Author: Paul

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Disprortionate Endings

Stephan Crump and Mary Halvorson of Secret Keeper at Bob Shop Records in Rochester, New York
Stephan Crump and Mary Halvorson of Secret Keeper at Bob Shop Records in Rochester, New York

Secret Keeper, Stephan Crump and Mary Halvorson’s duo is just amazing. Mary studied with and then performed with Anthony Braxton. She shares a mathematical approach to music making with hi but she is so wide open she is one of kind. She takes the guitar into unchartered territory and it is so refreshing. By chance her brand new octet album was voted “cd of the year” in the morning’s NYT. Stephan Crump is my favorite bass player. He’s been at theBop Shop withMary before and with his trio. He’s also played at Kilbourn with Vjay Iyer. With Secret Keeper on Sunday night he bowed his bass more often than plucked. And he started one song, a piece called “Planet,” scratching on the side of his bass while Mary Halverstand banged on the strings with her glass guitar slide. The song morphed into an extra-planetary walk. My favorite piece of the night was the mournful and beautiful “Disprortionate Endings.”

Tom really should do something about the small but nasty “No Public Restroom. Thank You” sign, visible in the enlargement this photo.

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Blue Christmas

Defced tress sign in the Commons
Defced tress sign in the Commons

I read an article about the blue Christmas trees they’re selling in New Jersey. Someone is spray painting real trees and people are buying them.

We spotted the black, spray-painted marks on the trees in the woods near our house a few days ago. You can’t miss them. The idiot marked the trail for other idiots by marking nearly every tree even ones no wider than my wrist. We rarely see anyone on the trail but we see footprints and very occasionally bike tire tracks and we’re guessing it was someone with those balloon tires. Yesterday we found this sign and we seconded the sentiment. We’re lucky the guy used black paint. As glaring as the offense was we’ve already stopped noticing the spots.

We decided to do the the Spring Valley trail today. We’re beyond tick season so the overgrown trails in that developed part of the park don’t pose as much of an obstacle. The toughest part about it is crossing the stream that winds its way though the valley. It moves along at quite a clip so the crossing point never looks the same. It is incredibly beautiful up on the ridge. The turkeys hang out up here and there were tracks everywhere today but we didn’t see any. Peggi took some panoramas that I’m anxious to see. We ran into one of our favorite neighbors, a so-called brainiac, on the way. She has four beagles, collects stray cats and has a room full of exotic frogs. There was a Pileated woodpecker at her feeder while we talked. Her house, built in 1947, is a classic mid-century modern and and another friend of ours told us they thought it was a Don Hershey. We confirmed that it is not. She gave us shopping bag full of Brussels sprouts so I did the hike with that and on the way home we cut the tops off three of of our Kale plants.

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Ultimate Compliment

Leo Dodd and Fred Lipp in Advanced Painting class at the Creative Workshop in Rochester, New York
Leo Dodd and Fred Lipp in Advanced Painting class at the Creative Workshop in Rochester, New York

I had to tell my mother again that her mother had died. She asked me where her mother was. She cried again. My mother was always very direct and she would not want me to lie to her even though she is suffering from dementia. I showed her a few photos of her mother and she liked them but she wasn’t sure who the baby was in this one.

My father started taking Fred Lipp’s painting class with me in 1995. My father called it “therapy” and there were many rough exchanges. Neither one of them were direct and they didn’t know what each other was talking about for the longest time. My father who was immensely talented had some rules that lived by. Fred claimed he could break any rule he wanted. He trusted his eye and his eye, developed by trust, was immensely talented. It took a some time for their relationship to mature and I was privileged to watch the whole thing develop.

I photographed my father’s paintings every four or five years and put them on his website. When he died last year I brought a huge pile of them here and I’ve been working my way through them. It is a huge project but I’ll eventually have them all on line. Fred helped my father a lot. I can spot the before and afters butFred help everybody – if they were open to being helped. Surprisingly some people would take the class who did not want to budge. Fred claimed his students helped him more than he helped us but I didn’t buy it. On Fred’s death bed he told me, “You’re father is a trip.” We both laughed at this ultimate compliment.

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En Plein Air

Bay bridge from Avondale Road in Autumn
Bay bridge from Avondale Road in Autumn

We walked up to Wegman’s and stopped by our bank to get some cash. We bought a Ritual Trio cd last night and that cleaned me out. We are not yet living in a cashless society but we are headed there. We needed basil for an Asian soup recipe but when we got home we discovered we needed broth as well so Peggi made another trip. I continued my ongoing project of photographing the watercolors that my father left in his flat file cabinet, the flat file cabinet that is sitting right behind me as I write this. This scene above, from a walk the other day, is something my father would have painted. I’d like to try that, “en plein air.”

