Category: Field Recordings of the Future

How the World Sounds

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You Can’t Reheat A Soufflé

Cuong Vu at the Bop Shop Atrium 2009
Cuong Vu at the Bop Shop Atrium 2009

I could have put on the Velvet Underground box set that I bought, ripped and then filed away but I was still diggin my new turntable so I reached for the “The Velvet Underground & Nico” lp which I noticed is only labeled “Andy Warhol” on the front of the album. And then there is that tiny type up top that says, “Peel Slowly And See”. My copy has the upside down Billy Name photo on the back but it’s beat to hell and the banana skin is missing. I put it on and played the Dean & Britta Warhol Screen Test dvd without the sound. The scratchy VU vinyl sounded fantastic and then ultra-fantastic when Nico’s screen test came on.

Our Friday night was just beginning though. We hopped in the car to ride over to the Village Gate where Cuong Vu was playing with Rochester’s Ted Poor on drums. On the way the Velvets came on the ipod and transported us. Cuong had two bass players and all sorts of knob twisting (see photo above). They were too loud for the space and a little too muscular when stacked against the Velvets but they sounded great once we were inside the record store. They reminded me of those early jazz rock combos like Tony Williams Lifetime and John McLaughlin’s Devotion.

Antony appearing in Lou Reed's Berlin
Antony appearing in Lou Reed’s Berlin

Back home we put our latest Netflix selection on, “Lou Reed’s Berlin”. Lou’s guitar sounded amazing and there were some brilliant moments but Berlin was a pretty dreary lp the first time around and this monstrous production couldn’t disguise that. The Schnabel footage of models in heat was pure crap and the backup singer stole the show.

We cued up the extras a watched Elvis Costell interview Lou and Schnabel. Schnabel wouldn’t let Lou talk and when he declared that he and Lou were best friends we thought we saw Lou wince.

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Dean & Britta Screen Tests

Dean & Britta at Lovin' Cup in Rochester, New York
Dean & Britta at Lovin’ Cup in Rochester, New York

The dreary weather this morning was the perfect setting for viewing Dean & Bitta’s “13 Most Beautiful…Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests”. We bought the dvd from Dean Wareham after his reading at Record Archive yesterday. Released in conjunction with The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh the dvd features Nico, Lou Reed, Edie Sedgwick and Dennis Hopper sitting for Warhol’s silent film portraits. But the films aren’t silent anymore because Dean and Britta have provided a beautiful soundtrack.

We knew nothing about Galaxie 500, Luna or Dean & Britta except that Angel Corpus Christi likes them. And then Casey form Mex called with his offer to pick up tickets for Dean & Britta’s appearance at the Lovin’ Cup in Henrietta out next to RIT. It was total immersion for us, bartender John John playing Luna tracks at Mex and listing all the covers the band used to do, Dean reading from his tour diary at the Record Archive, Dean & Britta in concert and then the gorgeous dvd. The thing that ties all these projects together is the Velvet Underground, the best rock band of all time. How can you go wrong? We loved it.

Hotel Reverie opened the show last night and sounded great. You can almost forget you’re in the suburbs when the band starts. The club has the right idea with no chair or tables in front of the band and the room sounds great.

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Testing 1, 2, 1, 2

Rubble Bucket at Record Archive in Rochester, NY
Rubble Bucket at Record Archive in Rochester, NY

Alayna sent us a press release from the Record Archive announcing the appearance of Rubble Bucket on stage in the store at 5 o’clock last night. They were described as a “polyrhythmic nine piece dance band” with comparisons to Fela Kuti, James Brown and Bjork so we dutifully headed over there after work. We were late as usual but he band was running late too so we caught their soundcheck. Sound checks are often the most interesting part of a band’s performance. The interaction between members without their stage persona, what they play while getting their sound, the words they use to test the mics are all more revealing than the songs they perform.

Dick Storms told us the band was on Wease’s show in the morning and Scott Regan’s show midday but hardly anyone showed up for their free performance here. I think that says something about the demographic of those shows. This young jam band has all the right old school influences. I hope a younger crowd found them at their club appearance later last night.

We headed over to Casey’s to pick up the tickets he bought us for tonight’s performance by Dean and Brita. We hadn’t been to Mex in a while and I was happy to see the mural was aging gracefully after almost ten years. The plaster chips and scratches and dings all contribute to tipico ambiance. John played Luna tracks from his ipod in bar downstairs and the food upstairs was better than ever.

