“Passion Play” 1998 by Paul Dodd, notebook assemblages for stations of the cross
Years ago, on this day, my parents tried to get us to sit in silence on a day off from school between the hours of noon and three. These were the hours Christ hung on the cross and this was the culmination of Lent. This year we helped my father file his taxes via TurboTax while my mother watched “Guys & Dolls.”
In 1998 I filled a notebook with bits and pieces of news clippings, sketches and nearly disjointed thoughts on a modern day retelling of the Passion Play set in my city neighborhood, all in preparation for paintings of the fourteen stations of the cross. I created large assembleges in Photoshop and printed the series at Scale 2 on St. Paul Street. I still haven’t done the paintings, there are so many approaches. I’m still sort of collecting references and each Good Friday I look at the paper for a Christian related story. The Ted Kaczynski in full-on crucifixion mode picture was on the front page of the old Times Union. In today’s paper there was a story about the Somali rebels going door to door in Kenya sparing Muslims and killing Christians. I entered the prints in the Finger Lakes Show and won the Harris Popular Award. They are kind of fun to look back on.
The original files for my Passion Play prints are so old they wouldn’t display properly. I had to take them into Photoshop, copy the layer and paste it into a new document and then save them out as tiff. Formats do not stay the same.
Secret Keeper with Mary Halverson and Stephan Crump at the Bop Shop in Rochester, New York
We made sure we had seats down front for Stephan Crump when he played with Vjay Iyer at Kilburn last year. We had heard him with his Rosetta Trio at the Bop Shop and were blown away. He is an amazing bass player. Incredibly sensitive, melodic and solid. He would sound great with anyone. As you can see in this picture he plays every inch of his instrument. In this duo setting, a project called “Secret Keepers,” he and Mary Halverson would start and finish each other’s phrases, odd phrases in odd songs because Mary Halverson is a most unusual guitar player. Seated and working one pedal with each foot she would clip and chew on notes as she picked them. She says her influences are horn players, Eric Dolphy, John Coltrane and Miles Davis, artists she first heard on her dad’s records. This was something else.
Stones, cops and crowd at Rochester War Memorial 1965
I liked “Rubber Soul” but I loved “Out Of Our Heads.” One blew away the other and the partisan divide began for me.
Rolling Stones incite near-riot in ’65
When the curtain went up the night of Nov. 1, 1965, there were 120 officers, War Memorial security, and ushers — the largest such show of crowd-control force in the venue’s history — ready to keep the crowd under control. Maybe they needed a few more. That Rochester show before an estimated crowd of 4,000 was perhaps the shortest Rolling Stones concert of all time, shut down by police slightly after 9 p.m. after only six songs. It was only their second-ever tour of the United States, in support of the album Out of Our Heads.
“The ones down front — particularly the girls — caused most of the trouble,” Rochester Police Chief William Lombard was quoted in the Times-Union. “They really started to get worked up when one Rolling Stone took off his jacket.” But what actually shut down the show was the promise — and the threat — of even more skin. “I knew when this one fellow took off his jacket and waved it at the girls while wiggling around that the next number would be the last,” Lombard said. “That’s the one where he strips to his undershirt.” The story did not indicate which of the British Invasion louts Lombard was referring to. One can only wonder if the police chief in hindsight regretted that move, as audience members reportedly threw popcorn, candy boxes, shoes and other items at the stage and chanted “We want the Stones!” Detective Lt. Andrew J. Sparacino was hit in the left eye and was taken to Genesee Hospital. As the Times-Union reported, “Lombard said he thought someone swung a bag of caramels at Sparacino.” And the photo accompanying the T-U story shows a glum looking Sparacino with a patch over one eye. Years later, he told a reporter he remembered talking to Stones lead vocalist Mick Jagger about being careful because of the crowd and the rock and roller responding “with some of the foulest language I’ve ever heard.”
Sparacino wasn’t the only victim of the night’s wildness. One 16-year-old Rochester fan was taken to Highland Hospital with a leg injury. And police removed “several youths” from the building for disorderly conduct. Who’s to blame? Lombard told media the crowd was noisy but for the most part civilized. “I appealed to them once to help them enjoy the show,” he was quoted as saying. “But when some of them really started to get worked up and began charging the stage, I thought someone would get hurt.”
After the show, guitarist and backing vocalist Keith Richards reportedly trash talked Rochester to the police, saying “This is a hick town. They were twice as wild in Montreal. They won’t get hurt. You were too hard with them.” The Rolling Stones reportedly flew out of town that night, presumably on their way to Providence, Rhode Island, and the next stop on their tour.
– MDANEMAN@DemocratandChronicle.com
