paul Westerberg wrote a piece on his mentor called “Beyond the Box Tops. He talked about Big Star and how Alex went on to record more challenging and artistic records “Like Flies On Sherbert.”

We spotted this dead mole in the woods and and Steve Hoy called us on Friday to tell us his mom had died. I feel especially lucky to be alive.

You know that Pete LaBonne song where the guy fine tunes a radio station until it goes off the air? I spent a good bit of the day today in a dentist’s chair listening to an all Christmas satellite radio station. I don’t think I heard a single song with auto tune and yet it seems the entire top forty has been auto tuned.

And another thing. I made some hummus yesterday with a big can of Goya chick peas and a regular size can of Goya kidney beans. Peggi was working on these tables for a client and she called me into the other room while the hummus was pureeing.

The food processor started making a really loud grinding noise and we both looked at each other and at the same thinking “WTF?”. I went back out to the kitchen and it stopped. I pictured a frozen jalapéno from our garden temporarily stuck under one of the blades.

Tonight when we returned from our Margaret Explosion gig we both dove into the hummus and Peggi hit a hard nugget of something. She spit it out and it looked like wood. The hummus tasted funny too and I was thinking it was because I used too much garlic. We threw it away. I guess I could go back to Wegman’s with it but I wonder what Rich Stim would advise.

We sent our next Margaret Explosion cd off for duplication and I submitted the new tunes to CDDB through iTunes. I had to pick a category for the type of music it is before it would allow me to submit so I chose “Jazz” from the short list. In the iTunes application however you have a much longer list and you can even make up your own categories. I don’t usually think about describing our music until I’m in situations like this. I found a category in there called “Psychedelic Jazz” and pretty much works. I didn’t know there was such a thing.

There is a student show up over at the Creative Workshop and the director asked us to write a short blurb about what it is that inspired us to paint whatever it is we painted. Most art types balk at describing their work because the work is supposed to do the talking. Some people, though, love “Artist’s Statements” and long descriptions or histories of the artists. At many shows these days the placards next to the painting severely detract from the work.

That being said, I did spend some time thinking about why I paint what I do. And I came up with a succinct, two word statement of my inspiration. “Human Nature”. I am interested in exploring why I am drawn to the subject matter of my choice. I am interested in creating a dialog about this subject through the work and then I’m interested in how people around me react to what I put down.

They didn’t use my artist statement and that’s fine.

Here’s Pete LaBonne’s track “Artist Statement” from his Earring Records cd entitled “Glob”.
Pete LaBonne – Artist’s Statement

Want to ruin your day? Try previewing the site you’ve been working on all day in Internet Explorer. We were fine until we had to duke it out with the “Doubled Float Margin Bug”. Then Radio Rick made our day when he played Margaret Explosion’s “Playground Tavern” on WRUR.

Last night we sat on the porch with the lights out. Peggi lit a few candles and we contemplated sleeping out there. It was a beautiful night. I started thinking about The Marshing Band sessions from 2006. We recorded without electricity up at Pete and Shelley’s on a battery operated M-Audio Microtech (as shown in the blow-up of the above photo) and we lit the session with candlelight. We sold that device and bought one made by Sony that records on the small SDHC cards. This unit takes has built in mics and ports for two external mics and it runs on batteries. We could do a killer recording when we meet up there this Fall.

Listen to the Marshing Band
Marshing Band – 1

I’m sitting over at Jerome’s Ignition while Igor looks at our car. It’s been making a clunking noise in the front end. This is already sounding like a Click and Clack episode. We are planning to drive to New York soon to see the Marlene Dumas show at the Modern and we are a little concerned about the thump. Igor didn’t see anything so he took it for a spin. When he got back he noticed that the lug nuts on our left front tire were loose. These guys are the best in the world. If only they had a wireless connection here.

I didn’t sleep very well last night and while I was awake I started worrying about my opening tomorrow night. Somebody was saying if I call it an “opening” that would not imply free food but if I call it an “opening reception” that would imply free food. I put “opening reception” on the post card so I stand to look like a cheapskate. I don’t really understand all the protocol of openings and what little I do understand I resist. For instance I can’t bring my own food or beverages in there because that’s their (not for profit) business. I could buy food from them and serve that for free but that’s part I don’t get.

Painting class started up again at the Creative Workshop and my father did some quick watercolor sketches from photos he took on Sunday night of Margaret Explosion on WXXI’s “OnStage”. I took this photo over his shoulder. I’m not sure that he spelled “Margaret ” right but I like the magic carpet under us.