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Clunky Djembe

Paul Dodd and his Djembe
Paul Dodd and his Djembe

We played a gallery opening in the old Jazzberry’s space over the summer and I brought my djembe instead of the drum kit. The old firehouse space has high ceilings and all sorts of vintage printing equipment scattered about yet the sound is warm with just right amount of ambience. Bob Martin stopped by with a cd of this gig and I glanced over at my djembe as it started playing. There was a big crack in the goatskin head. This happened once before, about ten years ago when we were playing happy hours at the Bug Jar. I had Tom at Toko Drums in Ithaca put a new head on back then and he did a great job. So yesterday we drove down to Ithaca to pay him another visit.

Tom is old school all the way. He still takes photos of his customers when they buy a drum, 35 mm photos on film, and puts them up on the walls like they do at Vic & Irvs but Tom has thousands. We still haven’t spotted the one he took of us when I bought a conga drum a few years back. He has a one page website and he doesn’t do email. His shop, in the same building as the Moosewood Restaurant, looks just like it has for twenty years. Percussion instruments, incense and funky hats, no drum sets or cymbals. He is a master craftsman when it comes to hand drum repair.

We strolled up and down the Commons and had dinner at a corner bar. Ithaca College and Cornell kids in flip flops were everywhere and some had their clunky parents in tow. The kids looked pretty clunky too and we felt like clunky strangers but it was all pretty dreamy. Stop out and see Margaret Explosion tonight at the Little Cafe. We have a dreamy set lined up.

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26 Years Ago Today

Peggi Fournier singing "Subscriptions Are My Prescription" at the Community Playhouse in 1983. Photo by Gary Brandt.
Peggi Fournier singing “Subscriptions Are My Prescription” at the Community Playhouse in 1983. Photo by Gary Brandt.

It was hot twenty six years ago today, real hot. Personal Effects rented the Community Playhouse on South Avenue where we were able to back project lights, slides, movies and liquid light on a giant scrim. The multi-media show was called “This Is It”. Duane Sherwood created a mind blowing special effects show, Don Scorgie provided the concessions and Al “Balloon Buffoon” Kerstein engineered the ballon drop. You can hear it on this song. Steve Lippincott in Portland has been after us for a copy of that show and I finally got around to digitizing a cassette recording.

Three members of Personal Effects play in Margaret Explosion and we have a show tomorrow night at the Village Gate in the courtyard at 6pm. We’ll be performing with fire jugglers, not at the same time of course. And we don’t play anywhere near as fast as we used to.

“Subscriptions Are My Prescription” by Personal Effects – Live from the Community Playhouse in Rochester, NY August 27,1983.

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New York Style Beach Music

Joe Plus N Trio at Durand Eastman Beach in Rochester, NY
Joe Plus N Trio at Durand Eastman Beach in Rochester, NY

We rode our bikes down to Durand Eastman beech to catch Joe Plus N’s Day Tour performance, the tenth annual, on Saturday. We have caught at least one stop all ten years except for the year we were in Spain on vacation. Joe had asked me to play with him that year too so I missed out twice as bad. This stop was billed as random trios and Joe Tunis was to play with Will Veeder of Hinkley and Scott Oliver of ORAA but Will didn’t show up. The duo sounded especially nice on the beach.

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I Remember Woodstock

Dodds and friends on Hawley Drive in 1969
Dodds and friends on Hawley Drive in 1969


Left to right, my mother, my brothers John and Fran, Brad Fox, my sister Amy’s four little buddies and Dave Mahoney

This is one of the first photos I took with my first camera. My father brought it home from the Camera Shop at Kodak. I took the photo in the summer of 69 but I don’t have any photos from Woodstock so I’m guessing I got this camera after the festival. Spevak had called me for some quotes for the article he was writing on Woodstock for the paper and then the editor emailed me to ask if I had any photos. Whatever I said was cut out by his editor but we did celebrate the 40th anniversary by seeing the director’s cut of the movie at the George Eastman House last weekend. They have a crankin’ sound system in the Dryden Theater.