On First Friday we stopped by Axom Gallery and looked at their new show. We bought a owl from their home furnishings section. Robin Muto runs that. And while we stood in line to pay Peggi asked if they owned the adjacent loft space. Robin told us that was Rick’s space. She said they call it “the abyss.” We had to see that. Rick showed us a wall of en plein air paintings that he had done and they were beautiful, much nicer than this photo above.

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Big Night Out

We’ve had tonight’s Ossia performance on our calendar for months but it just got bumped. Kahil El’Zabar’s Allstar Ritual Trio will performs at the Bop Shop with David Murray, a founder of the World Saxophone Quartet. Kahil has been here many times with both his Trio and his Ethnic Heritage Ensemble and we have seen every show. Tonight will be no exception. I took this video six years ago he played the Atrium in Village Gate.

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Standing Rock

Inside out Pomegranate on kitchen counter
Inside out Pomegranate on kitchen counter

I was so happy to read that the Army will not approve an easement for the Dakota Access Pipeline. A real victory for the Native American tribes and protesters!

The RoCo Members show is always a treat. It is my favorite show of theirs most years with one work from every member and there are a record number of members this year. The show is still visibly pleasing and credit must go to those who hung the show. Or maybe it is simply the abundance of engaging work. This is really something for Rochester to be proud of.

Louise brought us two Pomegranates for Thanksgiving dinner. We had one with Mascarpone for dinner that day and we hung on to the other. I cut into it this morning and squeezed and knocked the seeds out as she had shown us. It was juicier and much sweeter than the first. The inverted shell looked quite exotic, like coral or something, and I took a few shots of it. It would look good in Instagram’s square format.

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BigBassBounce

Peggi doing Farfisa organ overdubs with Arpad engineering
Peggi doing Farfisa organ overdubs with Arpad engineering

CD Baby offered a Black Friday special on album submissions. The 50% off deal was good until midnight last night even if your project wasn’t ready to submit. Ours is not. We had to come up with a name for the cd. We chose “Seventeen,” for the year, certainly not the sequential number of Margaret Explosion albums, and not so much for the age but maybe a little.

We got together six times in small groups, and played. The amazing Pete LaBonne was here for a couple of those days. Twelve things rose to the top. Bob, our guitar player, has yet to contribute parts to many of the songs. He hopes to have time over the Christmas break.

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Algorithms

Lake Ontario as seen from Rochester New York in November of 2016
Lake Ontario as seen from Rochester New York in November of 2016

I post notices for Margaret Explosion gigs, tag Peggi, and then get off Facebook as quickly as possible. I don’t exactly know why but the forum gives me the creeps. I guess it is prompts like “It’s “so and so’s” birthday today! Wish him the best.” Why? So FB can monetize my communication? They keep stats on every hover, every click. The whole thing is suspect. It depresses me that world wide web has turned into this but our civilization is still young. I know most people don’t worry about this and just have a good time with it. I am happy for them.

I’ve been thinking about their business model because at Wednesday’s band gig I talked to two people who said they had quit FB after the election. I could’t believe it. If they liked it before Trump why would they leave it now? Whether you were for or against him, this story is just getting going. I gather there was a lot of political badgering among so-called FB friends and I stay away from that. I like talking about politics but I don’t like provoking a fight. We always talk politics face to face face with Gerry at Atlas Eats and today was no exception.

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Red Hats

Our neighbor, Larry, with his Trump hat and dog, Topher.
Our neighbor, Larry, with his Trump hat and dog, Topher.

We never talk politics with our neighbor. We don’t have to. His hat sums the subject up. There are plenty of other things to talk about. His dog. The weather. The neighbors who don’t bring their trash receptacle back after pick-up.

Listen to Pete LaBonne -We Live Like Kings

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Earth Art

Chopped up leaves on the front yard
Chopped up leaves on the front yard

My watch says I walked 7.56 miles yesterday and I never left the yard. We raked and then mowed our leaves. In a good year we only mow the so called lawn once but we have mowed (aka mulched) the leaves four times. This should it. We have about two inches of chopped up leaves out there and it looks something like Robert Smithson’s earth art.

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Gravitational Arch

Vapourspace as seen on poster in PBS "Soundbreaking" show, "Four on the Floor" episode , 45 minutes in.
Vapourspace as seen on poster in PBS “Soundbreaking” show, “Four on the Floor” episode , 45 minutes in.

Jim Jarmusch’s “Gimme Danger” is a pretty tame Stooges movie but it is still a must see if you are a fan. It sounded great in Little 1, the original and largest of their five screens, and the sound system in there is great. Jarmusch uses the Rich Stim playbook for animations constructed to illustrate Iggy’s stories and I like that. Funny to picture of Iggy, a Discount Records employee, playing drums in his parent’s trailer. And then kinda sad to see the band move back in with their parents after those first two brilliant albums.

