August 2008 – Page 2

August 8, 2008April 4, 2019

Wrestling With All The Little Pieces

Poster for HI-Techs and Prestones at Scorgies in Rochester, New York on 04.07.1981

There’s a Press Tones show tonight at Abilene. I don’t think we will make it but you never know. We are headed over to Bill and Geri’s to see the progress they have made on their tiled house. I see a lot of people cover their original wood siding with aluminum but not Bill and Geri. They have been slowly applying all shapes and sizes of colorful tile to the side of their house.

We worked on the Scorgie’s site for Tom Kohn today. Tom is planning a Scorgies Reunion show at the German House in November with some of the bands that used to play there. New Math, Personal Effects, Absolute Grey and The Press Tones are on the bill. We have been setting up a site for Tom that will hopefully run itself. People should be able to post stories, pictures, posters, mp3 files and videos to the site without 4D Advertising wrestling with all the little pieces.

Today we spent a good bit of the day getting this slideshow script to automatically size and post thumbnails without distorting them and also size and post larger files that can viewed in a Lightbox slide show. The Press Tones sent in a poster from one of their gigs that was actually a poster that I made for our band, The Hi-Techs. We played this date with them opening. I hadn’t seen ithe poster in a while.

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August 7, 2008August 6, 2019

Basketball Team Faced Strong Competition

Holy Trinity basketball team, mid sixties. l. to r. Paul Dodd, Alfred Williams, Jim Schneider, Albert Williams, Jim McClellan, Russ Minor's older brother, Bernie Finch — Holy Trinity basketball team, mid sixties. l. to r. Paul Dodd, Alfred Williams, Jim Schneider, Albert Williams, Jim McClellan, Russ Minor’s older brother, Bernie Finch

Dodd, Williams, Schneider, Williams, McClellan, Minor and Finch playing for Holy Trinity basketball team.

I made a birthday card for my mom today and I went rummaging through a bunch of old photos to find one to use on her card. I found one of her working as a cashier in my uncle’s (her brother) grocery store and I scanned it for her card. I did a painting a long time ago of my uncle in his store. I worked there too although never on the cash register. I was a stock boy. I used to take cream pies into the cooler and eat them when he left the store. He came back one time and caught me sitting on top the milk crates holding a whole banana cream pie up to mouth.

I also came across this old photo of the Holy Trinity basketball team from about that same time period. I looked as geeky as these basketball players. I had to do some rumaging to find both of the painting links in this entry. They are old paintings and there is no logical internet route to them anymore other than typing the url. I’ve gotten in the habit of breaking the links to old stuff but leaving it out there, online for times like this.

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August 6, 2008April 11, 2019

Pimping My Blog

I installed the Lightbox software on Julia Nune’s site and then on this blog last night. It shows the photos in a pop up box on top of the existing page. I’m happy with this elegant solution. I also put 1pixelout’s audio player on Julia’s site and I like that too so I installed the WordPress plugin here. (updated since)

Twenty years ago today we were preparing to head up to the mountains for Pete and Shelley’s 8.8.88 party. Pete spray painted signs that greeted us on the way in to their summer home in the woods. At the time it was still a summer home because by Fall they were headed back to New Orleans to spend the winter in down home style. I listened to few Pete LaBonne tracks and picked one from that period to post here.

Bill Jones has set up a Pete LaBonne shopping cart that will allow you to purchase twenty years of Pete LaBonne tracks for 50 cents a piece. Peggi and I still have a little work to do to engage the store. In the meantime, here is “Who Dropped That Pin” from the cd entitled “High Time”. In most cases, Pete plays all the instruments and recorded everything in a small small shack on their property called the “Hodge Podge Lodge”.

In this case there are no instruments, just voice.

Hip Hop Security

Security for NV in downtown Rochester NY

How does Abilene get to have bands outside every night of the week in downtown Rochester? I’m not complaining, I’m just wondering. When New Math rehearsed in the Cox building on Saint Paul, we would get complaints from people all over downtown. Maybe it was our music. Anyway I’m happy to listen to bands out back at Abilene’s and I can only guess that there is just nobody around in this part of town to complain.

Nobody that is, except the NV clubgoers and the over the top securtity team from the hip hop club around the corner. These guys look like the Guardia Civil in Franco’s day. White chunky skinheads with pirate style hats, radios and handcuffs hanging off their belts. There were about fifteen of them out in front of Abilene the other night. I didn’t know whether to feel safe or be afraid.

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August 4, 2008August 28, 2019

Staycation

I didn’t come up with that word but I am living the concept. Today we did a little bit of 4D work, and then a few home repairs, took a walk in the woods and a swim at the pool. We’re watching our neighbor’s cat while they are on a real vacation so we just raided their movie collection to top it all off.

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August 3, 2008August 28, 2019

Rigamarole

It has rained a lot up near Lake Ontario. We have had some rain everyday for the last few weeks. The frogs are digging this weather, the mushrooms too. We have a bright red mushroom in our backyard and some funky things out front. We took a walk in the woods and found all these exotic formations.

We were going to go down to New York and then we decided to go up to the mountains but we didn’t leave on Saturday so we talked about leaving on Sunday and then we decided to stay right here instead. Peggi suggested pitching a tent in the back yard. We might do that. There’s too much rigmarole involved with trying to get out of town. It’s much easier to stay right here.

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August 2, 2008August 28, 2019

Art Reminds Us That We are Alive

Dick Storms artwork for Rain at Record Archive

Last night was First Friday again and Dick Storms had an art opening at his store, Record Archive. The whole store has always been like a funky art piece but for this occasion he set aside some wall space on the ramp that leads to the vinyl pit to show his rock artwork for bands in the late sixties and early seventies. Dick did the lightshow for Quicksilver Messenger Service back in the day. The photo above shows Dick’s album cover art for the Rochester band, Rain. It is a three color silkscreen sticker that the band stuck on the lp and on surfaces all over town. Hermie from the Bug Jar was at the opening and he said his sister had one of these records. Dick’s art work is is comfortable like Robert Crumb or late Philip Guston. His daughter, Margaret, helped hang the show. It should be be up for a month or so.

Avalanche Collective from Syracuse at Rochester Contemporary

Over at RoCo we fell for the the three guys from Syracuse, Avalanche Collective, who set up camp in empty urban lots and videotape their adventures. The photo above, of the three of them, was lit by the car batteries in their wagon.

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August 1, 2008August 28, 2019

We’re All Deaf In Here

It has been total Julia immersion for us working on Julia Nunes’s web site. She’s had thousands of hits while we set the thing. People were signing her guest book as we were installing it. We worked until six or so and then we headed down to the pool. It was beautiful there and relaxing. We watched for John Gilmore to drive by and when he did we went home to meet him for dinner. We ate on the deck and headed off to see Julia at Alilene. She was great. She did this song about breaking up with her boyfriend that had the line, “I’m going out to get my mind off you”. It was like an Irish drinking song.

I couldn’t hear her talking between songs (and that’s my favorite part) so I said, “louder”. I was standing next to Dick Storms and he seconded my suggestion, “This is an older crowd. We’re all deaf in here.”

I went up to Julia on her break and waited for an opening to say hi. She was surrounded by admirers. I said, “Hi Julia. I just thought I would say hi. I’m Paul” and she looked at me and smiled sarcastically sweet and went on talking to her friends. I had to interrupt her again to say, “Paul from the website.” And she asked if Debbie was around but she meant Peggi. So we met. We love Julia.