Abandoned car in Four Mile Creek Preserve, Webster
If you walk everyday you crave variety. We take various routes to the lake and sometimes walk in the neighborhoods. We don’t walk in the woods as much as we used to because of the prevalence of ticks. When we got out for an errand during the day we take a walk while we are out. When we go to the Co-Op we park in their lot and walk around downtown before shopping (and visiting Pete and Gloria.) We brought pimientos to my brother’s corn roast and left our splatter screen there. So we returned the next day and took a walk in the park near his house. My brother has never set foot in there.
Abandoned car in Four Mile Creek Preserve, Webster
You used to see abandoned farm equipment and automobiles in farmer’s fields all the time. It is a long decay process for cars and I’m certainly not the only one who finds them beautiful. Four Mile Creek winds its way through this Preserve and then crosses under Lake Road and passes between the funky cottages and Hedges Restaurant before it flows into Lake Ontario.
Abandoned car in Four Mile Creek Preserve, Webster
The decomposing cars in there bring a sense of history to woods. Today’s cars with their transistors, plastic parts and forever chemicals would look hideous in the woods.
We had more fun last week than we have in a long time. We had swim dates at the neighborhood pool with three different sets of kids. Melissa, who plays cello with Margaret Explosion, brought her kids on Tuesday afternoon. Jeff and Mary Kaye brought their two grandchildren over on Thursday and my sister brought three of our nieces children over on Friday. We played Marco Polo for four hours! Penelope told her father “it was the best day ever” when she got home.
We started about three dozen Pimiento de Padron plants from seed this year and most of them came up. The plants have been producing peppers for over a month now. That means more than thirty days in a row where we have eaten a plate of peppers. Typically it is like Russian Roulette, maybe one pepper on the plate will be hot but our batting average is way north of that this year.
We shared a plate with Dan and Diana last night. We took a batch to my brother’s annual corn roast on Sunday. We brought them to dinner at Jedi and Helena’s. They went nuts over them so we’ve dropped off a few more batches. We took them to dinner at Tom and Jann’s and Tom had to know where we got the seeds from. We dropped another batch off for him today. We brought a plate full over Jeff and Mary Kaye’s when we had dinner out there. Our neighbor’s Wayne and Sarah gave us some ginger and turmeric they grew in their garden so we repaid them with a baggie of pimientos.
They grow so fast we have to visit our garden every day to pick them before they get too big (and hot). This is just one of the reasons our summer has gone so fast.
Note left in top jar after 08.22.24 Margaret Explosion gig
New Math was playing across town at Record Archive on Thursday. I was in that band up until their first record and Propeller has just reissued it so they are back at it. Marc Ribot was playing in the Little Theatre next door to the Café where we were playing. And on top of that it was a beautiful summer evening.
Marc Weinstein and his wife drove in from Buffalo for the Ribot show and they caught our first set. He told us he remembered seeing our old band playing in Buffalo back in the eighties. I tried listing all the Buffalo bands we played with back then and mentioned the bands Tony Biloni was in and the next thing you know Tony showed up. He said something about playing sax with Peggi on a James Brown song and Peggi didn’t even know who he was. It’s only been about forty years.
Marc owned Fantasy Records, a shop on Monroe Avenue, next door to where my uncle’s grocery store was, back in the eighties. I bought records from him back then but didn’t know him. He moved out west and opened Ameba Reords in LA and SF. My friend, Dave Mahoney, worked for him. When Dave died Marc played drums on “So Clear‘” one of our favorite MX-80 tracks.
it got pretty quiet when half the room left for the Ribot show so I think we got a good recording of the gig. I’m exporting the files from our Zoom recorder as I make this entry.
I always thought the name of that song was “When I Was Seventeen.” It is the key line and that is about the age I was when I first heard The Turtles version. But Frank owns the song and I was happy to find a copy on the 45 table in the back of the Bop Shop. The boxes were overstuffed at the beginning of the sale and it was difficult to flip through. They got cheaper as the sale went on and by the last day you could help yourself. Peggi and I took home a few boxes and we sorted the sleeves by label.
