PopWars

Look how old the Scorgie’s crowd got! (click photo for full shot) Funny thing, the band hasn’t changed a bit. I posted a few more on the Scorgie’s site.

There are so many familiar faces in this photo like Earl with the video camera and Arpad and Brian Williams from the Goners and Monica from the HOG (along time ago) and Nick Gerber down front and my sister Ann (it’s hard to get her out) and Rick & Monica and Mary Caine and Bob Mahoney and Martin Edic and the guy in Peggi’s yoga class and Passion B’s drummer, Tim Dodd, and Stan the Man & Lynn, Amy & Howie and Doug Rice and Jeff & Mary Kaye, Mark Schwartz and Maureen Outlaw and Trish from the LDR and Ashley Black.

I can’t find Chris Schepp, Cheryl & Mark, Billy & Nancy, Dick Storms, Danny, Russ Lunn and Beth Brown, Olga, Jon who used to take a lot of photos, Fran, Del, Pete Presstone and Scotty and Jeff Labin, Andrea Kohler and Jason and Mike Mohawk and Rock n’ Roll Joel, Richard Casa, Chas Lockwood, Ralph Meranto, Gary Brandt and Chuck Perry but I saw or talked to them all at some point. And there’s Duane Sherwood way in the back doing the lights.

Man, it was really good to everybody.

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

Wow, do we have a lot of leaves! This is what our backyard looks like. We put some big yellow leaves on our table as a centerpiece for our post high school reunion dinner party. Jeff Munson and Mary Kaye came by and Marianne Gocker and her friend, Dave. We learned another classmate, Holly Clarke, was in the Woodstock movie without her clothes. I’m going to have to re-watch that classic. I don’t think we have room for any more leaves in our compost pile. We need to find a few more creative uses for them.

Frank DeBlase liked the Polaroids I put on line yesterday. He asked me to drop some of them off at City to use in the Scorgie’s piece that he’s doing next week. While I was out I stopped by with a package of seals that I photographed for a site we’re building. The Post Office parking lot was empty. How come we don’t get Veteran’s Day off?

I was too tired to paint last night so I spent a few hours trying to track down a problem with the Lightbox javascript on the Scorgies site. It started acting flukey yesterday and and now runs the photos from one gallery right into the next. Bill Jones called while I was duking it out. He asked me to do a logo for The Art Pile, his e-commerce site for artists. I like doing logos.

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.

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”.

I obsessed over the leak in our skylight for the last three days. It took me that long to pinpoint where the water is getting in. It’s a Velux window and it came with the house. They wrapped the wood frame with metal and had to bend it around the corners. They cut the top part to make the corner and stuck a tiny rubber gasket in there. Water rolls down the edge of the window, on top of the frame and when it hits that corner it builds up and finds its way through the rubber gasket into the window frame. And then rolls down the rafters out on to the ceiling where it turns the plaster mushy. It was a half-assed design held for a while and then gave out. If we get a warm spell I plan to take the window out and re-frame the opening. I’m hoping to find a better solution for the metal cladding than the one Velux came up with.

The deer around here are on a high protein diet gobbling up the acorns that are all over our lawn.

I wrote a piece this afternoon on the Hi-Techs and posted it on the Scorgies site. And I talked to Martin Edic on the phone about doing a song with us at the reunion. That conversation will be our rehearsal.

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.

10 Mesa.mp3

John Gilmore brought a Wegman’s precooked chicken over for dinner last night. We had a salad and some salsa waiting for him but the salsa was too hot for John. We gobbled it all down and raced off to the Little for our last Margaret Explosion gig until November. We’ll use our down time next month to rehearse for the Scorgies Reunion gig. Haven’t touched most of that Personal Effects material in twenty years.

Bob Martin was out of town last night so we played with Jack Schaefer. We got through the night without doing any songs and that is usually a sign that there will be some magic on the recording. Paul Brandwein was there to hear the band and marvel at his art on the walls. We had just seen him at the Billy Bang show on Monday. Mick Sarubbi was there with his mono recording rig set up. That’s his mic in the foreground of this shot. Here’s our recording of one of the tunes from last night. We’ll have to A/B it to Mick’s.

SnakeInTheWoods.mp3

Back home we checked out the photos that John Gilmore took at the Little while iTunes shuffled away in the background. Patsy Cline’s “Does Your Heart Beat For Me?” leveled me for some reason. Does that old stuff really sound better? Is there such a thing as progress or just passage? Like Irene (Palermo) Baurschmidt told me at our reunion, “We’re getting old, Paul”.

Dreamland Faces ignores these issues and plays timeless music. They’ll be playing saw & accordions tomorrow night while Jenn Libby projects some films at the Visual Studies Workshop – 8PM. Pick up a copy of their new BROWN HORN instrumental record while you’re there. I will be entertaining my mother-in-law.

I used the 25 dollar B&N gift certificate that the class gave me for being on the reunion committee to order the Marlene Dumas book, “Measuring Your Own Grave”. The book is a companion piece to her upcoming show at MOMA. She is my favorite living artist.

Peggi DJing at WRUR With DJs Stan Merrill and Joel Rosenthal looking on.

Margaret Explosion played last night at the Little Cafe and we play one more time this month. Bob will be out of town for that one so we will either go as a trio or play with bass clarinetist/guitarist Jack Schaefer. We had pretty good gig last night and came up with few nice tunes. Margaret Explosion is off next month so we talked about getting together to rehearse for The Personal Effects reunion at the German House in November. We plan to go with The Margaret Explosion lineup and then get Martin Edic and Bernie Heveron and possibly Robin Goldblatt (all three former PE bass players) up for a song each. Should be a breeze.

We’ve been digging through old photos from the Scorgies days to post to the Scorgies site and we came across this one of Peggi on air at WRUR’s studios. I used to listen to her show while I worked downtown at Multigraphics. That’s Stan the Man and Rock n” Roll Joel marveling at her on air presence. This must have been around 1980.

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.