LPW Summer Jam on the street at Jazz Fest in Rochester, New York
I’ve been reading “Picasso and Truth – From Cubism to Guernica” but mostly looking at the pictures. Author, T. J. Clark focuses on the art and stays away from the personality and that is as it should be but I get awfully bogged down in the artspeak.
I came awake thinking about a memorable quote that was actually never said by anyone. I must have dreamed it but I believed it as I regained my footing. I’ll put it in quotes but that doesn’t make it so. Picasso said, “If I could have painted one of my late (1970s) paintings when I first started out I would have stopped right there.”
It must have been the Breaking Bad episode we watched before turning in.
Midtown Tower from Xerox Headquarters in Rochester, New York
After twelve years it finally happened. Not one of the big-ticket, Eastman Theater acts booked at the Rochester International Jazz Fest has anything to do with jazz, unless you count David Sanborn. I am certainly no purist but I drift toward the off beat while the festival goes mainstream and there wasn’t much to choose from last night.
We started with the French trio, Thiefs, at the Xerox Auditorium. While waiting in line I took this photo of the about to be renovated Midtown Tower and I was thinking about the early eighties Personal Effects gigs in the ballroom that juts out of the fourteenth floor. A security guard interrupted my drift with a stern warning, “This is private property and no photography is allowed.”
The Theifs were pretty cool but not quite ready for prime time. The drummer and lead singer was shy of all things. The trio of sax, bass and drums all had effects pedals. The tenor player had more effects boxes than Bob Martin and sampled a few loops to add to the rhythm guitar sounds the drummer was getting from the box on his floor tom.
We ran into our jazz buddy, Hal, on the street. He had already walked out of Kat Edmundson (“the girl with the squeaky voice”) at the Little, the replacement act at Christ Church and Patricia Barber when the fire alarm went off at Max’s. We were sort of at a loss as of what to do. The yee haw Hackensaw Boys, Quincy Jones Presents: Nikki Yanofsky, the comedy Trondheim Jazz Orchestra? We opted for Dr. John in the street. I felt sorry for him banging out his gris gris stuff at another festival.
I’ve been uploading photos for the last week and I could spend the rest of my life organizing them but I was anxious to check out this external embed flash code so I put my first “set” together and embedded it above. (Note: Flickr embed no longer works)These are all stills I took from the Passion of Saint Joan movie. I can’t remember if I stopped the dvd and shot them or did screen captures from YouTube. The movie is public domain and about a million times better than “Frances Ha” which we saw at the Little on a $5 Monday night. Our neighbor’s brother and wife contributed music and had a small part but what happened to that director? We really liked “The Squid & The Whale,” sort of liked “Margot at the Wedding” and hated this one.
And while I’m complaining, the new season of Breaking Bad, that is the newly released dvd season, Part One of the fifth and final season in the series, better turn around because the first six episodes are going downhill on the brilliant meter. I just know they’re setting me up though so I’m hanging in there.
The vegetation is about as green it gets, pea soup green, and it’s not even officially summer but we noticed a few limbs on some of the big trees near our house are still not green. They’re dead so it’s time for a visit from Bruce O’Neil, the tree surgeon. He told me he usually does his estimates on Saturday but this one is his birthday, 65, so he’s stopping by on Sunday morning. We normally would be sitting on the porch in our pjs reading the Times but I plan to be dressed like a lumberjack when he gets here.
Sparky at Kriegers junk yard in Rochester, New York
I hadn’t seen our old neighbor in a few months so I gave him a call and suggested we go over to Krieger’s with some scrap metal that I had piled up near our garage. It was all stuff that we took out of our basement when we remodeled last year, an old fireplace grate, the chain-like curtain that went with the fireplace, the metal framework for the drop ceiling, two old cast iron music stands, some leftover conduit and a chunk of wire mesh left from the concrete pour. I was thinking twenty-five bucks at least but I just wanted to get rid of it and most of all I knew how much Sparky like going to Krieger’s.
We still call it Krieger’s even though Metalico has cornered every bit of the junk business around here. They’re located right by the tracks at the very beginning of Portland Avenue in downtown Rochester and the characters who work here are every bit as colorful as the assortment of junkers and junkies that patronize this place. Sparky though is more colorful than them all.
I looked straight in the camera at the cashier counter and received a paper receipt for $10.00 after Metalico’s “Rounding Adjustment” of -$.42. The cashiers handle no cash. The receipt has a bar code on it and you go outside to an open air money machine where you scan the sheet and “Take Cash Quickly.”