Peggi and I both hung on to our singles from the sixties and continued to buy 45s. When we dumped our lps and cds we hung on to the seven inchers. The two shelves aren’t getting any bigger though so we have continued to prune. The ones from the 70s and 80s brought a decent return and I used the store credit to pick from the mint copies that Tom keeps in the brown sleeves. They look like they came out of a library or something. I’d rather see them in the company sleeve and I am preparing to remedy that now.
Edith Piaf and Giulietta Masina check out new Joywave lp
The store was pretty crowded on Sunday afternoon. I said hello to Tom and went straight to the back of the store where I joined a couple of Black guys, about the same age as me, at the 45 table. They were filling a box and laughing at song titles and singles by Eydie Gormé and Engelbert Humperdinck.
I had already been in the store earlier in the week for the week long “Bop Shop Sidewalk Sale” but I didn’t have anywhere near enough time to work my way through the stacks. The boxes were overstuffed so it made flipping through them rough. Luckily I had to drop a tape for Matt to transfer and it gave me an excuse to flip through the rest. I was there a couple of hour and couldn’t make it to the bottom. The two other guys were still there when I left. The cashier saw my stack and said, “You better get your wallet out.” He didn’t even count them and charged me two bucks even.
“Highest Tightrope Walk” Guinness World Record Holders by Paul Dodd. Paintings from 1989 Pyramid Arts Center show. Acrylic house paint on billboard paper, 54″ wide by “60” high.
Phillipe Petite’s feat made it into The “Guinness “World Record Holders” book. I had a paperback copy of the book and made a series of paintings based on the book. Done very quickly I used house paint on the back of big billboard sheets that I used to get from Dave Mahoney‘s father. The paintings were shown in 1989 at the cavernous Pyramid Arts Center in Village Gate. John Worden was the director and Kathy Russo the assistant. She brought Spaulding Gray up here and left town with him. They spent the rest of his life together. It is so easy to digress.
Phillipe Petite will celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of this feat in a performance in Manhattan this week. If you haven’t seen the 1984, Academy Award-winning documentary, “Man on Wire” now would be a good time to track that down.
My brother, Fran, doing a flip off diving board with Brad Fox in 1968
We have been watching mostly soccer at this Olympics but Peggi did watch the Artistic Swimming event last night while I was showering. In my freshman year at IU I took a diving class with Hobie Billingsley. He was the Men’s Olympic diving coach at the time and I loved the way he got us to trust him on the first day of class. He had each member of the class climb the ladder of the ten meter tower, walk to the edge of the platform, turn around so our heels were just touching the edge and then fall backwards while keeping stiff as a board. If you did that you would do a perfect 360 and enter the water feet first. I have told this story many times because it was such a dramatic experience for me.
The filmmakers, Axel Danielson & Maximilien Van Aertryck, capture that moment beautifully in their short film. “Our objective in making this film was something of a psychology experiment: We sought to capture people facing a difficult situation, to make a portrait of humans in doubt. “
HOPPTORNET (TEN METER TOWER) by Axel Danielson & Maximilien Van Aertryck
My youngest brother, Fran, never went to college but he would not have flinched if he was in my diving class. He came out to Bloomington to live with Peggi and me for the summer between his junior and senior year in high school. You can see how fearless he is this photo of the two of us jumping into one of the quarries.
Paul and Fran jumping off edge of quarry 1973Leave a comment
Cover of April 1984 issue of Pat Thomas zine “The Notebook.” Cover picture shows Pat Thomas interviewing Allan Ginsberg.
We reconnected with Pat Thomas when he gave a talk at Record Archive about his recent books on Allen Ginsberg and Jerry Rubin. Pat lives in the Bay Area now and told the crowd that he quit his job at Kodak when he realized “the world was much bigger than Rochester,” something that never dawned on us. I was thinking back to Pat’s magazine from his time here and I remembered keeping a copy of one issue where he reviewed one of our records. When I got back home I found it and this picture of Pat interviewing Allen in Rochester in “84.
