Author: Paul

Rich’s video for “Tilt-A-Wheel” plays like an extended version of the last scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Strangers On A Train.” It fits the song, from MX-80’s recent, as yet unreleased album, perfectly. Mixed by Steve Albini, it is the last album recorded with the legendary guitarist, Bruce Anderson.

Bruce was a god-like figure in Bloomington, Indiana in the late 60’s when I showed up. He played with Mrs. Seamon’s Sound Band (with Michael Brecker) ( the first band I saw there), the Screaming Gypsy Bandits with Mark Bingham and Caroline Peyton (who also recently passed) and went on to form the seminal band, MX-80 Sound. The bands’ line-ups and sounds kept changing but Bruce stayed the same. I’m sure I saw every local Screaming Gypsy Bandits’ performance. Peggi and I saw the first few MX-80 shows at the local library and then left town in late ’74 before our friends, Rich Stim and Dave Mahoney, joined the band.

Somewhere in the early 70’s, Steve Hoy (that’s him on the cover of MX-80 Hard Attack) and I walked over to Bruce’s apartment to get our hair cut. It was a Zen-like experience and Bruce did a great job but Steve felt he could do just as well for less so he became our barber.

Bruce was a close friend of our close friends and those that remain gathered yesterday over Zoom for a memorial. The pain from the loss was evident. Rich Stim, Angel Corpus Christi, Dale Sophiea, Steve Hoy, Kim Torgerson, Michael Gribbroek, Marc Weinstein and Howard Thompson were all there along with members of Bruce’s family. Peggi and I learned just how special Bruce was as a person and the tributes were beautiful.

I was also struck by connections between people now scattered across the country. Steve Hoy was my roommate in the dorm (Shea 2, Foster Quad) my freshman year. Dave Mahoney was my best friend in high school and came out to Bloomington after dropping out of MCC. Rich was a former Shea resident and a friend of Steve’s. He had a crush on Andrea, then Bruce’s wife, and had me take some Super 8 footage of her behind the counter at Discount Records. Peggi was friends with Rich and Dale before we hooked up. Kim Torgerson was married to Dave. I guess I introduced them. She lived in the dorm across the street from me. She took the classic MX-80 Sound photos.

Michael Gribbroek grew up in Rochester near where Peggi and I live now. He was the first person Bruce Anderson met when he moved into the nearby Wilke Quadrangle on the IU campus. Mrs. Seamon, from the Mrs. Seamon Sound Band was the head dietician at Wilkie Quad. Michael found my blog through Andrea and follows our walks through his old stomping grounds. He told a story yesterday of the moment he knew Bruce was going to drop out of art school. They were in an art history class together, writing an essay in one of those little light blue books about how the art critics treated Mondrian. Michael looked over at Bruce and he was making cartoon-like drawings of critics physically torturing Mondrian in graphic detail.

Marc Weinstein is the co-founder of the world’s largest independent record store, Amoeba. He played drums with MX after Dave passed and grew up in Buffalo. He knows all the bands we played with there in the Personal Effects days. Howard Thompson put out the first MX-80 album while working for Island in London. Howard is good friends with Kevin Patrick, the lead singer in New Math, and he came to Rochester to produce the first single, Die Trying. I played drums on that track. Peggi and I went back to Bloomington to hear MX-80 audition for Howard and his new boss at Bronze in Dale’s basement.

Head-spinning but then again, I could have this all wrong.

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Do kids play Pick Up Sticks anymore? They might be considered dangerous. And the game is probably too delicate for these times. I remember loving it. The colors of the sticks, the finesse required to slide one out but then there were all those arguments over whether you disturbed the pile or not.

Instead of walking the last couple of days we picked up sticks on our property. The windstorm left small branches of dead wood everywhere. Our yard is clear and ready for tonight’s snowstorm. When we last walked (March 9th) we spotted these two swimmers looking pretty comfortable in Lake Ontario.

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It would have to be sunny today. We were schedualed to have our eyes checked at 10:30 and after the diilation we had to wear dark glasses for the rest of the day. I had forgotten that it was Ash Wednesday until I spotted a couple in the waiting room with smudges on their foreheads. Dr. Goodfriend asked me if I had noticed any changes in my vision and I told him I find myself taking my glasses off to read the really tiny print on labels. I’m not used to that. I haven’t taken them off since I got them in 5th grade.

He got his microscopic light out and said, “I’m gonna ask you to look to the left, one eye at a time.” He shined the light in my eye and there was a long pause before he said. “Look to the left,” as if I hadn’t heard him. I told him you said you were “gonna ask me to look to the left.” He didn’t find that funny. I tried to get back on his good side by describing how wild it was when I walked out of Waldert’s on Mount Hope Avenue with my first pair of glasses. As dramatic as the first time I took LSD. He chuckled.

Once back in the waiting room I picked out some new glasses for my new prescription. Rather the optician picked them out for me. He basically told me my current glasses, the ones I’ve been wearing for 7 or 8 years, were too wide for my face. I have a prism in both lenses and he got out a piece of paper to illustrate how the prism works. His drawing reminded me of Steve Hoy‘s sci fi influenced work and I made a point of taking it with me.

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I shared an album with Bennie , Kerry and Claire, our Flash buddies of photos I took at WNY Flash matches. Every Women’s National Soccer League star played in Rochester before the franchise was sold to North Carolina, the very same year they won the league championship. Heather O’Reilly, Sam Kerr, Carly Lloyd, Sam Mewis, Abby Wambach, Hope Solo, Lynn Williams, Abby Dahlkemper, Alana Kennedy, Jess McDonald along with international stars like Marta, Christine Sinclair and Sam Kerr. The US Olympic team was made up of primarily of former Flash players. It was a good ride.

Bennie, who plays drums in jazz bands as well as a Brazilian percussion ensemble added some of her photos to the album. I used the one of hers (above), taken in the Flash Mob percussion section in the end zone of the soccer stadium, for our gig tomorrow, Wednesday at the Little Theatre Café 6:30- 8:30.

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You can see the “different strokes for different folks” patterns in this freshly groomed Horseshoe Road photo. We got out there just as the groomer whizzed by on his snowmobile. He drags a roller that leaves the ridges. The skate skiers, the ones who stand up straight and whiz by, make the X like patterns in the snow with their long graceful stokes. Most people ski like Peggi and I, it’s more of a trudge and we ski in the long narrow ruts.

It was beautiful out there this morning, fresh snow, blue sky, full sun and all that but yesterday in bitter cold and high winds was even better. We skied up to the lake and looked out the white caps, as far out as we could see, and the lake was roaring as the big waves crashed against the ice formations along the shore.

We try to do a big loop and take a different route on the way back. At a hill Peggi asked, “Which way should go?” and I said it doesn’t really matter because we will eventually wind up back the same elevation,. That old, “What goes up, must come down” thing which used to be a truism. But then I wondered if there is any such thing as a truism any more.

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