We watched the “Soundbreaking” series on PBS. About 45 minutes into the “Four on the Floor” episode we spotted Vapourspace listed on a poster for the “See The Light” tour with Moby, Aphex Twin and Orbital. I texted Mark Gage to make sure he had seen it and he hadn’t. You can listen to Mark’s smash dancehall hit on this page.

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Trump’s Prayer

Bald Cypress in Durand Eastman Arboretum

We started the holiday like a million or so other Americans. We watched Donald Trump’s “Thanksgiving Message” on YouTube. The two minute video felt like a propaganda piece from a Third World country. Comments are disabled on the page. Trump’s “prayer” for unity rings about as true as Rupert Pupkin. But how about that stock market!

A walk in the Arboretum put things right.

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I Don’t Know

Maple leaves standing in the snow in late November
Maple leaves standing in the snow in late November

Many Maple trees, the Sugar Maples in particular, turn brilliant colors early and drop their leaves before the oaks but Norway Maples turn yellow and hang on. When they fell en masse a few days ago, with rain/wind/snow punch, they landed upright in the snow. It looked unnatural, like an art installation or something.

Recording live, as we do at the Little Theater, has spoiled me. The song is done as soon as we play it. We put a title on some and post them on the site but when we hit two hundred songs I started looking for ones to retire before putting another up in its place. The song below was recorded last week. Conceived, played, mixed and recorded in as much time as the song is long. Simple.

Multi-track recording is a whole other story. We got together here a few months ago, six sessions, a couple hours each and laid down some improvised tracks. Since then we’ve done piano overdubs. We’ve looped sections created ending through editing. We mashed a few songs together as one. Peggi doubled one of her sax tracks. We’ve replaced whole tracks with new takes. We tore the drums and bass out from under one song and put congas and electric bass on it. We’re adding bass clarinet next week. All this is a lot of work. Many nights are consumed with compressor settings and reverb plug ins. I haven’t even had time to check in here.

Does all of this sound any better than closing our eyes and knocking the songs off live? I don’t know.

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Gerundegut

Sewer manhole cover at the top o Hoffman Road in Rochester, New York
Sewer manhole cover at the top o Hoffman Road in Rochester, New York

I guess I never came across our town seal until the other day. Gerundegut is the Native American word for “Where the Land and the waters meet,” a perfect description of town, now know as Irondequoit. When we lived in the city I chronicled the nearby manhole covers in this slideshow. I’m going to start looking down again.

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National Bird

Peggi on trail around Eastman Lake in Rochester, New York
Peggi on trail around Eastman Lake in Rochester, New York

We visited our garden this afternoon and brought back a couple of eggplants, some lettuce and cilantro, a big bag of kale and one small tomato which we cut in half and had with our dinner. Not bad for a mid November harvest. Seventy five degrees tomorrow and then the snow will fly.

Our friends, Pete and Shelley, wrote us that they spotted an American Eagle up in the mountains. It was off to the side of the road picking at a bag of McDonalds trash. We sold an Invisible Idiot cd this week. I just put it in the mail. Pete played bass in that band with Peggi and me and Jack Schaefer played guitar. We recorded it about twenty years ago. It may be time for a follow-up.

Listen to “Kudzoo” by Invisible Idiot

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Trump University

Everest Institute on Portland Avenue in Rochester, New York
Everest Institute on Portland Avenue in Rochester, New York

It was so nice out we decided to ride our bikes over to Home Depot. We had a short hose that we wanted to return, one of those that connect your outdoor faucet to the big plastic spool of rolled up hose. Our old hose sprang a leak so we had picked up a new one but when we got it home I realized it had a female fitting on both ends, kind of a lesbian hose. We were in front of Home Depot when I realized I had forgotten to put the hose in my bike basket. We went in the store anyway and bought a second pair of noise cancelling headphones, his and hers. They look like Beats but they are not wired for sound.

Further down the road we stopped in the Starbucks on the corner of Ridge and Goodman. The clerk tried to sell us a holiday version of the “Flat Whites” at two for one but we held up the line quizzing her on the holiday flavoring. Was the flavoring in the coffee? Was it a powder that they added? She was uncertain and we grew suspicious so we ordered two regular “Flat Whites.” We sat down near the door and I speed-read a Wall Street Journal while we waited for our order. It occurred to on me that we were sitting right where the Golden Point was maybe fifty years ago. I used to have a hamburger and fries there while I waited for my father to pick me up after soccer practice, just something to hold me over until we got home for dinner. He worked at Kodak and Bishop Kearney High School is near that intersection. The old Everest Institute is just across the street on Goodman.