Marc Weinstein was at Pat’s talk. He has recently moved back to Buffalo but he still plays in Pat’s band “Mushroom.” Their recent double lp has a fabulous 18 minute track on it entitled, “Marc Moved to Buffalo.” Pat’s Ginsberg book, “Material Wealth,” is fascinating. Pat came over for dinner the following night and I showed him my copy of his magazine.
Personal Effects album “This Is It” on Earring Records 1984 EAR 1
PERSONAL EFFECTS “THIS IS IT” BY PAT THOMAS APRIL 1984
“Personal Effects new album “This Is It” is a pop masterpiece in its own right. Recorded by the band themselves at home, the production is basic, yet smooth and flowing. The songwriting and musicianship is first rate, the lyrics and music complementing each other throughout the album.
A catchy guitar riff with a haunting organ background starts off “I Had Everything,” the opening song and one of the album’s more memorable melodic songs. (And one that I would strongly recommend for airplay.)
The alienation concepts of “No One Can Get To You” are lyrically, reminiscent of Jack Kerouac’s “The Dharma Bums,” “sit in the woods for three days.
One of Personal Effects’ more popular songs follows, “Bring Out The Jazz,” a happy upbeat tune celebrating the joys of life with Paul’s vocal perfectly projecting the mood of the song. “Bring Out The Jazz” sums up what Personal Effects are all about. A fun, creative band without pretensions or falsehoods that make good, danceable, intellectually and physically stimulating and satisfying, pop music.
Other highlights include “Drifting Apart” – easily the best song on the album with its psychedelic feel, low-volume guitar providing just the right touch – a great mix and production that captures the spirit of the band and their live performances.
Another surprise follows, “What’s The Attraction.” Bernie’s lethargic vocal and intelligent lyrics tell an increasingly intense story of a religious-cult gathering or concert. The vocal line builds and builds as Bernie works himself into a nervous frenzy that is fantastic and genius.
In rock music’s existence, musicans and bands have influenced each other time and time again, sometimes to the point that everything begins to jell into one, evident thru MTV and FM-Top 40 radio stations. The best thing about Personal Effects and “This Is It” is summed up in one word; “UNIQUE.”
Duane Sherwood at the board in our spare bedroom on Hall Street. Bob Martin is listening to playback of “This Is It” sessions.
The liner notes on the back of This Is It read: “This record was recorded and mixed at home on borrowed equipment by Personal Effects with help from Duane Sherwood.” Duane sat up in our spare bedroom with a borrowed board and a half inch eight track recorder. Bob borrowed a snake from Whirlwind where he worked and we ran it down the laundry shoot of our Hall Street house to the basement where the band played. Duane has our cat, Pia, in his arms.
Peggi recording Farfisa track for Personal Effects lp “This Is It” Leave a comment
Cover to “Personal Effects Nothing Lasts Forever – A Collection Part 2” Digital release August 6, 2024
Today, August 6, “Personal Effects – Nothing Lasts Forever” drops on all the streaming platforms. The song itself is forty years old and the band members are even older (coincidentally Bob turns seventy today). The band released five albums in the early eighties and nineteen of those songs were collected for a cd/digital release in 2008. Nothing Lasts Forever includes eighteen more songs from the same period.
Personal Effects Nothing Lasts Forever – A Collection Part 2 can be streamed at Apple Music and Spotify and all the streaming services.
Listen to “Nothing Lasts Forever” by Personal Effects
Personal Effects’ “A Collection” CD on Earring Records released in 2008
Cover to “Personal Effects Nothing Lasts Forever – A Collection Part 2” Digital release August 6, 2024
Kevin and Jeanne went back to Nashville today. They were up in Rochester for the last month, staying at an airbnb in our old neighborhood, the neighborhood that got so hip after we left. We were there for 27 years and I preferred it when it wasn’t hip but it’s nice to see such a resurgence. We visited them at their place and had them over for dinner a few times. We went out to eat with them and met them at the Little to see a couple of bands. We heard Bernie, who played bass in Personal Effects for a while, playing guitar with the Paul Nunes Band and we heard Pete playing drums with the Debbie Kendrick Project.