As we sat there watching the movie I kept trying to remember who it was that had recently told me they were in in the movie. It wasn’t until near the end of the movie that I remembered that Holly Clarke from my high school class was one of the nude woman swimming in the pond. We got there a day early but still managed to get stuck in traffic. When it got unbearable we parked the car and started walking. I remember a long line of people going in one direction and an equally long line going in the opposite direction. No one was sure where the festival site was and we watched people turn around and switch directions on a hunch. I don’t remember packing any food, clothes or sleeping gear but we did have some acid they we planned on taking at the show. We couldn’t wait for that and took it the morning of the day before the show. We wandered around and tried purchasing some canned goods that a local family had arranged along the railing of their porch. It all looked so strange and we weren’t sure what we wanted or even how to conduct the transaction. We found the festival site and hung around in the blazing sun while the sound crew conducted an ungodly sound check. There were scattered groups of people with dogs on the hillside and the animals were howling at the stage.

We left before the show was over because Dave Mahoney thought we had better get out before they ran out of food. On the way out we bought some mescaline from some high school friends that we ran into. Back in Rochester we went to an afternoon matinee of “2001” at the old Stutson Theater where Herrema’s is now and took the blue capsules. We were the only “adults” in the theater and we laid down on the floor in front of the screen. I have no idea what that thing was all about. I haven’t done any of that stuff since 69 but it kinda stays with you.

Richie Havens was great in the movie. Canned Heat sounded like the inventors of sludge rock. The Who tore it up but looked pretty silly. I never like the Tommy stuff. Only Queen can mix rock and opera. Ten Years After were wankers. Sha Na Na was hideous and Joe Cooker was over the top. (Is that a Beatles song.? “High with a little help from friends.”) Peggi leaned over and said, “You have to admit that was a good song from pre-bloated Crosby Stills and Nash” and I admitted it. The Jefferson Airplane tracks were goofy one. The rest must have sucked. They could be pretty rough live. I saw their Volunteers tour. I never had any of Santana records but he kicked ass. His drummer was amazing. Sly, Janis and Jimi were all great. It was pretty good show.

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Tear Me Up

We woke up to a few orders for Margaret Explosion cds and they were all from Rochester. It took us a bit to realize that the sales were a result of the rebroadcast of  the Margaret Explosion segment of WXXI’s “On Stage”. We were downtown out on the deck at Abilene listening to Bobby Henrie & The Goners so we missed the show. Martin Edic said it was on the tv inside the bar but we were busy watching the best band in the city. Besides, I was making a movie.

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NFS

Martha O'Connor art at Rochester Contemporary Lab Space
Martha O’Connor art at Rochester Contemporary Lab Space

Art work with an NFS (Not For Sale) tag is especially appealing. It is often the best work in a show. Duane was in town for the weekend and we met at the RoCo opening for “State of the City”. It was a funny mix of un-unruly (I want to say the opposite of unruly but I guess ruly is not a word) graffiti, polite hip hop and empty warehouse photography. We spent most of time in the small Lab Space looking at Martha O’Connor’s show, “Augurhood”. Duane wanted to buy the piece shown above but it was NFS. Martha explained that she drew this on the paper wrapping from some imported Italian cheese that she liked.

The soundtrack from the movie, “Short Cuts”, that we ordered from eBay thanks to a link that Joel sent, arrived yesterday and we love it. Its a dark California soundscape complete with helicopters, earthquake rumblings, songs by Peggy Lee, Duke Ellington, Dr. John, Iggy Pop, Igor Stavinsky and Horace Silver. It was 75 cents plus shipping. Funny that clunky old cds are sometimes cheaper than downloads now.

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Gritty City Jukebox

Hotel Reverie at the Boulder Fest in Rochester, NY
Hotel Reverie at the Boulder Fest in Rochester, NY

I stopped in our bank last Friday to make a deposit and cash a few checks. I don’t know where the tellers go but they move through this branch pretty quickly. I was asked to show my id and then the same teller asked if our business would be interested in doing a display in the bank for a week. He pointed to a tabletop display in the corner that currently featured a popcorn machine with fresh popcorn and a sign for a concessions company. The teller said he had a cancellation for next week and he wondered if we would be interested. I committed to it and printed up a few 8 1/2 x 11 posters with a blowup of an ad and some stuff from our website. He told me the bank opens at eight on Monday and I said there was no way I would be there at that hour.

