I fired up my Funky Signs Tumblr blog. Hadn’t been there in a bit. I’ve got fifty or so new signs to get up there for the new year.
Leave a commentFunky New Year
Pure As Poetry
I’ve found I have to turn the tv on pretty early in order to catch the live Premier League games from England. If I tune in at noon I’ve already missed them. There are sometimes four games on simultaneously so I can always find one that looks good. I don’t have any favorite teams or favorite players, I just like watching the motion with the sound off. A good game is like a German Expressionist drawing, all angular and emphatic but as pure as poetry. Today I watched AVL battle SWA to a 1-1 tie.
With most of the snow melted we headed over to the garden to check on our cilantro. Sure enough it was still kicking and we got reacquainted. It tastes great in anything but I like like straight out of the garden. The hill leading down into the woods was slippery so we traversed our way down and spent some time looking at these small trees in the frozen creek.
2 CommentsPurgatory
We planned on getting in Duane’s car and riding back to New York with him after Christmas but his Brooklyn apartment building had a serious plumbing issue while he was up here so we decided to stay in town where the toilets work. The ride back was a black ice nightmare for him so we’re happy to have missed out on that.
We knew there wasn’t enough snow yesterday to ski through the woods so we put our skis in the car and drove along the lake. We stopped at Horseshoe Road and skied out on to the golf course but the snow stuck to the bottom of our skis so we turned around. Today we walked on the road but we’re attracted to a loud industrial sound in the distance. We followed our ears and cut across the marsh off Hoffman Road where we found this big blue ball. We would never be able to walk out there in the summer without sinking in mud. The temperatures have been hovering around the freezing mark and we’re making the best of Limbo.
Leave a commentBlue Christmas
It felt like a blue Christmas, the whole lead-up, and then on Christmas day we learned Yusef Lateef had died. He was 93 and was still playing. I’m pretty sure it was Russell, the crazy guy that lived across the street from Steve Hoy and me on Driscol Drive in Bloomington, Indiana that first turned us on to Yusef Lateef, 1968’s “The Blue Yusef Lateef.” It was so exotic, so beautiful, we soon had our own copy of the lp and still do. Blue has always been my favorite color.
1 CommentTime That Never Was
You might feel like you’ve died and gone to heaven as you walk into Patti’s Pantry on Dewey Road. It is a complete throwback to days that never were. Plastic bottles of Mrs. Butterworth maple syrup adorn every table and the dining room overlooks the CSX railroad station, in fact a train came through while we were eating. It’s sort of a truck stop without the truckers. There was a cool cow print on our coffee cups and my Ceaser’s Salad was weighted down with bacon. My father ordered the hot chocolate and considered the fried bologna and onion sandwich before ordering Philly Cheese steak quesadillas.
We had entered Holy Sepulcher on the Lake Ave. side, helped my parents pick out a location for their final rest in the cemetary’s new “green space” and then exited on the Dewey Avenue side just in time for lunch. Patti’s Pantry is connected with some outfit that makes candies from way back like Smith Brother’s cough drops and all chocolate Necco Wafers. My mom bought some of those but they didn’t taste like used to. We didn’t fall for the Duck Dynasty candy beards.
1 CommentWhy Not?
I may have done this same post this last year. I’m afraid to look. I do know the Church of the Transfiguration had the same plywood nativity scene on display and I can’t imagine me not wanting to to photograph it. I would like to believe this spot on Culver Road is the exact spot where the young baby Jesus was born.
Leave a commentUnique As Hell
It is still possible to round up enough energy to leave the house at ten thirty or quarter to eleven at night. Nod does not play that often these days and they were splitting a bill with The Fox Sisters at Skylark Lounge. It was a bit like the old days there. We met Rick Cona and his girlfriend at the door. Rick was the original guitarist in the Chesterfield Kings and we had just seen Greg Prevost at Spevak’s Xmas party.
