Category: Field Recordings of the Future

Duane sent us an article on the Missy Mazzoli world premiere of “Lincoln in the Bardo,” opening at the Metropolitan Opera. The 45-year-old says her entry to opera came through MTV with its eye-popping barrage of splashy, jangling videos. Coincidentally, we have been watching a lot of XITE, one of those free channels that come with a Samsung TV, over at Kevin and Jeanne’s place.

The channel’s slogan is “See Your Music,” and it really fits, as they keep the sound off when we’re there. Janet Jackson, Gary Numan, Electric Light Orchestra, Quiet Riot, and even Kansas videos look operatic without the sound. Kevin says he likes the station because they play a lot of Kool & the Gang and all those Black groups that MTV refused to play back in the day. Not only that, they mix in performances from The Ed Sullivan Show like the Carpenters, Petula Clark, and Pearl Bailey. We had to ask them to turn the sound on for Neil Diamond’s “Holly Holy.” I never thought those videos from the ’80s would live on, but they do in a wonderful way.

I had my teeth cleaned last week, and I had to interrupt Amy, the hygienist, to tell her I liked “Give Me One Reason,” the Tracy Chapman song that was coming out of her tiny Sonos speaker. Got me thinking about the Beach Boys song: “You’re sittin’ in a dentist’s chair. And they’ve got music for you there.” Her playlist was heavy on Fleetwood Mac and Tom Petty, and it all sounded so good. She told me it was a Pandora playlist called “Stevie Nicks Radio.”

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I loved the afternoon we spent at Storm King in the Hudson Valley. It was the perfect way to celebrate our anniversary. The 500-acre outdoor museum has more than 100 works by many of my favorite artists, but they don’t have a Chillida. There is a mostly outdoor Chillida museum, Chillida Leku, outside of San Sebastián, where all the work is by one man. I would say Chillida Leku is more impressive than Storm King.

Peggi took a short movie at Storm King of some school kids rolling down one of the hills in front of a large sculpture. It brought back memories of doing the same thing with my siblings and standing up so dizzy I couldn’t walk straight. I found a quote from Chillida in the book Hauser & Wirth put out, Eduardo Chillida: Writings, that fit well enough to have Chillida represented at Storm King, and I inserted it in this Margaret Explosion video.

The song was in the big list of performances that were in the running for our new release, Tone Poems, but it didn’t make the cut. I hope you like it. And here is my favorite Chillida quote:

“Isn’t planning a way to steal the present’s greatest mission?”

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I heard CDs are coming back.

We still sell cds at our shows and people often ask, “which cd best represents what I heard tonight?” or something to that effect. The players and instrumentation have changed over the years and it is tough to recommend one. I often recommend the very first cd we did, 1998’s “Invisible Idiot.” Our most recent cd, “Field Recordings” is sold out and so is “Disappear“. I’d like to say, just get a streaming subscription and you can hear them all but I bite my tongue. We need more product.

We started collecting songs we played live a couple of years ago and eventually we whittled down the list to fourteen. We sent those to Arpad for mastering a few weeks ago, he brought them to life and we are headed over to his studio tonight to make a few final tweaks. Now we need the artwork.

We named a live piece we did “Bohemia” and created a video for it. The song made the cut for the new release and I thought it might make a good title for the cd. I found a print of a photo (above) I had taken in Indianapolis in the early 70s and thought these guys made pretty good bohemians but the print had what they used to call “satin finish ” and I wasn’t able to get rid of the pixelated look without buying an add on for Photoshop.

I switched gears and started working with the ‘Arcadia” concept. I took this photo on the windward side of O’ahu when we were visiting Matthew and Louise. John Vaccaro recently sent me a scan of a sheet of press type, a font called “Jackson,” and I used that for the title.” Peggi and I used to see this font in Spain. I drew enough of the letters to create the Refrigerator logo back in the nineties and I am thrilled to have a whole alphabet.

That first one looked like a travel ad for Aruba so I swapped out the beach photo for one from Rochester.

And then tried this one. The central figure, the girl standing alone in the water, looks like a Rinekake Dijkstra subject and mood goes in a dystopian direction.

This photo, taken out the window of the back seat of Matthew’s car in Honolulu, fit the dystopian mood and I switched the title after we watched the fantastic”Blast of Silence,” sometimes described as a tone poem.

I lightened up for a few minutes, long enough to entertain putting our cello player’s son on cover.