Sure enough the bank called this morning and wondered if we were still planning on setting up a display. Peggi told them we were on the way. When I got there I was the only customer in the bank and the tellers were discussing what satellite radio station to tune into. One of the tellers told another that she couldn’t stand it when customers sang along with the songs so she suggested they choose an instrumental station. I arranged the three posters on the backdrop and spread some business cards around on the table surface and I scattered some Margaret Explosion matches around for good measure.

The soundtrack for my trip down Titus Ave. to the bank was the Hotel Reverie cd that Jen gave us after their sensationally understated performance at the Boulder Fest on Sunday. Jen’s right-on rhythm guitar, dark, enchanting vocals and high heels complete the package while her brother, John, plays drums and carries the equipment. I say this as someone who walks in his shoes. Hotel Reverie has a pretty active calender.

Nod closed the show in style while a cowboy walked in circles in front of the stage. Maybe tomorrow I’ll post some video of that performance.

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Bar Band In Heaven

Captain Beefheart drawing at Red Creek in Rochester, New York in 1977
Captain Beefheart drawing at Red Creek in Rochester, New York in 1977. Photo by Greg Prevost.

I digitized some vinyl the other day. I go tape out of our stereo amp into Quicktime on our laptop and then edit it in Audacity. One of the things I digitized was an old Personal Effects 45. Peggi’s voice and sax sounded too high. Peggi got her sax out to play along and we confirmed that our turntable runs fast. We changed the pitch by -110 cents and it came out fine.

Brad Fox sent me a 33 1/3 book on “Trout Mask Replica” and I’ve been reading that and thinking about the cassette recording I made of Captain Beefheart at the Red Creek in Rochester in 1977. I remembered Beefheart saying something nasty about Drumbo (aka John French) between songs. And of course there are a lot of quotes from Drumbo in the book, some of them lambasting Beefheart. So I got an old cassette deck out of the basement and put the tape in but the deck wouldn’t go into play. It was just sort of froze in the eighties. Luckily we had another old deck down there and I transferred the tape. I posted one of the songs below with the quote from The Captain. You can hear Brad Fox scream as the band begins this song.

I remember there was some dreadful magic act (someone saw Magic Band and thought why not?) that went on first and there were two shows. We went to the second. I still have the ticket. When we got there Greg Prevost (Chesterfield Kings) and Carl Mack’s (Zenith Effluveum get compared to MX-80 in this review) were interviewing The Captain in the parking lot. I think Kevin Patrick’s wife, Corrine, took this photo of him and gave me a print. The stage was still in the front of the room there. The Captain mentioned the the chocolate pie that owner, Jeff Springut, gave him before the show. The band was amazing and included Jeff Moris Tepper, Eric Drew Feldman, Denny Walley and Robert Williams. They faithfully recreated the older material and went on to record “Doc at the Radar Station”.

When David Greenberger was here he was telling us that he was in a Boston band in the eighties called Men & Volts and they did Beefheart covers and Beefheart-like material. I told him about seeing the Trout Mask Replica tour in Columbus at Ludlow’s Garage with Hampton’s Grease Band and the Screaming Gypsy Bandits opening. And he said he was talking to the Bandit’s Mark Bingham in New Orleans about doing a project. And then along comes this little book from Brad.

Captain Beefheart Band at Red Creek in Rochester, NY
Captain Beefheart performing at Red Creek in Rochester, New York in 1977. Photo by Greg Prevost.

Bruce Fowler was also on the Bat Chain Puller lp and by another coincidence we just saw him playing in the band that appeared throughout Robert Altman’s “Short Cuts”. We’ve been watching the entire Altman catalog in order but have been breaking it up with other stuff. It took us three nights to watch that one because I kept falling asleep. So each time we came back to it we re-watched large portions. There is such a large cast in this one and all these interweaving stories that it worked well in small doses. Tom Waits’ character hangs out in this bar where Annie Ross from Lambert, Hendricks and Ross sings with Terry Adams from NRBQ on piano and Bobby Previte on drums and Bruce Fowler on trombone.

