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.
It was hotter than the Fourth of July this fourth. We walked to the lake, lounged at the pool and watched France beat Belgium in the Euros. We are all in for Spain in this one. Our favorite players from La Liga are all on the national team. Young for the most part, really young – Lamine Yamal joined FC Barcelona’s youth academy when he was seven years old. He’s a sixteen year old wunderkind now. Peggi made Shrimp Adobo from our Miami Spice cookbook. We watched “The Stones and Brian Jones” after dinner and then fireworks from the town hall out on our deck.
We found obituaries from two people we know/knew in the paper. We first met Julie when she was going out with Brian from the Paper Faces. As HiTechs, we shared gigs with Faces in Buffalo and here. Peggi remembers dancing with Julie when Brian Horton’s band was playing at the Firemen’s Exempt on Saint Paul. She took her bra off while dancing and Peggi still doesn’t know how she managed to do that. Her funeral mass is Monday.
We got another call for help from our friend, John. He’s been having a hard time lately and he got too weak to get out bed. I microwaved a Chicken Teriyaki package for him, washed his dishes and fetched him a clean pair of underwear.
It is hard enough for Peggi and I to get the Zoom recorder set up and running before our gigs and then harder still to remember to write the files before unplugging it. On top of that the batteries stopped working so if someone trips on the cord we loose the recording. And now it sometimes shuts off in the middle of a set, so we bought a new one, the Zoom H4essential. It comes with an eighty page pdf manual and whole new interface. We spent most of the day before Wednesday’s gig trying to record us saying “hey” into the mics at home. We used the old recorder at the gig and it worked.
The gig was hectic, the day before the 4th, but we managed to find some nice space on a few songs. We had relatives on both sides of the family there. Our niece, Lora, and her son, Dylan and his girlfriend were in town from Colorado. And my cousin, Colleen, was there with her friend. Peggi bought some beers at the break. I get woozy if I drink while we play. It was especially hot in the Little and I pretty much chugged the beer when we finished. We came home and took a midnight swim in the pool down the street.
Lora came over the next day with her two other sons, Lucas and Jude, and spent the afternoon in the pool.