And finally settled on using an abstract I did incur garage back when we lived in the city.

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We used to hear Michael Burritt all the time, playing his signature marimba as we walked by his house. We’d often cross paths with him when he was out jogging, but the last time we saw him he was pictured on the billboard on the side of the Sibley Music Library. And that was at least a year ago. I looked him up online and found he is not only the head of the Eastman percussion department but a leading percussion soloist who performs extensively around the globe, so maybe that explains it.

Mona Seghatoleslami reviewed Michael’s latest release in CITY, and we played it before leaving the house today.

I always pick up a copy of The New York City Jazz Record when I’m in the Bop Shop. I always find something interesting in the free monthly. In the August issue I read about a recording that David Murray just re-released, with him and drummer Steve McCall backing the poet Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones). We listened to the first track, “Last Revolutionary (for Abbie Hoffman).” Now, more than ever!

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I’m planning to play this 45 from 1964 at Skylark Lounge tonight. I found it at the Bop Shop. “Sciuri – Sciuri” is a Sicilian folk song by Francesco Paolo Frontini in 1883. Luisa & Gabriella made it a hit in 1964 and the duo split shortly after. The track helped establish Gabriella Ferri as one of Italy’s greatest 20th-century cabaret voices. I couldn’t find the song on Apple Music or Spotify but I found a live (dubbed) version on YouTube. Here’s an English translation.

Jasmine flowers and little creepers,
I don’t sing because I feel in love,
I only sing to clear my mind and pass the time.

(chorus)
Flowers, flowers, flowers all year round,
The love you gave to me, I give it right back to you.

Saturday, as we know, gladdens the heart,
Blessed is the man who has a beautiful wife.
He who has a beautiful one spends money on her,
He who has an ugly one feels his heart dying. 

Red roses in blossom,
Pity the poor person who believes your words.
I don’t want you anymore, you can leave!

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I set the alarm most Sundays for 3 p.m. No matter where we are we tune in to WAYO’s Up On The Roof with Kyle. Today was no exception. His mix of early soul, jazz, R&B, doo-wop, and lesser-known 45s from the fifties through the seventies is exquisite. His radio voice alone takes you back a notch. And we’ve seen him spinning records a few times, most recently at Rochester Rapid Response Network’s benefit at Skylark, where we introduced ourselves. We met his friend Kelley there too, and Kelley suggested we all get together and take turns spinning 45s.

On Friday it happened. They each walked in with a 45 carrying case and we got down to business. Kyle started things off with a record he had just managed to track down, Irma Thomas’s “Anyone Who Knows What Love Is (Will Understand).” Worth every penny he paid for that one! Kelley played a version of “Scotch and Soda” that was every bit as good as the Kingston Trio version I had ready to go. Kyle pulled out a Jamaican pressing on the Barron’s label, Joya Landis doing “When the Lights Are Low.” Kyle told us he has this idea to do a whole night somewhere where they can turn the lights down and play slow songs all night.

The Sapphires’ “Who Do You Love?,” Bertha Tillman’s “Oh My Angel,” Stax’s Wendy Rene, the familiar Barbara Mason with “Yes I’m Ready,” and Barbara Lewis’s “Pushing a Good Thing Too.” We have four Barbara Lewis 45s, but not this one. That is, we didn’t. Kyle told us he had two copies and gave us one. Peggi and I were pretty rabid music fans during this period, and these young guys can play a whole set of songs that are new to us.

We were out walking today when the alarm went off. Bo Diddley’s “Surfers Love Call,” Larry Birdsong’s “Since You Left Me Behind,” Della Reese’s “Blow Out the Sun,” and the Lafayettes’ “Life Is Too Short.”

Life is too short, but let’s not dwell on that.

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We put another row of arugula in and another row of lettuce, one that supposedly can handle the heat. Everything is going great guns with all the rain we’ve had. Lake Ontario is still more than a foot above normal. But I’m not complaining. So many parts of the country don’t have enough rain.

We’re keeping up with Cape Fear, watching an episode each week. That is about all the TV we’ve had time for with all the World Cup matches. Javier Bardem is so good! Bardem and his wife, Penélope Cruz, have (so far) been the most natural-looking celebrities in the stands at the World Cup. Unless they are better actors than I think, they genuinely looked like they were having a good time. We liked both earlier versions of Cape Fear, the one with Robert Mitchum and then the one with Robert De Niro, and we camped on Cape Fear a few times on our way down to Savannah, where my in-laws retired. This version is on another level. I hope they don’t wreck it.