DA Pennibaker and Jack Garner at the Little Theater in Rochester, New York
D. A. Pennebaker was in town over the weekend for a screening of “Don’t Look Back” at the Little Theater. I pictured him being chauffeured in at the tail end of the movie but he was in the house for the full ride and at eighty seven he got up on stage with a big smile and he was ready to talk and field questions.
He told the crowd he “wanted to see how the film held up” and I was thinking about the number of times we’ve seen the movie and how when the big “Don’t Look Back” letters come on the screen at the end of the film it is always a surprise. The movie is perfectly edited, lingering uncomfortably long on some of those back stage scenes and then cutting fast through performances, and it always whizzes by.
The opening scene with Dylan tossing hand painted placards of his brilliant lyrics is a hundred times better than any MTV video ever was. Donovan clearly got under Dylan’s skin and the scene with the two of them trading songs is is my favorite part of the film. D. A. told us Donovan helped paint those lyrics and he also said he caught Dylan alone playing Donovan’s record in his hotel room.
I will never get tired of seeing Dylan in his prime. There will never be another like him but Pennebaker was there and he caught it for us. You feel the presence of the camera in the hotel rooms, in the car and backstage but as Pennebaker says, “he was searching.” He is not out to tell a particular story or manipulate the action. He would pitch movies and the suits would ask him what the movie was about and he would say, “I don’t know yet, I haven’t made the movie.” He was searching.
If you don’t find me here this summer I’ll probably be chipping away at the job list. We want to reset some patio stones that are stacked up in the back yard and I have bunch small pile of concrete blocks back there left over from last summer’s project and people keep telling me I should build a BBQ grill out them so I’m thinking.
And then I want to fix the drawers under our bed and we want to wash the outside of our windows while its warm. We’ve been talking about extending our so called forever wild plot, a small portion of our lot with a green fence around it to keep the deer out. And it’s time to paint our metal chairs and while I’m at that I could paint the horseshoes with the same Rustoleum colors. It’s getting hard to tell them apart.
Paul Dodd “Model From Crime Page 04″ 2013 24″x18” Charcoal on paper
How many times over the last few years have I heard Fred Lipp say those words? “Let your eye be your guide.” In other words, “Don’t think.”
I still go around in circles as I look for a solution to compositional problems but I am increasing finding the answers not in the source or in logic but in my eye. I am thrilled to report that I’m learning to trust my eye because I’m finding it works. When I see it I know that this is my solution. But I have to let my eye see it before I think about it.
I’ve been drawing from the same sources for the last few years, a bunch of mugshots from a Chicago paper. I’d rather use the local Crimestopper models but they’ve reduced the size of their photos both in the newspaper and on their website so I found twenty Chicago mugshots online. I’ve drawn each of them four or five times but increasingly I find myself working away without the source and when I go through the stack to refer back to the one I used I can’t find one that looks like drawing. I find this very exiting.
Blue Spring flowers in marsh off Hoffman Road in Rochester, New York
Marshes, wetlands, swamps are some of the most beautiful places on earth. The marsh down on Hoffman Road, one of the lowest elevation spots around here before the land gives way to Lake Ontario, is alive with bull frogs, snapping turtles, wild yellow Irises, buttercups and these beautiful Forget Me Nots.
Speaking of gorgeous landscapes Jim and Gail Thomas have a great little show in the 1570 Gallery at Valley Manor on East Avenue. Jim has a series of oil pastel drawings based on the ancient tree in Genesee Valley Park that recently split down the middle and Gail makes the local hills look like Cézanne’s work. Their “Shared Visions” rival the great outdoors in this sensational display.
I’m thinking about suiting up and going Ellen Altfest in the marsh.
James T. Sturtevant paintings on display during First Friday in Rochester, New York
We decided to start with the Hungerford building this First Friday because we hadn’t been there in months and that building seems to be in a constant state of flux. We used to get large stats at R. A. Ellis back in the eighties when they had offices up there and Richard Edic had a wood shop up there when we got our kitchen remodeled and then I remember a great art show by Ann Havens in studio there. Today there must be a hundred artist’s lofts up there and you can really get bogged down rather than recharged if you don’t watch it.
Bleu Cease had emailed earlier in the day wondering if I would be interested in taking part in the summer Art Tent that RoCo will have setup in conjunction with the Party in the Park concert series. I thought about it for bit but still hadn’t found a workable plan so I told him I talk about it when stopped in RoCo to see the 6×6 show. Two of Peggi’s clown paintings had red dots on them and none of my six split headshots had sold so my first thought was Peggi should be the artist in the tent.
