Paul – Page 130

March 14, 2013April 4, 2019

Stackhouse

Greg Prevost performing with the Chesterfield Kings

Funny that I live so close to the HOG now and I haven’t set foot in there since I bought a snare drum a few years ago. There was a period when I’d go there every week or so to buy music. That round display rack in the front of the store was always stuffed with the newest albums and the singles moved all over the store. They were upstairs with the instruments and out back and then for a while in the mid seventies all the cool stuff (UK imports and American underground stuff like the Cramps and Television) was kept in a locked case at the top of the stairs. They had everything but it was almost impossible to find it. You had to ask for help and Kim and Greg were the best. They would walk right over to an unruly pile and put their hands on what you were looking for.

Kim Torgerson married Dave Mahoney. Dave’s sister, an avid House of Guitars shopper, married Kim from the HOG. Greg got famous in the Chesterfield Kings. We ran into Greg at Spevak’s holiday party and did some serious catching up in the kitchen. Greg has a solo album out now and an action packed bio here.

Listen to Playette – Roomful of Voices. Dave handles the lead vocals and Kim does back ups.

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March 13, 2013August 16, 2019

Face Of The Earth

I have one of our old computers set up in the painting room that streams music from a drive in another part of the house. It’s on shuffle and I love it that way, random with a one big control factor, it only plays stuff that I put in to the library in one form or another. Of course I ripped most of the cds we had before selling them and some lps and I’m not above borrowing cds from friends and giving them back in five minutes once they’ve been ripped. I’ve taken my laptop over to my brother-in-law’s and ripped while we celebrate a holiday and I occasionally buy downloads from Amazon or the Apple Store. And then there were those Napster years and the news groups so there are plenty of surprises in there. If I stumble on something I don’t like I hit the delete key and it’s gone forever.

But the coolest thing about this setup is the moods that iTunes gets into. It’s been on a Joni Mitchell kick lately. This afternoon it really hit a sweet spot and got on a good run. I was struggling with a drawing and iTunes was as gentle as could be. Think Afro Harping or Below The Bassline. It started with a modern loungy Tango Club thing (cover has woman’s fishnet stocking legs crossed) and then a Gypsy King instrumental and then the real gypsy king, Django Reinhardt, a slinky Cuban piece from Ry Cooder & Manuel Galban, a spacey piano thing by Bill Dixon, something from Kronos Quartet’s Early Music release, Miss Peggy Lee, a beautiful chamber jazz number with cello from Chico Hamilton, Pete LaBonne’s quiet anthem, “Arouse The Thunder,” a Nino Rota piece from Amacord and Bill Frisell, Ron Carter & Paul Motian doing a very slow number called “Introduction” and sounding a lot like Bob Martin.

This set got me where I wanted to go and when I got there all hell broke loose with MX-80’s “Face Of The Earth.”

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March 11, 2013August 16, 2019

Watching The Sistine Chimney

All it took was a 60 degree day in March and the geese formations are overhead, although they seem to be headed west instead of north, the witch hazel is out down at the park, I spotted an ant in the kitchen and these little yellow flowers are are poking through the snow.

We stopped at an estate sale at the old Parsons’ farmhouse on East Avenue. It was a Jack Wanderman (Susan Plunket’s brother) production and Dick Storms was there. He told us he doesn’t go to those things early anymore and he was only there to see Jack. Of course Jack brought most of the stuff into the estate. We looked around for some of Peggi’s mom’s stuff but didn’t find any.

We met a guy in a beard there. His beard seemed to swallow his whole persona. He said,”You probably don’t remember me but I used to come see your band.” He said he’d been out in LA and was back for family reasons and his name was Brian and he had made a movie that was coming out on Netflix. He told us he had fought to keep the music of John Martyn in his film because music is very important to him. We were thinking, “Wow, we know another guy from Rochester named Brian who made a movie with John Martyn music in it” but when he told us the name of the movie, something to do with a river, it wasn’t “The Butterfly Knot.” Could it be that this was the same Brian and something as simple as a big black beard made everything so different?

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March 8, 2013August 16, 2019

Who Stole The Keeshka?

Adirondack furniture at Arhaus in the mall, Rochester, NY

We took my mom out to the mall today. It was real treat watching her roam the aisles in full hunt mode. She has great taste and used to give us a shirt or sweater each year, one time a bike bag that I still use, but always something I would wear, like all the time. People still compliment me on a shirt and I’ll say, “My mom gave me this.”