And if you are looking for lighter fare, I would suggest the feel-good Neil Diamond movie Song Sung Blue. Years ago, while vacationing with Peggi’s parents on Hilton Head, we went to see a Neil Diamond cover band in the hotel lounge. Peggi’s father had too much to drink at dinner, so he lay down and Peggi, her mom, and I whooped it up. The band was sensational, so much fun. And I thought Neil was corny. I guess he is, but his songs are a life force.

“Solitary Man” wasn’t in the movie. I bought that 45 in the sixties, and I still have it. I might give it a spin tonight when we have a few friends over for a 45 party.

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David Murray and Kahil El’Zabar returned to the Bop on Monday night. We first saw them together twenty-five years ago at the old Bop Shop Atrium. The recording from that concert was released on Delmark. I shot this video of the two of them ten years ago in this same location. As Murray told the crowd, “I’ve been all around the world, and you people don’t know how good you have it here, in this place.” Peggi and I sat down front, just behind our brother-in-law (right).

After reading James Blood Ulmer’s obituary I had to play his “Are You Glad to Be in America” 45. I might have known this before, but while reading the credits on the sleeve I noticed that David Murray played tenor sax on it. He has recorded with Max Roach, Charles Mingus, Cecil Taylor, Jack DeJohnette, Chico Hamilton, Elvin Jones, Archie Shepp, and Pharoah Sanders. He is a co-founder of the World Saxophone Quartet. And it was a joy beyond words to hear him play in such an intimate setting. We don’t know how lucky we are.

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It was so good to see Skylark Lounge packed last night for Rochester Rapid Response Network’s (RRRN) fund raiser and dance party. But the bar was so crowded it was tough to get a beer. The pop trio, Missu Kissu played a set and WAYO’s Kyle Brown spun 45s. We told him how much we love his Sunday afternoon show and we hung out behind him in the dj booth for the rest of the night, chatting about 45s. Kelley, a friend of his, was back there as well and he told us about a fabulous store in Detroit that has hundreds of boxes of soul 45s. We hatched a plan get together and each bring a stack of singles to play.

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I have one Lee Morgan 45 but he is featured on three of the Art Blakey singles I have. I played the Morgan record, “Hey Chico,” last night while we were preparing dinner and Peggi said it sounded like Frug music. She demonstrated it.

I didn’t know much about Lee Morgan, so I googled him and found Ethan Iverson’s Substack article on the movie I Called Him Morgan. Morgan’s wife preferred to call him “Morgan,” and then she shot him at Slugs on the far east side of lower Manhattan.

We watched the movie last night and loved it. Fellow musicians and friends paint a loving picture of Lee. He was a fully formed musician at eighteen. Helen tells her side of the story, and together they paint a picture of Slugs, where nearly every jazz great of that foundational era performed.

If that is not enough up top there are more Slugs handbills here.

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We have twenty-eight Margaret Explosion songs in a folder called “Arcadia.” They were all recorded live over the last two years. We are sifting through them in preparation for a new release. About half of them will find a place on the CD of the same name.

“The Chase” is one of the songs from that folder. We put it together with some footage I shot from the car while Peggi was driving. We had this fall-colored leaf stuck to our windshield in spring, so we took it for a spin. Margaret Explosion plays at the Little Theatre Café on Wednesday, June 3.

When we would visit my parents in their last years, my mom often had the obituary page from the local paper open nearby. She’d say, “Did you see that so-and-so died?” Often it was a former neighbor or one of their friends’ spouses. We still read the paper and, of course, at our age we’ve seen plenty of people we know listed there.

Yesterday there was a name I was trying to place under a picture of a guy who looked a bit like Ricky Nelson or Frankie Avalon with his guitar. The obituary for Richard Nicholas Tosti was short, but it included a link to the funeral home’s website. We learned Dick graduated from Aquinas in 1959 and died after a struggle with cancer at 84. It also mentioned that he played at Gigi’s Italian Restaurant on Hudson Avenue.

I found an article that announced Gigi’s closing in 2018. The owner was quoted as saying, “When we were on East Ridge, there were eight Italian restaurants in a few-mile radius: Gigi’s, Pasta Villa, Dentico’s, Mamma Rosa’s, Nick’s Sea Breeze Inn, the Italian Osteria, Ciprianni’s/Carpani’s, and one other just down the street from us.” For a few years Peggi and I tried to keep track of the many Italian restaurants in Rochester but Gigi’s was not there.