This week’s New York Times Magazine had an article about Rochester’s Lydia Lunch in the Magazine section and they quoted Greg talking about Lydia as a customer of the House of Guitars where he worked before she left town. The two surviving founders of the Bug Jar were there and Mark Bradley was playing sax with the Fox Sisters. We played pinball between sets and had a good time. Nod sounded great. The trio is incredibly rhythmic and unique as hell and that’s why we love them. Fox Sisters looked and sounded like the Dap Kings without Sharon Jones.
Leave a commentPeter And Paul
In England and Wales the feast of Saint Peter and Saint Paul is observed as a holy day of obligation (i.e. you must go to mass). Peter, fisherman, friend and disciple of Jesus, and Paul, a Jewish pharisee and later a self-appointed apostle of Jesus were both martyred and have churches named after them in every major city in the country.
Peter (Monicelli) and Paul (Dodd), local voluntary Catholic exiles, drove out to Nazareth College yesterday to visit the Thomas Merton library (Peter’s agenda) and photograph the stations of the cross in the school chapel (Paul’s agenda). We started with the stations because I was driving. Pete found the lights in back room of the empty chapel and I was able to photograph the fourteen stops. By coincidence, I first spotted the classic, sculpted stations at Father William Shannon’s memorial service last year. Bill, as my parents called him, was a close family friend as well as the leading authority on the writer, mystic, artist, Trappist monk, poet and social activist, Thomas Merton.
Pete Monacelli was in heaven in the Merton Library. Pete is a self described “abstract illustrator” but that sells himself short. He is an artist, a seriously productive and successful artist, as well a great guy with a huge heart. He is very interested in the connection between Merton and the early abstract expressionists. Merton was on the same search as his New York contemporaries when he converted to Catholicism and joined a monastery. Pete showed me many series of works he has done based on Merton’s works, beautiful drawings and paintings and assemblages. He wanted me to pick one to take home and he let me borrow Volume 1 of Merton’s journals. There are seven but he insisted I start with one.
We had lunch at Rocky’s on Jay Street. Pete eats here at least twice a week and can get away with ordering rigatoni as “rig” and calling the waitress “sweetie.” Pete is my favorite drummer in town. He had Rob Storms at Sound Source rig his turntable to run at 16. He says all the guys in his day used to learn guitar parts by slowing the song down, dropping the tune an octave. After lunch we listened to Miles Davis’ version of “Guinevere” and “Pharaoh’s Dance” from “Bitches Brew” on 16RPM. They are both long songs and were twice as long this way but beautiful. You quickly forget that you have changed gears while you hear parts dramatically unfold. He told me with all certainty, the way Pete says most things, that this is what Margaret Explosion sounds like.
1 CommentMental Floss
Magazines and the whole print world have clearly taken a hit but somehow the magazine rack at Wegmans hasn’t gotten any smaller. I picked up a few this morning and would have bought something if I could have found anything interesting. It seems instead of just going out of business they have filled their pages with more ads and shorter articles. Rolling Stone was hard to even flip though. It was stuffed with blown-in subscription cards and heavy stock, multipage ad supplements. An article entitled “The Year Pop’s Future Arrived” had a picture of Paul McCartney in it. Maybe that was the point. No future.
A casual glance reveals there are more Mac oriented mags than PC ones and for a system that is so intuitive and easy to use there is the niche journal, “iPad For Seniors.” I was afraid to open “The Saturday Evening Post. Did it come back from the dead? “If “Fast Company” really knows “The Secrets Of The Most Productive People” they certainly aren’t secrets. And I was too skeptical to look at the “Skeptical Inquirer’s” article on “Islamic Creationism.”
Leave a commentEnd Of The World As We Know It
Who knows what tomorrow may bring. As far as we know tonight is our last night at Café. Christmas falls on a Wednesday this year and no schedule has been announced for next year.
Bill Coppard owned the Little Theater when we first started playing in the café and for over ten years we have felt very lucky to do what do in this magical space. Minimal amplification for guitar and sax, acoustic bass, bass clarinet, drums and occasional grand piano. No pre-planned sets of music, no songs in fact until we play them for the first and last time. A low wire trapeze act bolstered by the belief that it is never as good as the first time.