Kevin used to do sound for the Hi-Techs and Personal Effects and he played bass on Personal Effects’ last two records. We FaceTimed Bob Martin when Kevin was over. Bob played guitar with Personal Effects and has been working on a remix of the “This Is It” sessions. Kevin gave Bob his secret for mixing my snare in live situations and wrote down the formula. “Pre-delay the snare by about 80 ms and send the delayed signal into the reverb (of course Kevin traveled with his own spring reverb unit). That way the reverb doesn’t obscure the actual snare sound.”
The studio version of “Single Minded” was recorded in 1985 for Personal Effects’ “Mana Fiesta” lp. It and another song didn’t fit on the lp so Restless Records suggested putting them on the cassette version. It is almost forty years old and I only wish I could be as single minded as the theme of this song.
We finished cleaning the windows in our bathroom and I moved on to the next item on the to-do list. I went out to the garage to get a spare light bulb for a light in our kitchen. I turned the light on in the garage and stood there for like five minutes before I could remember why I was out there.
Anne Havens Art Giveaway at Colleen Buzzard’s Studio
It was the best show ever at Colleen Buzzard’s Studio. So much Anne Havens’ work -it was arranged in stacks, leaning against walls and piled on tables. And it was all insanely priced. Attended by mostly artists, we heard, “She was so prolific,” at least five times. We had been to an event similar to this at Jim Thomas’s where we were instructed to pick a piece we liked from his life’s worth of work. It is a creepy feeling, while the artist is still alive, but then it is just as beautiful.
Anne, for a long time now, has been my favorite Rochester artist. Beyond prolific, she is free, wildly expressive, funny and mysterious. And what I like most about her work is that every piece – graphic, print, drawing, book, painting or sculpture – has her touch all over it. It belongs in an Anne Havens Museum but we don’t live in an ideal world.
The first Ornette album I bought was “Science Fiction.” It blew my mind. I bought every album he made after that. Ornette had a singular voice and he was supported by the best drummer in the world, Ed Blackwell, and best bass player, Charlie Haden. It was like a religious experience hearing him play live in New York. This one song from one of his last albums captures the joyous spirit of his music.
I’ve kind of gone off the deep end with August Sanders’ portraits. I’d like to buy every book available of his photos or maybe just download every photo I find by him from Google image searches. The Nazis put the kabash on his social commentary tainted portraits so he switched to landscapes under their noses. I love the portraits, the brick laborer, the piano teacher, the dwarfs, the couple, another couple, the chef, the artist and the man women.
I didn’t notice the concentric circles on Gloria’s bread at first. It was maybe the third or fourth time we had some. She gave Peggi some of her sourdough starter a year or so ago and Peggi has managed to keep it alive by feeding it and making bread every other week. Often it is French or semolina loaves but my favorite is the Seeded Multigrain, Gloria’s recipe. But Peggi’s bread never had the rings on it until today. The secret is a wooden proofing basket called a banneton.
The Milwaukee convention was depressing. I copied this line from our local paper’s coverage. “After finishing a prayer, the pledge and a rendition of ‘God Bless America,’ the delegates raised their fists and immediately began chanting: ‘Fight! Fight! Fight!'” I spent too much time thinking about how the good lord spared Trump and yet made a quick decision not to protect the fireman seated near him. I’m so happy Biden is hanging up his cleats. We can finally move on with wild speculation and positive energy.
John Travolta in John Carpenter’s “Blow Out.” Personal Effects is the name of his video company.
We worked our way through three Criterion Collections of Noir movies and we just dove into one called “NeoNoir.” We started with Brian DePalma’s “Obsession” (thumbs down) and then “Blow Out.” We had seen this one in the theater. Bob Martin had just joined our band, formerly the Hi-Techs, and we were looking for a band name. Bob was with us in the theater and we all looked at each other when John Travolta opened the door to his film studio. Travolta’s character witnesses the assassination of a governor who is running for president and enters a tangled web of conspiracy.