She got a little flustered though when the saleswomen in Lord & Taylor took her pants out of the dressing room while she was trying on another pair. Peggi had to go find my mom’s pants and when she did the clerk apologized, saying, “we like to keep a clean fitting room.”

We looked at this furniture for a bit. Our friends, Pete and Shelley, make chairs like this. They seem right at home in the Adirondacks but look a little wacky in the mall.

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March 6, 2013August 16, 2019

No Drawers

Passersby rush past Moondog as he stands at his panhandling post in front of the CBS building in Midtown Manhattan

With a name like Moondog you would be hard pressed to come up with an album title as good as your moniker. I’m guessing that is the reason there are so many different recordings called “Moondog.” I had one on vinyl back in the late sixties and then in February of 1970 the Sunday Democrat & Chronicle featured Moondog on the cover of their Upstate Magazine. I kept the magazine inside the gatefold lp for a long time, then scanned the article for the Refrigerator. While staying with a friend who was living in Hell’s Kitchen, we walked over to Sixth Avenue where Moondog was holding court. I was a fan and so was his onetime roommate, Philip Glass.

Later I found two of his cds in the downtown library, one called “Moondog” and the other “More Moondog/The Story of Moondog,” both recorded in the mid fifties, with sound collages and poetry and a glimpse through the eyes of a blind man. We were on an Amtrak train coming back from Manhattan in 1999 when we found Moondog’s obit in the NYT. I folded that up and stuck it in Moondog’s “Sax Pax For a Sax” cd.

Hark Pictures from Midlands UK is making a documentary about Moondog and the director found the Upstate article that I had transcribed. She asked if I still had the original article. Good question, I have digitized so much of my stuff over the years. I just bought a new desk for my computer and in keeping with my minimal aesthetic it has no drawers so I filled the trash can three times with old stuff. But I surprised myself and found the magazine squirreled in one of the few remaining hiding spots. The brittle old newsprint cracked as I did 600dpi scans of the pages.

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March 5, 2013August 16, 2019

Work In Progress Administration

Janet Williams is one of my favorite painters. We have a pretty good reproduction of one of her pieces, a broom from her “Primordial Household Objects” series, but there is nothing like the real thing. Some of her older paintings can be seen here and she shows her recent work at the Oxford Gallery on Park Avenue.

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March 4, 2013August 16, 2019

Time Becomes Space

Do you want to feel young? Go to one the Regal theaters when they do their live HD broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera productions. You will be the youngest person there. We went to Wagner’s Parisfal, his last opera, and were in our seats at noon. The first act ended at 2:30 and the second at 4:30. We had to leave and missed the third act all together but wow, what a spectacle!

The music is heavy, the production almost painterly with white dresses soaking up blood, the story jam packed with the big issues, good versus evil, an exploration of human frailty, a spiritual quest where the pure and foolish are made wise by compassion. The female lead is being punished for laughing at Jesus on the cross while the brotherhood of the Holy Grail bring home the rituals of a high mass. Take of my blood and drink. Take of my body and eat.

If only there was enough time in the day to take in the third act.

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March 2, 2013August 16, 2019

Panic Attack

International School of Music & Arts students performing Philip Glass at Rochester Contemporary

Axom Gallery was jam packed last night for Judd William’s artist talk, so jammed a woman next to us on the way in said, “I better not go in there or I’ll have a panic attack.” Judd’s talk was pretty straight forward and you probably could have guessed that he has fun while he works. He draws a lot. He always has, he was voted the “The Artist” in high school and he likes doing portraits but he shys away from calling them portraits because often times the people he draws say it doesn’t look like them. It was a treat to hear him talk while surrounded by his recent work.

Our favorite show this First Friday was the performance by the International School of Music & Arts students doing works by Philip Glass. This instrumentation sounded fantastic in this room and I have never heard anything sound good in this space. The oldest kid in this ensemble is a tenth grader. Two of the violinists are in seventh grade.

