The timing of the Paw Paw Party at Coleen’s could not have been better. The morning was warm and sunny. So warm in the sun that we hung around the pool watching the Tulip tree leaves collect on the winter cover after we covered the flower pots, piled the tables and chairs under a tarp and turned off the heater for the winter. Peggi and I took a walk that finished at the garden and brought home a sweater full of peppers, arugula and salad fixings and then headed downtown. Colleen had three paw paws ready for us to sample.
We started with the dark skinned one. It was especially softe and overripe. The fruits sweet but tasted like it had starting to ferment. The second brown skinned specimen, also the consistency of custard, tasted like passion fruit. Delicious. It surly was at peak. The third was still firm so we brought it and the seeds home with us. The party was short as Coleen’s dog had to go out. The clouds darkened and It started to rain as we said goodbye.
The fruit came from a tree that grows near the public market and Colleen and Hucky got them from a vendor there. They gave us some seeds last year and we have a paw paw tree growing in our backyard now. We sang the song in grade school but never came across one. A lifetime later we discovered a tree in the park. Peggi submitted a photo to iNaturist and an Associate Professor of Geography at SUNY Geneseo contacted her to say even though Pawpaw is native to our area it is quite rare in NYS. It is classified as a threatened-species designation. Pawpaws produce the largest edible fruit of all native tree species in the United States.
Our friend, Pete, was given an old copy of Milton’s “Paradise Lost” with illustrations by Gustave Dore. Really old, like 1878. The pages were worn and brittle at the edges and the binding was falling apart. Pete painted and drew over the top the pages and brought the ancient text to life. Pete is always at the Little Theatre Café when Margaret Explosion plays. He was sitting at one of the front tables a few weeks ago when we came up with this tune. We named it “Paradise Lost.”
Dick and Lucinda Storms were showing their recent paintings. The crowd was more chatty than usual. We trust the conversations were good interesting. We were having our own musical conversation. Paradise Lost tells the biblical story of the temptation of Adam and Eve and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. I have to say the fall of man doesn’t look so bad from our paradise.
Margaret Explosion Big Band with Peggi Fournier, Melissa Davies, Phil Marshall, Ken Frank, Paul Dodd and Jack Schaefer
Margaret Explosion plays Wednesday night with the full line-up in living color.
Teen Empowerment Ribbon Cutting with Rochester Mayor Malik Evans
“I hear a whisper calling us to rise. Our story, it deserves the light. They tried to bury us, but they didn’t know we were seeds. A seed that’s planted in this community, it’s dat rose that grew outta da concrete. Ensured our futures were so bright. I’m never lost with TE as my guide. From abandoned and burnt houses on Genesee. To a beacon of hope within these cold streets.“ — I’Aisha Elsaw and Mekka Shareef – Teen Empowerment
We were so happy to be in the crowd on Genesee Street when the Mayor cut the ribbon on the new 4 million dollar Teen Empowerment building. The new building just across the street from their old location in the exotic Valiere building. Duane, who grew up in this neighborhood, turned us onto the place back in the late 70’s. The woman who ran the place sold exotic fabrics from the forties and fifties. Duane’s bachelor pad was outfitted by her.
For over twenty years Teen Empowerment has been a lifeline for the kids in this neighborhood.
Replica of Rosa Parks’ bus behind Van White’s mini Civil Rights museum in Rochester, New York
Earlier this month the Landmark Society conducted a tour of the Gibbs Street, Selden Street and Grove Place neighborhood just a few blocks from the Eastman Theater. Along with six spectacularly renovated apartments we toured The Center For the Study of Civil and Human Rights Laws, a civil rights museum in what was once Susan B. Anthony’s lawyer’s (Samuel Selden) home.
The 4,000 square foot building located at 18 Grove Place serves as the office of Van White, currently a Monroe County Assistant District Attorney, formerly School Board President for the Rochester City School District, Chair of the Council of Urban School Boards Association and Director of the National School Boards Association.