So I searched “Dick Tosti” on the PopWars site and found this entry from 2012.

Long live Dick Tosti!

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Tom let me go through thirteen boxes of 45s that he was getting ready to put out on the floor. About half were from his own collection. He told me he would bring stuff home and put it on the shelves but he had never taken the time to organize them. When he did he realized he had duplicates and triplicates of all sorts of stuff. Very little jazz in there but a very enjoyable few hours thumbing through.

I came home with six gems. Two Sun Ra 45s, “Plutonium Nights” and “The Sky Is A Sea of Darkness,” a Lightning Hopkins single from 1965, one of Jack White’s Chess reissues, Muddy Waters “Manish Boy,” Otis Redding double A, “Hard to Handle” and “Amen,” a clean copy of Wreckless Eric’s “Whole Wide World” Captain Beefheart’s “Abba Abba.”

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Every week it seems we read about another musician from the 1960s that has passed away. Today it was Country Joe. Steve Hoy, had the first Fish album when we were roommates. I loved their first single, “Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine.”

Because we all grew up with that music it was always a reference point when we were performing as Personal Effects. At least three times during that period we played out as “Boat”. They were odd ball dates like Halloween (above) or a Pyramid Art Gallery event. That one was in a cavernous upstairs space connected to the old Visual Studies Workshop.

Kevin, who did sound for Personal Effects and eventually played bass with us, was in bands in the sixties that performed a lot of the songs we did as Boat. Phil Marshall, from Colorblind James Experience at that time, played guitar. They helped transform Personal Effects into Boat. Peggi recently came across one of our setlists. Looks like we all sang and we had guest aoppearences from Martin Edic and Pat Mosciano.

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I have picked over these boxes many times. I let a few months go by and then revisit them. There were only six boxes marked “Jazz” when I first came across them, so I guess it is a good sign that there are now nine. The ninth, out of view in this photo, is all boxed EPs. I found a couple of Bud Powell beauties in there. I didn’t see any new ones yesterday — well, all of them are old; I mean newly added. And I worry that the old-timers who had these items in their collections have already moved on. The selection is certainly drying up.

I listened to a short stack and came home with five. “Bacchanal” by Gabor Szabo is a winner. The Hungarian guitarist fell in love with jazz listening to Voice of America and wound up playing in Chico Hamilton’s chamber jazz combo. I picked up a Coleman Hawkins track on the Impulse label, a crazy version of “Little Liza Jane,” a song written so long ago (1917) that Hawkins could put his name on it.

I grabbed another Gerry Mulligan disc, another of those four-song 45s on the Pacific Jazz label (think cool jazz). I have four now. I wish they hadn’t done that. 7-inch records were designed to carry one song on a side. A or B. You like it or you don’t play it. Nobody wants to have to cue up the one song on a side that you like. And it certainly wouldn’t work in a jukebox setting.

For me, I can’t get enough of the slow, moody Mulligan. He plays baritone sax. There is no piano player in his band, and Chet Baker plays trumpet with him. (Nobody wants to hear an upbeat Chet Baker.) The two horns on the late-night, “Darn That Dream,” “The Nearness of You,” and “My Funny Valentine” sound like heaven.

Ray Brown has got to be the greatest bass player who has ever lived. No, that can’t be right. Charlie Mingus, Richard Davis and Charlie Haden could all be that guy. But Ray really shines on “Song of the Volga Boatmen.” I found a copy of his version of the Russian folk song in a trio setting with Hank Jones and Buddy Rich. Here you get to savor the attack, the swing, and the shape of every note.

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The Ethnic Heritage Ensemble opened last night’s sold-out show at the Bop Shop with Wayne Shorter’s “Footprints.” Kahil played a hypnotic pattern on his drums with mallets while Corey Wilke and Alex Harding added precision and then the enchanting melody. We’ve seen them over twenty times, and it is always a treat. We’ve heard Kahil in other settings as well, with David Murray and Billy Bang, and the lineup never includes a bass player. They have a uniquely sophisticated, primal sound. It is from the heart.