“When We Were Young” was recorded two weeks ago at the Café. Peggi says the cover may be an early “selfie”. As usual the song is a free download. We have almost 200 of them on our site. We hope you can stop by the Café tonight. We’d love to see you.
2 CommentsElectronic Cigar
I drew this guy from a tiny obit picture in the New York Times. Don’t know if he wore the patch his entire life but he seems pretty comfortable with it. Of course he’s dead now but his investment banker image is eternally fixed.
Leave a commentCoat Tails
The local PBS station recently broadcast a documentary of Albert Paley’s thirteen sculpture installations on Manhattan’s Park Avenue medium. We stumbled across a couple of the sculptures as we cut across town, gallery hopping this summer. All thirteen of them were created specifically for the show and most sold. Paley taught with my brother, John, at Rochester Institute of Technology but now spends his days in his 40,000 square foot studio workplace in the former Valeo plant on Lyell Avenue.
Locally Paley is represented by the Nan Miller Gallery and Sunday’s paper featured an article about his show there. My brother is coincidentally showing some work there along side of Paley and I’m hoping crowds that Paley attracts are drawn to my brother’s exquisite work. This bench is similar to the two that the city bought for the sidewalk in front of City Newspaper and it would work inside or out.
Leave a commentOff The Map
The oversize ballot, maybe 16 by 9 inches, that we filled out yesterday at the special election at Christ the King School was absurd. When I say “filled out” I mean we used a Sharpie to fill in one circle that was no more than an inch in diameter. And to do so we had to wait in a long line, but I’m not complaining. At issue was whether the Town of Irondequoit should consolidate the two libraries by building a new bigger library next to the Town Hall on property that the town already owns.
The thing that makes this absurd is that the town already approved the plan in a special election held last year. They failed to properly complete an environmental impact study and the no tax/no services crowd seized the opportunity to force another election. I’m quite certain this kind of drama plays out in various ways all across the country. I just want a better fine arts section.
Only the committed ventured out on such a snowy day and getting so close to West Irondequoit gave us the opportunity to stop into Atlas Eats on the very northern end of Clinton Avenue. Their bowls of Kimchee Fried Rice with Tofu and cilantro are out of this world, that is off any map you’ll find on the walls of the restaurant.
1 CommentFool On The Hill
It was cold today as we walked by the marsh down on Hoffman Road, a magical spot spoiled only by the albatross of a house on top of the steep hill overlooking the wetlands. Is it ok for me to wish that someone would torch it? It was another neighbor who said, “I wish someone would torch it.” I won’t mention her name, I’m just seconding the motion.
No one lives there, the previous owner, who also owns at least ten houses in the city, and we only know this because we saw his name listed in the paper among those who owed back taxes on their property, walked away from it for some reason. The town should never have let him build there since he violated every set-back/steep-slope regulation on their books but that was another administration, Schantz, and they were probably desperate to get more property on their tax rolls.
The guy who had this house built couldn’t even engineer a driveway that would allow him to drive up to his garage. They would be able to pull a feat like this off in Bel Air where swimming pools with glass walls hang out over cliffs and money is no obstacle but this guy went to court with his neighbor when he tried to snag a bit of his neighbor’s property in order to negotiate a switchback driveway up to his house. Needless to say, he lost and now we’re stuck looking at an ugly-ass, abandoned house. The siding is falling off and the trim around the garage door is rotted. You could put your fist through the wood. I try not to look at it.
Heavy rains in the Spring and Fall wash over the house and race down the hillside so erosion may someday allow the marsh to swallow up the house.
Leave a commentDivine Transfer
I think it was just a stomach bug but it hit my dad pretty hard. We took him to Emergency just to be safe and once diagnosed they were pretty quick to show him the door. Chances are high you’ll pick up a worse infection in the hospital or you just might be seriously entertained in the waiting room. We listened as a doctor told this dazed guy on stretcher, “Dude, you can’t keep coming here. This is the fourth time this week.” And a hospital nurse came out to get a guy in a wheelchair. He looked down at the guy’s feet and said, “A little cold out there for flip flops ain’t it?”