I really like this Trump University concept. A millionaire (and now president elect) sharing what he has learned in the real estate business, spreading the wealth around. Studying with a master at a University, not philosophy, history or art but a real profession and not from life-long academics but from a successful entrepreneur. Not some elitist major but an honest, practical trade. Does anybody know where the school is located?

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If I Knew You Were Coming

Nick Masa behind the service bar at Club 86 in Geneva, New York1953
Nick Masa behind the service bar at Club 86 in Geneva, New York 1953

Next time we go to Nick’s Seabreeze Inn I plan to record Nick as tells a few stories. His high school class at Geneva High School easily fit in one 8×10 and it included the great Scott LaFaro and Philip Seymour Hoffman’s father. In high school Nick was already working at Club 86 where Duke Ellington and Louie Armstrong did one week stands. Admission was $2.50 with a two dollar and fifty cent minimum per person at the table. Nick wound up with the photos from the bar and has them displayed on the walls of his restaurant in Sea Breeze. I knew there must be a good story behind the upside down promo photos in this picture of Nick from 1953 so I called him over. “Why are the pictures of Eileen Barton and Sammy Kaye used down?” “The house took a bath with them.” I asked if the performers were paid and he said,”Oh yeah. They got paid they didn’t draw enough for the house to make any money so we hung their pictures upside down.” Of course Nick then sang a few lines of Barton’s 1950 novelty hit, “If I Knew You Were Comin’ I’d’ve Baked a Cake.”

Most of my family was having dinner at Nick’s after we accepted the Paul Malo award for outstanding work in the field of historic preservation on behalf of my father from the Landmark Society. At the event Chris Brandt told me they had almost given the award to Leo last year which would have been nice considering he died in December. Brighton’s town supervisor was there and he told us he had just dropped his iPhone on the Brickyard Trail. He lives across from the newly opened trail, whose name my father championed, and the supervisor told us he sees people reading the sign at the trail’s head all the time. He said Leo would be so happy to have reached so many people with the history of Brighton’s brickyards. I agree. He would be thrilled. I gave a short rambling thank you speech and tried to make the point that my father’s enthusiasm and pure joy of discovery as he worked on these projects were infectious and inspiring. We told my mom about the award when we visited her today and she cried.

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Tact

Big concrete blocks at quarry near Starkey, New York
Big concrete blocks at quarry near Starkey, New York

This could be the best photo I have ever taken. And I didn’t do anything but push the button. These concrete blocks were out in front a quarrel in Starkey near Seneca Lake. We passed it, stopped the car and I got out o take a few photos. I could not take a bad photo here. The lighting was perfect, the Fall colors were peaking, the piles of distinctly different earth elements were beautiful and those concrete blocks! I would love to have some of those to scatter about the yard.

We hardly ever go to Ithaca without visiting the Johnson Museum at Cornell. I was thinking about their Otto Dix painting all day. We stopped to visit my mom on the way out of town, then stopped at the diner in Penn Yan for lunch. We sat at the counter and both ordered a club sandwich with coffee. I read the little plaques on the walls and took note of my favorites.

“Boss spelled backwards is double S.O.B.”
“When the white man discovered this country the Indians were running it. No taxes, no debt, women did all the work. White man thought he could improve on a system like that.”
“Helen Waite is our credit manager. If you want credit, go to hell and wait.”
“Tact: The ability to tell a man to go to hell and make him feel happy to be on his way.”

Our next stop was Robert Treman State Park where we walked three miles up the gorge and three miles back down on the other side so we didn’t make into Ithaca until dark. Just enough time to walk the Commons, browse the used book store where Peggi picked up a copy of “Exquisite Corpse, and have dinner at a French restaurant. Couples on both sides of us were talking election results.

Check out the audio of this Leonard Cohen interview. He left us with some solid advice.

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Bare Bones

10 point buck off Wisner Road in Rochester, New York
10 point buck off Wisner Road in Rochester, New York

The day before election day we saw “A Palo Seco” perform at the Dryden Theater as part of the Eastman’s World Music Series. The New York based company puts a contemporary spin on raw, “a palo seco” or bare-bones flamenco, minimal musical accompianment with some improvisation. Mostly this was voice and percussive dancing, heals clicking and hands clapping. We loved it. Check out their video.

The day after the election there was blood on Hoffman Road in two different spots, both near houses with “Repeal the Safe Act” signs. I know there is a controlled deer bow hunt on property nearby and maybe the wounded wandered around before dropping but we’ve always thought people take deer on their own property even if they do live within the the town limits. There’s far too many deer around here. They decimate the undergrowth and the next generations old growth. But you can stop and look at these guys standing still just ten feet away and they don’t flinch. There can’t be much sport in taking them out.

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