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March 1, 2013August 16, 2019

Artist Statement

Artist's statement at Canaltown Coffee on East Avenue in Rochester, New York — Artist’s statement at Canaltown Coffee on East Avenue in Rochester, New York

My sister got us out of bed pretty early this morning. She had slipped on the ice last night while walking her dog and the throbbing pain in her wrist had kept her awake all night. She didn’t think she could drive herself to the doctor so we offered but first we had to “walk her dog”, a euphemism for taking the dog to a bathroom on the neighbor’s lawn. I inverted a Wegmans bag and cleaned up the mess and we headed off to Greater Rochester Orthopaedics (GRO) where the walls of the waiting room were lined with two foot square paintings of tree related art. I wanted to take a photo of one of them, a cross section of a big tree, but I did not want to confront the grumpy, gum chewing couple that was sitting in front of the painting.

My sister came out with a purple cast and I suggested going to Canaltown for a cup of coffee. We ran into my father over there, he was getting a to-go cup for my mom, so we had a small family reunion. The paintings there were not as intriguing but I liked the artist’s statement.

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February 28, 2013August 16, 2019

Performance Art

Steel fence in Brooklyn near Duane's apartment — Steel fence in Brooklyn near Duane’s apartment

On the way into Manhattan a well dressed, middle aged, black man walked through the door of our subway car and started singing an acapella version of Sam Cooke’s “You Send Me.” He was wearing a small mic and he had a small PA in his backpack with a great reverb setting. We changed trains and a group of three musicians got on. They too had a black singer and they did a beautiful version of “Hooked On A Feeling,” a song I thought I never wanted to hear again.

On the way back to Rochester we were one stop out of NYC when a couple got on the train in Croton on Harmon. We held our breath as they walked by. I tried to give off bad vibes but they sat down across from us anyway in the one seat in the car that faced the opposite way the train was traveling so they faced us. I tried not to look directly at them but she had died blonde hair and dark glasses. He had a pot belly and hearing aids in both ears and he was wearing a faded Lynyrd Skynyrd t-shirt. They talked non-stop to the people next to them and we quickly learned they had been babysitting the woman’s granddaughter while the child’s parents took a Carnival Cruise. Apparently the two year old is brilliant and this couple had the time of their life babysitting her.

He was in the National Guard and has diabetes so the woman scolded him for buying a big bag of chips from the snack bar. She was drinking a large Diet Pepsi and reading a magazine called HELLO! which had a picture of Elton John and his partner holding a little baby on the cover. Growing up with six siblings I got pretty good at tuning out a crying baby but this was something else altogether. They said whatever popped into their heads to whoever would listen and they acted like this was completely normal behavior. Peggi suspects it was some sort of performance art.

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February 26, 2013August 16, 2019

Playing Ball With Matisse

The focal point of our NYC trip was the Matisse show, “In Search of True Painting,” at the Metropolitan. There were no photos allowed so I have committed the images to my psyche. Matisse is the master of color and form and expression and this show is arranged like a master class in painting. You see versions Matisse did of the same painting hung side by side and you see how he reworked them to better tell the real story. He often photographed his paintings in various stages, the photographs helped him and they are shown here to help us. But just standing in front of these perfect paintings is an exhilarating experience.

When they kicked us out of the Met we took a train up to Harlem to visit a different nephew. He’s finishing law school at Columbia and he had a few suggestions for good soul food in his neighborhood. The Col. Young American Legion Post on 132nd between Adam Clayton Powell and Frederick Douglas sounded like the funkiest so we hiked uptown.

This place was in the basement of an old brownstone and it appeared to be full of regulars. We were asked to sign a guestbook on entry and everything on the menu was ten dollars. Your choice of Oxtail, Whiting Fish, Fried Chicken, Roast Pork or Turkey plus two sides (Collard Greens, Red Rice, String Beans or Cabbage) with some deadly Rum Cake included for dessert. Our waitress called everyone “dear.” I would love to draw everyone in this place, the Modigliani-like woman with the Art Noveau hat, the older woman with the stark white wig, the guy at the bar with the big smile and bad teeth. A four piece band was setting up and the Hammond B3 player told he crowd he had been here fifteen years now. Could this place be an alternate universe Lucia’s Supper Club?