Motivated by his father’s experiences of discrimination and his participation in the March on Washington in 1963 White embarked on a journey to preserve his father’s memory by collecting books and photographs from that pivotal time. His thriving civil rights law practice allowed him to build his collection with memorabilia like Martin Luther King’s pool table, a recreation of the lunch counter at Woolworth’s and a bus from the same fleet as the one Rosa Parks sat on.
This little guy was slinking across the street in front us today as we headed into the park. Peggi took a photo, submitted it to iNaturalist and identified it as an American Dagger, the caterpillar stage of a large moth. Such a dandy! We routinely identify leaves, trees, nuts and insects while we walk. Well, maybe once each walk, but I use the word “routine” because we take it for granted that we can identify something with our camera.
In the mid-nineties Pete LaBonne used the earliest text-to-voice Mac voices to create characters he interviewed on his “Ask Mr. Breakfast” show.
Listen to “Ask Mr. Breakfast” by Pete LaBonne
For years, Ken, the bass player in Margaret Explosion has created songs at home that you would never guess came from him. He pitch transposes his voice and uses an alter ego to create vaguely Germanic dance floor smashes. Today he is fooling with AI, submitting his lyrics and selecting parameters for the type of song he has in mind. He lets AI do the cover art while it’s at it. This is the next generation of song poems (without the wait time) and the performances are incredible.
I don’t waste time reading wall tags anymore. I photograph them and convert the photo to live text at home if I want. I’m waiting for curators to eliminate the square footage they devote to explaining the art. Put a bar code there for the curious and use the space to display more art.
We listen to NYT’s articles read by an AI voice while washing dishes or preparing meals. Despite putting too much emphasis on the “J” in Donald J. Trump it does a servicable job. Much better than the fake me I created on my iPad.
This morning we were reading about AI-powered Russian drones picking off tanks manned by Ukrainian forces on the front lines of their battle with Russia. These are brand new, top-of-the-line tanks provided by the US and they are suddenly outmoded. This is a brave new world.
We were downtown for another reason but grabbed a parking space near the back of the Little Theatre and walked through the Café on the way to our event. We stopped long enough to hear two songs by Trio East, all professors at Eastman School of Music, so accomplished they can do a gig as Trio East even when none of the three principals are available (thanks to their Eastman students sitting in for them). We witnessed one such show a few years ago. They have been playing here longer than Margaret Explosion.
Rich Thompson appears to be the leader. He had the set list, all standards, on his bass drum. Jeff Campbell plays bass and Mike Kaupa (filling in for Clay Jenkins) on trumpet and flugelhorn). They are masters of their instruments and it is a joy to listen to them play. Rich makes his drums sing. Sweeping his snare with his left hand and playing the beat with his right, then riding one of his two perfectly tuned cymbals between quick rolls on his toms, he keeps time with his left foot and hi-hat and accents the one on the floor. A master class.
This was a powerful show and you have one day to catch it. R.G. Miller’s graphic paintings were on display at downtown’s RoCo gallery. We heard Miller’s lecture and we stopped by a few times during the run of this show. As tragic as the circumstances were, this is real art, real expression and I’m thankful RoCo showed this work..
“Along with hundreds of thousands of other Indigenous children across North America, R.G. Miller was forcibly removed from his family and community and put into an institution that Canadian officials proclaimed was intended to “kill the Indian in the child.” In the American version of these institutions the motto was “kill the Indian, save the man.” In addition to being deprived of his language, culture, security, nutrition, love, freedom, and community, Miller was subjected to chronic terror and abuse by the priests that administered the so-called ‘school.’ The exhibit includes large oil paintings, mixed media sketches, and collages created by Miller during 2003-2008. This project is intended to show the truth about these “death houses.”