Here is my recording of Captain Beefheart Live at Red Creek in Rochester, NY

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Not In New York

Toy alligator on the road near Spring Valley
Toy alligator on the road near Spring Valley

I think we might have been set up by some kid for this one. We were headed over to Spring Valley to to forge our way though the overgrown woods when we came across thing. Peggi and I both thought it was real for a few seconds and then we quickly realized we were in New York.

Peggi had an assignment tonight to video Annie Wells with Phil Marshall and her NYC drummer so we raced over to the Little Cafe and plugged in. Mick Sarubbi was there with his recording rig and he slipped me a copy of Jenna & The Horse Lovers’ set from last weekend. (I gotta get the story on that name. I get the Jenna part.)

What a pleasant assignment. Annie sounded great. She did a Laura Nyro song for Peggi and a beautiful version of Dave Ripton’s “Heroin & People”. Jack Schaefer was there with his son and we smiled at each other when the song started. Jack and I both played that song with the Ripton band many years ago. Annie’s song to Edith Piaf, “Little Sparrow”, sounded great even without Ed Maris’s accordion. Peggi complained that my tripod was acting sticky when she panned. We’ll probably post one one the videos to Annie’s site.

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España

Hill in the country south of Rochester, NY
Hill in the country south of Rochester, NY

I would take a ride in the country any day over slugging it out with html, php and css. Although I did enjoy getting thoroughly obsessed with making this page work in the PC version of Explorer. I must have worked on it until one in the morning. I didn’t really intend to get into this whole project of redesigning our web site. You know how it is with a plumber getting around to fixing his own leaky faucet. But we ran out of business cards a few months ago, printed some online, passed a few out and then realized the site should sort of look like the card. So we did a simple rework with most of the old content. The whole site is now only five or so pages because we put all of the content in iFrames so you can scroll through it. I did the Web Design page and the Logos page with an iFrame and everything was cool. When I got the Print page I wanted to pop the small graphics up to show enlargements and I managed to find a version of the Lightbox script that would pop photos up out of the iframe and into the parent but when I tested it in IE8 on the PC the photos tried to open inside the iframe. Grrrr.

So I called Bill Jones and he talked me through setting up a scrollable div that served the same purpose and took on the extra challenge of doing the the page without tables. It was fun but not as nice as hopping in the car driving down to my brother‘s place in South Bristol. We did that the other day and came across this hillside that reminded us of Spain. Now, that would really be fun.

Margaret Explosion plays tonight at an opening at Genesee Center for the Arts. I’m thinking of just bringing my djembe instead of the whole kit.

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We’re Goin’ To The Liquor Store

Chinchillas performing at Abilene in Rochester, NY last night
Chinchillas performing at Abilene in Rochester, NY last night

We played two sets at RoCo last night and spent most of the first set trying figure out what worked best in that lively gallery space. I Sparse worked best and provided at least some definition so we went with that. Director, Bleu Cease, invited us back to play the Members Show Opening so we must have found the sweet spot.

We packed the equipment and headed over to Abilene to catch the last of The Chinchillas set. They sounded great and the place was packed. Club owner, Danny, told us Toots from the Maytals was in there playing pool a few nights ago. The Chinchillas gig was a cd release party but they ran out of cds. You can see the empty plastic bag at their feet in the blowup of this photo. You’ll also notice the lighting rig in the foreground that gave the band that special glow. One of the two outdoor spots was working. Pete, on the left, churns out some great songs and they make this whole thing look effortless. They played some songs from the early eighties (some of these guys were in the Presstones) and finished with a song I’m still singing. “We’re Goin’ To The Liquor Store”.

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Law Of Large Numbers

MArgaret Explosion Skyhigh playing on Bill and Geri’s patio

Margaret Explosion plays at seven tonight for the Rochester Contemporary closing party of the 6×6 Show. I put some of my Local Crime Faces (from the Crimestopper page) in there and last I checked only one of them had a red dot next to it. Just why would anyone want a crime face on their walls anyway?

We met with our financial guy yesterday and he had some new software that allowed us to put numbers for what age we would like to retire and how much we would need to live on. After a little crunching the results indicated that we would have to work a little longer that we had hoped. So we started looking looking for variables that we could fudge. The life expectancy figures show Peggi would live to 93 and I would live to 92. This sounded ridiculous. I told him I did not want to see ninety so he moved my number down. Pegii said, “Yeah, at ninety I could live like a bag lady and not even know the difference.”