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February 25, 2013August 16, 2019

Inspirational Words

Jean Michel Basquiat painting at Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea, NY

Every trip to New York, for the last ten years anyway, has included a Saturday romp through the hundreds of commercial galleries in Chelsea. It’s like iTunes shuffle, you never know what you might come across. I had a few destinations in mind as well so we made sure we saw the A.R. Penck paintings at Leo Koenig, the Jean Michel Basquiat show at Gagosian, but I never expected to see Francis Bacon paintings in a gallery down there along with a large Philip Guston I had never even seen in books. I asked if anyone had bought the Guston and they said it wasn’t for sale.

It always surprises me when I see people talking to an art dealer in Chelsea and appearing to be seriously considering the purchase of a piece. Are these scenes staged? Do people actually buy high priced artwork on a whim? Of course they do and that’s what makes the world go ’round.

I wouldn’t be suspecting ulterior motives if we hadn’t stopped in a gallery at the end of 25th Street where someone was sitting at a desk behind an obligatory Mac laptop and three artists’ names were rubbed on the entry above the door. One of the gallery’s walls was painted a toxic shade of yellow and an “L” shaped piece of painted wood was mounted to the right of a hole that had been cut in the drywall where a piece of plywood, about four feet square, was exposed. The tops of a few wood screws were also visible.

New Yorkers are in better shape than we are. They run up and down the stairs of subway stations and walk, walk, walk. When the galleries closed we hiked over to Fifth Avenue and found Nomad, the fancy restaurant our nephew works at. This was a surprise visit so the maître d’ asked us to wait in the lobby and after ten minutes or so someone came out and led us down the stairs to the kitchen. The stainless steel work area was immaculate and dramatically lit. The workers were all standing over a huge, long table. Random inspirational words were printed on on the wall next to a large picture of Mick Jagger. The scene was more intense than any of the galleries we had been in. Our nephew, the artist.

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February 25, 2013August 16, 2019

Art Binge

Friday night is Target night at MoMA and admission is free. The place is packed but I have learned how to ignore the large crowds and just enjoy the glimpses of blockbuster shows. I don’t even notice the groups of people who barely look at the art but might take a cellphone shot of it and then move on. We met our friend, Duane, here and there was plenty of room in front of the Malevich paintings in “Inventing Abstraction.” Thanks Target.

Our art binge had only just begun and we needed physical nourishment and rest so we took a downtown train to Chinatown and stopped at a favorite haunt near the Tombs. Duane did a little shopping for a cast iron wok while we were down here but had no luck. We headed out to Brooklyn to listen to some reggae, watch some homemade movies and bed down.

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February 24, 2013August 16, 2019

Train To Loveland

Indian Point Power Plant as seen from train

The Amtrak ride along the Hudson is so dreamy especially as you head south on the river side of the train. It perfectly set the stage for our stop in Beacon where the DIA has enshrined major works by an all star cast of big thinking, modern (post 1960) artists. Joseph Beuys, John Chamberlain, Walter De Maria, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Blinky Palermo, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, Louise Bourgeois, Michael Heizer, Sol LeWitt, Agnes Martin, Bruce Nauman, Robert Ryman, Gerhard Richter, Richard Serra, and the earth artist maestro, Robert Smithson. But the biggest star of all could be Robert Irwin who designed a plan that would retain the original character of the former Nabisco box factory while accommodating its twenty-first century museum function. The place is a marvel, a theater with dramatic visual acoustics.

Train To Loveland

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February 23, 2013August 16, 2019

Not What But How

Sunny snow scene with yellow mark on tree

I’ve been looking at some Robert Ryman images in preparation for our visit to DIA Beacon and I like what I see. The impetus for the DIA trip is the Robert Irwin book that we went crazy over. Irwin designed the repurposed Nabisco box factory on the Hudson for the DIA foundation. He talked about Ryman’s influence in the book and so I tracked Ryman down. I like this Ryman quote from the sixties. “There is never a question of what to paint, but only how to paint.”

It bugs me when people deface trees but I have to admit this little yellow patch on a tree near Eastman Lake looks pretty sensational.

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February 22, 2013August 16, 2019

Budweiser Profile

Over the years we’ve developed a few theories about who the Hoffman Road Budweiser guy is. We’ve suspected kids, the neighbor with the dog whose breath smelled like liquor one morning when we engaged him in conversation and the guy who built the new house up on the hill. In fact last summer we became certain he was our man because he defaulted on his mortgage, moved out and the pile of beer cans dried up.