I was thinking I could take mugshot style photos like the ones I took at the Bug Jar in 1998. I’m trying to figure out how I could get people to sit for that. Maybe just the promise of putting their anonymous shot online or maybe I can round up a printer for the evening. Give one print to the sitter and put one on the tent wall.
Another thought would be to get people to sit for charcoal sketches, 5 or ten minute poses with a “may not look like you” disclaimer. Guess I could just give away the drawings.
I have my choice of the ten Thursday nights. I would probably pick the worst of the bands so the people would be interesting. Only trouble there would be deciding between Blues Traveler, Moe, Southside Johnny and John Brown’s Body.
We finished the night at the Little Theater Café listening to Grr, a drumless trio with great players and really interesting arrangements.
When our former neighbor, Leo, reached his nineties he really started spacing out. He lost track of everything and was always ringing our bell to ask if we knew where his tools were. In his heyday he could fix anything and made a point to help someone everyday. Near the end he had a pile of uncompleted projects and he was buying tools that he already had because he couldn’t remember where he put the the ones he had. There was a note from him stuck to the window near our door one morning that read, “I need some common sense.”
We used to plant vegetables in his garden and it was a joy to garden with him. He taught us how to hoe. I never really understood that simple tool but in his hands it was an ingenious instrument for weeding. No bending over to pull tiny weeds or ones that had grown bigger than our new plants in a few days times. The how is angled just right so it cuts the weeds or at least uproots them while dragging a small amount of earth over the blade and leaving it essentially right where it was. I always pictured a hoe as simply a tool to pull earth along so you could plant seeds in a trough or something but Leo used to sharpen his hoe so it cut like a knife.
He had a few hoes, one was a favorite and it was small. He looked everywhere for that hoe and was so desperate to find it that he good naturedly accused us of taking it. “Are you sure you don’t have my small hoe?” I took him in to our garage to look around and I spent a few hours looking for that thing in his yard. I can’t be sure but I think it was right in his garage. When I showed it to him he said, That’s not the one.”
Patriotic Budweiser beer cans in woods of Hoffman Road in Rochester, New York
A distinctive can tossed in the woods would certainly whet the appetite of a thirsty hiker. And if the can design was patriotic it would resonate with our sense of freedom as well as enhance the brand. A win win situation.
If you took a Sharpie and lightly touched your skin with it the black dot would be about the size of the nymph deer ticks that Peggi and I picked off of each other yesterday. Peggi took one to her doctor last week and she had it tested for Lyme Disease. The tick was not carrying it and thus far there have been no confirmed cases of ticks carrying Lyme disease in Monroe County but it is probably only a matter of time.
The ticks are so small we’ve been using this battery operated loop, a lighted magnifying glass with a focus dial that we used to use to inspect the registration of the rosette pattern on four color print jobs, to verify that the tiny black spot indeed have tiny legs. I couldn’t get a good look at one on my arm and feared that it had already burrowed in so I dug away at the spot with our tweezers until it was a bloody mess. I either removed a mole or an age spot and then put a band-aid on it.
Katie Boss Hostess paintings at High Falls Gallery
I don’t like thinking about kids trying to knockout randomly chosen strangers with one punch (the Syracuse police chief described it as something out of “A Clockwork Orange”) or vandals spray painting one hundred year old saguaros in the Arizona desert and posting photos of their work on social media sites. Or how about that guy that shot up rock formations in the National Natural Landmark “Garden of the Gods” in Colorado Springs? But that’s what I get for reading the paper.
The Center at High Falls had an opening for their last show over the weekend. As usual the walls are jam packed in a democratic display of freedom. Sally and Roy have been perfect hosts here for many years but I have always found it hard to look at work in this hodge-podge of a space. It could be that the spectacular view of the falls from windows on the stone walls trumps anything on the walls. We would all be better off if the City opened a proper gallery space downtown with white walls and lighting in one its many empty buildings.
I got frantic call from Duane yesterday. He was trying to work with a batch of videos that were sent to him on a pc formatted hard drive and he couldn’t change the permissions on the files to move them to his Mac. While we tried a few work arounds he mentioned that was going to be having dinner with Alan Vega that night when they celebrated Howard Thompson‘s birthday.
I started thinking about the time Peggi and I drove down to NYC after work to see them perform. We were just outside the city at about 10 pm when we stopped for gas. Jimmy Carter was president and the gas crisis was in full swing so we had a hard time finding a gas station that was open. We eventually ran out of gas and slept in our car in a gas station parking lot missing the show. Six months or so later we caught them at Max’s and it was unforgettable. They were so cool, so thrilling and dangerous sounding, they blew us away. We were sitting in one of those little tables up front and I was worried that Alan would pick our table to include in his menacing performance.