Our financial guru laughed and told us about his brother’s plan. “Put on a nice suit. Go to church. Stop at the doughnut shop on the way home. Have some Irish coffee. Pull in the garage, shut the door and leave the engine running.”

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Box Of Sighs

Trout for the grill at Anne Haven's house
Trout for the grill at Anne Haven’s house

Anne Havens is one of our favorite artists. We recently helped her with a few computer issues so she invited us over for dinner last night. She said we would know which apartment was hers by just by looking and we did. Everywhere you look you are surrounded by art and most of it is Anne’s.

We sat out on their deck while Stuart cooked trout on the grill. Peggi and I marveled at his nonchalant barbecue style and we knew the trout would be done to perfection. Anne made a real Ceasar’s Salad and roasted potatoes. We listened to Ornette Coleman and Duke Ellington and had a marvelous time. Anne proposed a toast to Ornette, our cat, and we got to talk about how special he was. The Ornette synchronicity has been non-stop around here. When David Greenbergger was here he had a Wire Magazine with Ornette on the cover and this morning Marc Weinstein emailed us a link to an Ornette Coleman clip from 1974 with James Ulmer Blood on guitar.

We offered to help Anne with an audio file that she plans to put in her concrete box sculpture, “Box of Sighs” which will be featured in the upcoming Rochester Finger Lakes show. Anne’s studio mate commented on how Anne sighs while she works so Anne recorded her sighs and put them in this box. She showed the piece at Studio 354 in 2008 but she wasn’t happy with the sound quality so we rerecorded the track today in our bathroom. The sighs were barely audible behind the closed doors and were so quiet that I had to really boost the input levels. As a result we wound up with a hum on the track. We traced that to the refrigerator on the other side of the bathroom wall so we unplugged it and got a perfect track. Anne was really in the zone. We were telling her that what we needed was a “whisper room” like they have out at Sutro Sound in San Francisco and she liked the sound of that.

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Small Duplex World

David Greenberger from Duplex Planet stops in to the Little Theater to hear Margaret Explosion
David Greenberger from Duplex Planet stops in to the Little Theater to hear Margaret Explosion

Transmissions are expensive and they seem to go in the worst situations. David Greenberger and his wife were driving back to Saratoga Springs when theirs went near the Henrietta exit. They holed up at a MicroTel Inn, rented a car at RentAwreck and found their way to Craig Autometric on East Avenue where their car had been towed. They had some dinner at 2 Vine and spotted a poster for Margaret Explosion at the Little Theater. They were there when we showed up. Jenna Weintraub from the Horse Lovers played some beautiful saw on few tunes.

Ten or fifteen years ago Chuck Cuminale, aka Colorblind James, gave a us a small stack of David’s magazine, The Duplex Planet. We loved it. Chuck was contributing to the Refrigerator at the time and David sent us one of his cds. He has worked with Terry Adams, Robyn Hitchcock, Dave Alvin, Drew Friedman and David Hidalgo and Louie Perez of Los Lobos. Coincidentally, our friends Pete and Shelley had crossed paths with David and we sent David a Margaret Explosion cd with Pete on it. David liked it and contacted us about the possibility of doing a recording project some day.

David was a regular contributor to National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” so you may have already heard him. He has a new cd called “Cherry Ping Apple Blossom Time”. Milwaukee musician, Paul Cebar, supplies the music and David reads dialog from elderly Milwaukeeans with memory loss. There are 38 delightful tracks on the cd and you can download them all from Thrill Jockey for $10.

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Jazz Fest Parting Shots

Jeff and Margaret had a post jazz fest party last night. Jeff played cds from the bands that performed here and we actually stood around talking about the acts we had seen at the festival. “What was your favorite act?” was a good conversation starter as the crowd mingled on the back deck. Jeff took a poll and reported the results while standing on a chair. Monty Alexander and Jonas Kullhammar were tied for first place. Dick Storms and Scott Regan picked bands that we didn’t even see so there was plenty to go around.