This Thanksgiving I am thankful for “Between The Buttons”. I am thankful that it still sounds as good to me as did in 1967. Bob Mahoney and John Gilmore stopped over after Margaret Explosion’s gig last and we went for a ride with iTunes Party Shuffle while we ate olives and bread. I’ve got all my cds on a harddrive now and it is a gas hearing stuff come up that I know I love but I wouldn’t think to put it on. Of course iTunes doesn’t think at all and it shows me up all the time.

We heard a couple Pete LaBonne tunes that drew us closer to the stereo so we could hear the lyrics. Then there was something from Moondog and “The Wind Cries Mary” and a track from Bruce Anderson/Dale Sophiea’s “Strict” and then an amazing last number. It sounded so good I played it again as Bob and John were putting on their coats. “Something Happened To Me Yesterday” features Mick and Keith trading lead vocals, Ian Stewart on piano and Brian Jones on trombone, trumpet and violin. Peggi mimicked Kieth swinging a pint as she sang his lines. It’s barroom circus music and pop psychedelia like Colorblind James meeting the Squires of the Subterrain.

Pete LaBonne, along with Bruce Eaton, released a 45 with their Buffalo group, “The Party Nuggets”. It was called “I Mow The Lawn” and it was pretty close to the Staple Singers’ tune “I’ll Take You There”. I start singing it every time I fire up the lawn mower. Yesterday was one of those days.

We were supposed to be at Peter Pappas’s for a pre Jazz Fest party at 7 and I got a late start and so I mowed while walking really fast which reminded me of the job I had in Bloomington mowing the lawns of University owned houses. There were about a hundred of these houses all over town. Caroline Peyton from the Screaming Gypsy Bandits who went on to do the voice for many of Disney’s animated cartoons (Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Pocahontas, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame) lived in one of the houses that I mowed. And I think her roommate at the time was Andrea from Angel Corpus Christi. I would stop and chat with Caroline but my main objective was mowing my lawns as fast as I could, hiding the mower in someone’s bushes and then riding my bike back to the trailer I lived in to hang out for the rest of the day. Then around four I would have to ride back into town to punch out.

My boss had mouth cancer but he continued to smoke Lucky Strikes. He had open sores on the side of his face. It was my first glimpse of cancer. I remember a woman opening a window and giving me six pairs of grey socks. She said her husband had recently died and I looked like I could use them. It was a little creepy the first time I put them on but I got over that. Near the end of the summer one of the other mowers told me that the boss was spending some time driving around looking for me. So I made a point to hang around and let him see me. I remember smiling and waving when he drove by.

Detail for cover of Duane Sherwood’s Crucial Roots cd compilation. Click photo for enlargement.

I’m still “feeding the beast”, that is, ripping all the cds we have in the house in iTunes and building a library on an external drive. This has been a casual, ongoing, background activity for about a month now. I’ve got boxes of cds on the way out the door. Still not sure where to go with those.

I am really surprised that I haven’t burned out the cd drive in our old laptop yet. That thing has been a work horse. I did bring it to its knees a few times with homemade cds with paper stick-on labels. I put the first of Duane‘s Crucial Roots cds in there and it sounded like a helicopter taking off. I had to use a paper clip to bring it down. I asked Duane if he had a digital version of his essential, twenty cd set of Reggae/Ska/RockSteady/Dub and he set aside some time on Memorial Day weekend to make one. It fit nicely on a dvd and it’s now in our library competing with Pete LaBonne’s twenty six cd set, “Gigunda” in the “Party Shuffle” mode.

Bill Jones bought a plug-in for Cart Weaver (a shopping cart add on for Dreamweaver) that allows you to sell digital files and collect through PayPal. We are collaborating to set up a functioning store for Pete LaBonne’s entire oeuvre to date, entitled Gigunda. Today I scanned the covers of twenty six Pete cds. When we get the bugs worked out we hope to off this service to our website customers. Here is a sample from “Gigunda”. This track is from Pete’s “Ask Mr. Breakfast” cd.
9-02 Ask Mr Breakfast2.mp3

I brought the Marlene Dumas book that Monica checked out of the UofR library to painting class last night. I had hoped to show it to Lorraine but she wasn’t in class. She has been really tearing it up lately. She brings in two or three paintings a week that just knock me out. My painting teacher really her work too and he has borrowed the book for a while.

I saw that Lucian Freud’s fat lady painting sold yesterday for more money than any other painting by a living artist. Beautiful Tribute/Obit to/for Robert Rauschenberg in yesterday’s NYT’s. I particularly like this passage.

The process — an improvisatory, counterintuitive way of doing things — was always what mattered most to him. “Screwing things up is a virtue,” he said when he was 74. “Being correct is never the point. I have an almost fanatically correct assistant, and by the time she re-spells my words and corrects my punctuation, I can’t read what I wrote. Being right can stop all the momentum of a very interesting idea.”