The activities of a bullied Pennsylvania kid with his dad’s firearm and the many articles on Shelley Duval that we’ve read in the last week put Robert Altman’s “Nashville” on our “Up Next” list. We saw that in Toronto when it first came out. Interesting watching it with a theater full of Canadians. I remember people smoking cigarettes all around us. We saw “3 Women” in NYC and left the theater feeling as if we had had an out-of-body experience.
Don’t you hate it when politicians tell us, “This is not who we are?”
We usually included one cover song when we played and this Skeeter Davis song was a favorite in ’83/84. I have a folder of movies from those days and no idea who took most of them. With long distance help from Bob Martin I located three performances that included this song. Two were labeled Scorgie’s Early ’83 and just Scorgie’s ’83 and the third video was a complete mystery. It looked like a sound check somewhere. I put some of that footage at the front of this (above).
The one I liked the best showed Peggi singing the song without playing her Farfisa. The resolution was rough and the camera person loses track of Peggi a few times. She floats out of the frame but you can hear the crowd and just barely make out bodies moving in front of the band. I used that audio but the video and audio cuts out when we get to the bridge so I had to cut to another version for the audio. I patched it all together by overlapping the three versions of the visuals and Peggi and I struggled to get them all in sync. But, if it really is the end of the world it doesn’t matter much.
Found sand sculpture along the beach at Durand Eastman
We’ve been preparing to paint our house for the last month. Had to repair some of the concrete blocks and let that set up before painting. We finish work by dinnertime and eat while watching soccer. We usually have the summer off but this year the Copa America and Euros were happening at the same time. We don’t have cable anymore so we started out with Sling in order to record the matches, stay away from the news and then watch them one at a time. We dumped Sling about halfway through. They were trimming the games, starting the second half at 70 minutes or so and then cutting away with four or five minutes to go. We settled on Fubo and now we are paying as much as we did with cable but we’re doing it without Spectrum. We will dump it after the finals tomorrow, both on the same day so we”ll save the Copa final for Monday. Posting here has taken a back seat. Did I mention that Spain is going all the way? Peggi will wear the Jersey tomorrow!
One of the most popular 45s in our house is Nature Boy by Bobby Darin. Peggi’s childhood friend, Chris Firth, wrote her name in magic marker on our copy. We might also have Nat King Cole’s version on an lp. I know we used to have it. Bobby Darin does a swinging version and his backup singers almost steal the show. Of course Coltrane’s version is beautiful. Elvin Jones almost sounds melodic. And Etta James does a great version. But “who wrote this thing?” we wondered while out walking.
I looked it up when we got home and that led me down a long rabbit hole. Known by the lower case moniker, eden ahbez (1908 – 1995), he was possibly one of the first hippies, long hair and a beard, white robes, sandals, he lived outside under the first “L” in the Hollywood sign. He left the sheet music to his song with Nat King Cole and it went to number one in 1948.
The greatest thing you’ll ever learn Is just to love And be loved In return
We had taken our friend, John, to his doctor in Geneseo and we stopped at Schaller’s on the way home so John could pick up a bacon burger. As we were leaving with the goods we spotted this silver spaceship of a car. It pulled into the parking lot next door and the driver got out and went into Hollywood Traders (“We Buy Gold”). I stopped to take a picture of the car. I wasn’t the only one doing so. Two teenagers were grinning, flashing hand signs and taking selfies in front of the beast before I got out of the car. The license plate read LKY 8466. Peggi looked up the price and found they are north of 100G
On top of our existential crisis, the president has forced people my age to confront our eventual demise. If he doesn’t step aside and let the Democrats nominate a vital, clear headed woman (like Gretchen Witmer) in the next week we’re going to be forced to have a Trump Bible in every household. Maybe she could initiate campaign finance reform and get rid of the electoral college. Great Britain, France and even Iran have all shifted leftward. I want to be optimistic. When asked about stepping down Biden said: “If the Lord Almighty comes out and tells me that I might do that.” We are overdue for the second coming.