As good as it was, the conversation eventually turned to how it could be better. These were just a few of the conversation points. More US/NYC bands and less from across the pond. Does the government subsidy of those bands make them cheaper than US bands? How about multiple stages up and down East Avenue with local jazz acts instead of the two big stages with big name biker acts? Why isn’t the Little Cafe a venue for the night? The big, white Jazz Fest mass of a logo is almost impossible to shoot around for photographers. The web site is sort of sad. No imbedded YouTube videos, sometimes no links to sound files and no blog feature to give your feedback. And if you gave the organizers your email address you got a useless email everyday trying to sell you stuff. But these are all minor quibbles. It is amazing that these guys pulled this thing off again. A successful jazz fest! Who can complain?

I mentioned seeing Gary Brandt at the Petter Molvaer show in an earlier post and he emailed us this followup.

“I got to the church at 6, and discovered that not only was I first on line, I was the line for 20 minutes. A guy comes around the corner and asks if this is where Nils is playing and is this the door. After chatting, I asked him where he was from. His reply, ”I flew in an hour ago for this from NYC.” The next two people to the line were from Toronto, and the next three were from northern jersey. We were all there for Nils and Arve. And yes, I spent 80 dollars and was quite happy.”

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Live Jazz Withdrawal

Joe Lovano and Us Five at the Rochester Jazz Festival
Joe Lovano and Us Five at the Rochester Jazz Festival

Joe Lovano opened the last night of Day 9 with a different Us Five than his YouTube video. This one featured only one drummer and his wife, Judi Silvano, in that order. Joe moves about the stage with a wireless mic and tosses off melodies like he is in the middle of a lively conversation and most of the animation was between the amazing drummer, Francisco Mela, and Joe. Judi’s skat, Cameron Brown’s bass, (he’s recorded with Archie Shepp and Mal Waldron) James Weidman’s piano made this a rich musical experience. Joe Lovano is big league.

Delirium at first seemed like a toy band. But that is only in comparison to Joe Lovano. This Finish quartet has been together for ten years and they sound it. Their arrangements are crisp and cleanly delivered with lots of unison horn. They are all great players but the tenor sax player was exceptional. They have their own European (more pageantry and less blues based) jazz sound and it’s a lot of fun. Their last tune was entitled, “Let’s Have Some Pie”.

Aaron Parks has one of the goofiest haircuts I’ve seen in a while. We were excited to see the Respect Sextet’s Ted Poor in the drum chair and gave these guys about a half hour but never warmed up to them. Aaron’s flowing, lyrical piano style seemed to butt heads with Ted’s rambunctious rough edges and the bass player was not holding this all together. Can’t we have Respect Sextet here every year?

We finished the Fest at Montage with the Antonio Ciacca Group. We had see Antonio at Kilbourn a few years back and really loved his playing. He came out limping (literally) tonight and seemed kind of tired. We were sitting right next to his piano but he was not loud enough. The tenor sax player was great. Everybody is great. This festival just keeps getting better and better. We said hi to and thanked co-promoter Marc Iacona on the way out (he was a former student of Peggi’s) but we can’t thank him enough.

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Go To Church

We spent some time following links to sound files for Friday’s line-up. We watched a video of Pat Martino and couldn’t even count the number of strings on the bass player’s instrument but we guessed there were seven so we nixed that show. Turns out he played with an organist and no bass player. We heard he was great. We chose to start with Arve Henriksen, a trumpet player from Norway, who was performing with a dj at the Lutheran Church. We thought there would be a bigger line for this event but it was pretty laid back. We chatted with friends while they mowed the lawn at the church. Hal told us there was a review of Arve and Nils Petter Molvaer (we saw Nils here the night before) in today’s New York Times.

Thank god churches are are hurting for patrons (except for the Evangelicals) these days because all these beautiful urban buildings are now available as performance spaces. The Cowboy Junkies recorded the Trinity Sessions in a Toronto Church letting the ambiance of the hall define their whole sound. Ani DiFranco bought an old church in Buffalo and converted it to a performance space and Doug Rice has recently converted an old Baptist church on Atlantic Avenue into MUCC. Arve Hendriksen let the room breathe and he made the most of it with his beautiful sparse but melodically rich trumpet playing. And looked completely relaxed sitting on the piano bench while the dj sampled the horn live and processed the horn parts adding them to the mix. I closed my eyes and heard an Arabic falsetto voice chanting and assumed the dj had added a vocal loop. When I looked up it was Arve singing into the mic. If only church going was this meditative and restorative. We stopped over at Abilene and then came back for the second set.

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