In the waiting room my mom, Peggi and I sat next to a few people who were passed out. A couple of security guards were watching the Discovery Channel’s “Naked & Afraid” on a big screen tv. Naked idiots with blurry private parts in exotic locals saying the dumbest things. We were aghast.
At 3 AM the wackiest religious show I have ever seen (and I grew up in Catholic schools) came on with the prophet (profit) Peter Popoff (Bernie Madoff) hawking his miracle spring water. “God is going to set you free” he screamed. “Live debt-free with miracle spring water. Expect a check by divine transfer. You too can have all your bills paid in full. Funds transferred into your account supernaturally.”
“I have millionaire potential inside of me. Unexpected money is coming to me now. God has all the money in the world and he can distribute it anyway he likes. Miracle money, through a divine transfer. You need to get the anointed tool. Call the toll free number on the screen. Pray to Jesus.”
Leave a commentOff The Corner
I took this photo in Indianapolis sometime in the very early seventies, about the time Miles’ “On The Corner” was released. I was so into that lp. A couple of weeks ago we got into a groove that reminded me of that period. I saw a chance to use this photo on the cover of the single and I took it. Margaret Explosion has two more Wednesday night gigs and then the next Wednesday will be Christmas so we will be off for a while.
Doubt And Questioning
Some days I get so bogged down making the rounds of friends’ blogs, news sites and links from my Tumblr page that there is no time left for a post here. That is as it should be. Yesterday was one of those. Who knew that Millie of “My Boy Lollipop” did such a beautiful version of “Since I Met You Baby” and that Jacke Edwards, the male voice on her early records wrote this song. I had always thought it belonged to the Tex Mex border artists like Doug Sahm and Freddy Fender. Kevin is on a roll over at So Many Records.
Louise Wareham Leonard called my attention to a Louise Gluck passage on how writing never gets any easier. I find this fascinating because I recently had a conversation with Bill Keyser, a sculptor, painter and fellow art student at the Creative Workshop. He was telling me how he worries he is getting dependent on our teacher, Fred Lipp, and he wrestles with whether he should skip class for a while. He is torn because Fred has this amazing ability to always be there at exactly the right juncture to call your attention to the next concern. Only when you are ready to see it and be in a position to do something about it. Just when you think I’ve got it, this painting is done, Fred will turn your your head around.
I found this conversation so interesting, of course, because I have been there, still am. If you’ve read Louise’s piece you might want to take a look at this post I wrote a few years ago on the Midas Touch. Like Louise Gluck says “the fantasy exists.”
2 CommentsDon’t Take Away My Cattle Prod
Ken Frank is at the top of his game. He plays in six bands and writes all of Hook Face’s material. They had their debut performance last night at Monty’s Krown, headlining a bill with another of Ken’s bands, The Crabapples. Hook Face was lean and mean. Driving bass and drums with enough air to hear Jack Schaefer’s sensational guitar parts and Matt Sabo’s vocals. We had heard their demos and some rough mixes of new songs and were thrill to hear them blow that stuff away with their live performance.
Leave a commentFinancial Hot Seat
This morning was a mix of low lying misty clouds and brilliant sun and it looked especially dramatic from Joe Marchese’s fifth floor office at Monroe Community College. We would occasionally catch his one hour “Managing Your Money” show on WXXI and always thought he made a lot of sense. When a listener asked where he or she could get more advice he would say I do consulting on the side. He charges by the hour and neither buys or sells stocks or funds. He establishes an equity/fixed income balance that works for you and recommends a balanced batch of no-load funds that you can purchase on your own. We see him every couple years and think he’s the greatest.
Leave a commentArt Check-Up
Interesting to think about why the person or people that hung the 2013 Rochester Contemporary Members Show decided to put Dan McCormick’s photo next to my “Local Homeless Kid.” It sort of works.
The annual Members Show is always the best show they have at RoCo. The place was packed last night and it preempted First Friday. It will be packed again tonight. The news, announced last night, that RoCo has met 76 per cent of their five year fundraising goal (to pay for the building outright) in the first year of five was welcome. This is a healthy organization with a great staff and great members. Now we could use a few more great shows.
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