I stuck my head over the embankment as we walked by the other day and couldn’t believe my eyes. We brought two Wegmans bags with us the next day and the pile of 24 ouncers barely fit in. Whoever he is he probably has a red nose and black bow tie.

My favorite thing about the Neil Young autobiography is not the wild stories about familiar names, it’s the little things like when he visited Costco for the first time. “My first big purchase was a set of replacement brushes for my Sonicare toothbrush.” Marveling at the vast organic food section and then remembering all the small mom and pop stores from his youth he writes. “I felt pretty old for a moment and then I regrouped and realized I was alive and should be thankful.”

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February 21, 2013August 16, 2019

Ways To Go

Beautiful dark grey snowy day in Rochester, New York

I shoveled the driveway in my pajamas this morning. Not the first time I’ve done that. I go out to get the paper and if it looks like it’s over my slippers I shovel my way to the mailbox. I have always liked shoveling snow. I used to do three driveways when we lived in the city, sometimes four, as our neighbors got older. And I used to make money with my shovel when I was in my teens. The rules never change. You have to get out there right away before the snow gets too heavy, before cars drive on it. And do it two or three times in a heavy storm. My father was showing me a Ralph Avery watercolor last night, a scene of downtown Rochester, and told me Avery died shoveling snow in his driveway. Not a bad way to go.

There is nothing like a fresh snowfall. I wish we had more of them. It’s like mother nature has low Testosterone these days.

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February 20, 2013August 16, 2019

Connections

Alarm Will Sound performs "1969" at Kodak Hall in Rochester New york — Alarm Will Sound performs “1969” at Kodak Hall in Rochester New york

I think of our time, early twenty first century, as turbulent but pointing to a reflection of this turmoil in contemporary art or music is not so easy. The late sixties were very turbulent and the evidence is everywhere.

Alarm Will Sound, a new music group which started while the principals were students at the Eastman, returned last night to perform their newest work,”1969.” Three projection screens surrounded the 20 piece orchestra as they played arrangements of pieces originally performed by John and Yoko, Stockhausen, Luciano Berio and Leonard Bernstein, pieces that today clearly express those heady days. Images of Stavinsky, Father Berrigan, Hunter Thompson, Martin Luther King, the Civil Rights protesters, Kent State students and the soldiers in Vietnam cement the connection between the times and the art. I was thinking how Philip Guston’s art changed in that same period but that played no part in this program. These were our formative years so Peggi and I deserved the second row seats we took. Actually we arrived as the show was starting and someone was in our seats already so the ushers said we could sit anywhere we want.

I loved this presentation, short pieces of Leonard Bernstein’s “Mass’, Lennon and Yoko’s “Unfinished Music”, the Beatles “Revolution Number 9” and Stockhausen’s “Set Sail for the Sun,” collaged together with dialog taken from the artist’s own words. The entire piece was centered around a connection that actually never took place, a meeting between Stockhausen and John Lennon. They did talk about it though.

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February 19, 2013August 16, 2019

The Moment Is Now

Matt & Kim at Armory in Rochester, New York

You can’t hear Kim, standing on her drums in this photo, but she’s telling the crowd “to have fucking fun,” as if the packed Armory needed any guidance. Our friend Kevin, manages this band and they have become a sensation. It must be so satisfying for a pop music fiend to have an act at the top.

And this band is intense pop. Boiled down to the essentials of drums and melody they deliver their major key, sticky tunes like mini anthems. Kim may be smiling full tilt but she is working her ass off. As a duo their huge, live sound (I wore my Home Depot ear protectors) is quite fragile and that only adds to the excitement.

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February 18, 2013August 16, 2019

Fragment of a Head

The Memorial Art Gallery has a really interesting show to celebrate their Centennial. The staff picked local artists and invited them to reinterpret works from their collection. The new work in “Art Reflected” is for sale and it is scattered throughout the gallery, positioned next to or in front of the work of inspiration. This arrangement encourages you to wander into rooms you normally whizz by. Like an Easter egg hunt the show is full of surprises. It reinvigorates the collection.

My brother, John, has a really nice piece here but as a celebration the show is a bit stuffy. One hundred artists for the one hundred years would have added to the merriment. If they had asked I would have given my reflection of this beautiful Mayan, stucco “Fragment of a Head” from the eighth century.

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