Duane posted this video of Suicide to his YouTube channel.
Leo Dodd presentation on Edmunds’ Woods in Brighton, New York
Cobbs Hill near the aptly titled Pinnacle Hill in Rochester, New York was named after Gideon Cobb, the quintessential pioneer and brick company proprietor in the Brighton neighborhood. Saturday was Gideon Cobb Day and about fifty people gathered in a lodge near Edmunds Woods for Leo Dodd’s presentation on the old-growth forest. The annual event was sponsored by Historic Brighton and a boxed lunch was included. The woods, an integral part of the old Edmunds farm, is now trapped between a suite of medical offices, parking lot, mosque, retention pond and expressway but it is a real gem with abundant wildlife.
The event started with a series of technical issues, first of which was helping my father find his glasses. They were in the side pocket of his car. My dad constructed the presentation in Keynote (Mac version of PowerPoint) and he transferred it to his iPad. The projector had a hard time recognizing the iPad so a restart was in order and then the wireless mic which my dad had charged up the night before wouldn’t work even though the red on light was lit. That turned out to be the “stand-by” position so that too was a relatively easy fix.
The first slide had an audio file on and I tried holding the iPad up to the speaker which only caused a screeching feedback loop. I was in charge of swiping the iPad to advance the slides while my father talked and I had a quite a time trying to anticipate when to swipe so he wouldn’t have to say, “next slide please” between each graphic. I jumped the gun a few times and had to go back and I clearly caught him off guard a few times as he looked back up at the screen and saw that I had already advanced the slide he was talking to. But the presentation was flawless on my dad’s part and thoroughly enjoyable. Afterwards he led a group out into the woods.
The Center for Youth Services on Monroe Avenue provides counseling, shelter and education to homeless kids in the Rochester area. The late Chuck Cuminale (aka Colorblind James) worked there and it is only fitting that a tradition Chuck started twenty seven years ago would be now be a benefit for the Center. Hunu, with core members of the Colorblind James Experience hosts guests performing Bob Dylan songs on or near Bob Dylan’s birthday which was cosmically near Dylan-soul-mate Chuck’s own birthday. I had the pleasure of accompanying Peggi Fournier last night on a rousing version of “She Belongs To Me.” Russ Lunn caught the performance on his cellphone.
June 3rd Correction: I just learned that Saturday’s show was not a benefit. The proceeds from this show pay Hunu’s studio rental for the whole year and allows them to do the big benefit they do at Christmas for the Center.
Privately we were calling our nephew’s NYC celebration “The Graduation Gout Tour” but that is really unfair. We ate at three very nicer restaurants in three days and never really felt overstuffed. Our graduate nephew’ brother works at NoMad and he picked “Blue Hill at Stone Barn.” The graduate picked Gramercy Park Tavern and of course we had to eat at our other nephew’s place, “NoMad.” Well, it’s not really his place but someday he’ll have one. He worked at “Animal” in LA and has worked his way up to sous chef at NoMad. I took snippets of movies of our nephews and their friend as we ate and then stitched them together last night.
Kind of funny that someone would ask the drummer what the time signature was of a song we did last night. Like I would have a clue.
We walk in the woods most days and aren’t very diligent about checking for ticks although we should be. I had one that Peggi picked off last year and yesterday Peggi found one on her arm. Peggi took our tick tweezers down to Jared’s house and he identified it as a nymph deer tick. He pulled it out by the head and we put it in a little bag to bring to Peggi’s doctor today.
We are really lucky to have a neighbor like Jared. His chemical engineering skills coupled with a farmer’s background make him a real “go to” source. How many guys do you know who could point to a spot on the ground behind the street pool property and then drop a tree in slow motion on the spot?
There are always high hopes for a Margaret Explosion performance but so much of it is in the cards, the work day, the crowd, the mood. Many factors are beyond our control and improvisation by it’s very nature is hit or miss. We try to stay open and explore the possibilities but you can’t beat a good melody to hang the song on and sometimes that don’t show up.
As a rule we sound best earlier in the evening on a night when very few people are there, we are all fresh and more receptive to each others parts, but the last three months have all been bonus nights (more money if the cash register total exceeds X amount). The crowd noise is an integral part of our sound and we’re happy to provide a soundtrack for stimulating conversations but when the place is full and the crowd noise infringes on the band (remember Ken’s stand-up bass has no amplification) we have learned a pretty cool trick. It doesn’t always work but we pull back the volume. I might leave the snare and just play hi-hat and Peggi or Bob will stop playing. The crowd immediately dials back the din knob and the music comes into focus.
Tonight is our last Little Theater show until September.