“Be fearless. Don’t be afraid to put paint down. It will tell you if it’s right or wrong. You don’t have to know. You don’t have to think you know. Half the job of an artist is discovering when their accidents are better than what they know.” – R.G. Miller
Thomas Freidman on Charlie Rose show. iPad sketch by Leo Dodd
I took a painting class with my father for twenty years. We were students of Fred Lipp so this was not a formal art class. It was deeper than that, closer to an experience, one that I felt made his “students” richer as human beings. We all worked in our own mediums on our own projects. There were no lessons or exercises. It was often abstract as to what was being accomplished. Fred would circulate around the room for individual consultation – you were not allowed to talk until he “looked” at your work – and sometimes you would only have a couple of exchanges with him but they were packed. I would often write the comments down when he moved on to the next person. The comments would often appear cryptic the next day but then reveal themselves over time.
When Fred got to my father they would often talk about whoever the guest was on Charlie Rose’s show the night before. Fred came down with pancreatic cancer and died before my father. On his deathbed he told me, “Your father is a trip!”
My father, who often said he couldn’t talk without a pencil, used to sketch the guests on his iPad as he watched the show. Peggi read Thomas Friedman’s column aloud today while I did a few stretching exercises and it made think of my father’s iPad sketch. I put 250 of Leo’s Charlie Rose Drawings online in 2011.
Mary Bloss monument in Brighton Cemetary, Rochester, New York
The last time we visited the 1821 Brighton Cemetery was with my father as a guide. We placed our order at Canaltown yesterday and while Pete was packaging it up we walked over here. The cemetery is two hundred years old and with the help of the “Leo Dodd Fund,” Brighton Cemetery is now a designated landmark of the City of Rochester.
Just steps into the cemetery, at the end of Hoyt Place overlooking the Eastern Expressway and the former Erie Canal bed, you’ll spot names that are very familiar to locals. Penfield, Blossom, Watson and Hungerford. William Bloss, a tavern owner turned temperance advocate fought against slavery and for the right of women to vote. There is a monument to him and his wife Mary near the entry gate. I love the inscription below Mary’s face.
“Oh blessed harvest yet to be Abide thou with the love that keeps In its warm bosom tenderly The life that wakes and that which sleeps”
The owners of the former brickyards in Brighton are all buried here with their families. Abner, Leonard, Amos and Hobart Buckland. Although we have no photos of these. In retirement, my father unearthed the history of Brighton’s brickyards and created portraits of the former owners.
Steve Hoy, Karen Mahoney and Paul Dodd in still from Personal Effects “Bring Out The Jazz” video
Arpad has been mastering Margaret Explosion files for our new cd and sending them across town for us to review. We listen to some in the car, some on the small speakers connected to my desktop machine and most on the stereo in the living room. The files we sent him were just live stereo recordings and there is only so much you can do but Arpad works wonders.
At the same time Bob Martin in Chicago has been remixing songs we recorded as Personal Effects in 1984. The album, “This Is It,” was recorded forty years ago so this re-release will be the Special 40th Anniversary issue. In this case, there is a lot Bob can do to affect the mixes.
We recorded the album in our house on Hall Street where we used to rehearse. We borrowed equipment from Whirlwind where Bob was working. We ran a snake down our laundry shoot and Duane Sherwood sat behind the board in our spare bedroom while we played in the basement. We recorded on used half inch, eight track tapes that we bought from someone at the Eastman School of Music. Twenty years ago Bob transferred those eight tracks to DAT and today he is remixing the lp.
We have had a string of house guests and it has been hard to keep up with the remixes. When Bob sent the latest batch we told him it would take us a bit to get to the files because Steve Hoy was in town. He asked if it was Steve from the “Bring Out The Jazz” video (coincidentally a song from “This Is It.”) When we said it was, Bob sent us the still (above.)
We don’t remember who did the video. It was shot in our house on Hall Street and someone rounded up a lot of people. It is so bad it is good.
Abandoned car in Four Mile Creek Preserve, Webster
If you walk every day 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 get 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 the 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 niece’s 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 Padrón 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 platefull 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 Amoeba 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 onto our singles from the sixties and continued to buy 45s. When we dumped our lps and cds we hung onto 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