Kahil wrote “Great Black Music” for the Art Ensemble of Chicago, and they played a version of that with different lyrics last night. “Keep on Marching” was the refrain. Kahil reminded us that Mother Nature is much stronger than the crazy man in the White House. He did a spot-on impression of Ornette Coleman when he told the crowd how Ornette called him after he heard Kahil’s song “Ornette” on a New York radio station. The band played “Ornette” and then one of Ornette’s, “Lonely Woman,” to cap a perfect night.

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Our neighbors at the end of the street brought two freshly made, still-warm cinnamon rolls down to us. We were already making dinner, so we thanked them and said we would have them for breakfast. On the way out, they wanted to know what our secret was. “How do you keep your driveway so clean?” They speculated that the pavement may be heated. “We shovel,” we told them. Pretty simple. We’re home most of the time, and when it snows, we shovel. It’s a great excuse to get outdoors. Most of our other neighbors either have a plow contract or a snowblower, and we hardly see them in the winter.

CalZone gave us a heads up about PBS’s American Masters show on Friday, and we built our day around the broadcast. “Sun Ra: Do the Impossible” is available to stream now, and I would call it required viewing for human beings. The producers did a great job touching on all facets of the poet, philosopher, and music visionary’s life, but the section on Sun Ra cranking out LPs with custom covers on his own label was mind-blowing. Those original Saturn LPs sell for thousands today as the world is catching up with Sun Ra.

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Steve Black texted us just before 4:30 the other day. His text read: “Here’s hoping you have the best 4:30 PM ever!” It was indeed at least one of the best 4:30 PMs ever. We were listening to a couple of Peggy Lee 45s, “One More Ride on the Merry-go-Round” and “Sans Souci” and I told him so. Steve must have gone to YouTube to listen to the songs because he texted us back a comment that someone had left under the video of Sans Souci (above).

“Thank you, You Tube…..Purchased a 45 record of this song when I was 11 years old for 49 cents. left it on a bus and never got to play it.. Now I can hear it any time I want……Brady; Buffalo, NY. Purchased at Sattlers “998”” @wloriganbrady 

Steve thought these ingredients, with a little fleshing out, would make a great movie. The song, with lyrics by Peggy Lee, came out in 1952 and Brady says he bought it at Sattler’s in nearby Buffalo. Sattlers was a department store in the very center of the Polonia section of Buffalo.

My copy is pretty clean. I might have William Brady’s record. Rob Weinert-Kendt has a post on this song, a tribute to its brilliance, and he includes a demo version that really knocked me out. Would have made a killer b side and would certainly be featured in the movie.

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I haven’t played with AI for video yet, but I need to move up to something more sophisticated than iMovie. I’ve pretty much exhausted the possibilities for manipulating random video clips.

That said, here’s the second video from this week. The last one, “Sombremesa,” was for a song on our most recent CD, Field Recordings, and this one goes with a piece from January’s performance at the Little Theatre Café.

For the last six months or so, I’ve picked one improvisation from each month’s performance and given it a title and a video. This one has some snake-charm qualities and is called “Bohemia.” The videos can be found here.

For years now, there has been one person in the crowd at the Little who listens intently and never fails to comment on the music. I hope he knows how much that means to us.

This one goes out to Pete.

Margaret Explosion performs Thursday, February 5 at Little Theatre Café 7-9pm.

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“Sobremesa” by Margaret Explosion from 2024 release “Field Recordings”

Not sure if I should be putting quotes around a Google AI Overview definition of this word but here goes:

“Sobremesa (Spanish for “over the table”) is the cherished tradition of lingering at the table after a meal to chat, relax, and enjoy conversation with family or friends, with no rush to leave; it’s a cultural practice emphasizing connection as much as the food, often involving coffee, drinks, or dessert, and explains why restaurant checks aren’t brought until asked for. It can happen after lunch or dinner, even during business meals, and is a time for bonding, storytelling, and digestion.”

This could be the most uneventful video yet for Margaret Explosion, footage from a Catalan traveling circus troupe coupled with one of my favorite songs on the “Field Recordings” cd. The old world melody has an Early Music /Chamber Music quality and Melissa, our cello player, is not even on this one. Peggi’s saxophone melody with Jack’s bass clarinet sounds almost like bagpipes at times. Phil’s guitar parts echo the melody and add the atmosphere while Ken’s bass parts anchor the whole. I hope you like it.

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I’m kind of thinking all five members of Margaret Explosion will be there on Wednesday. You never know. One thing I do know is that it will be different. The song above was recorded at our last performance. We made a short video for it. Looking forward to Wednesday.

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