Buffalo Bills inflatables in front yard of house on Avondale in Rochester, New York
You gotta stay up really late to hear DJ SinMin’s way cool “File Under Popular” show on WAYO. Either that or get up really early on a Saturday morning. I got an email that Jack would be playing some Personal Effects, Invisible Idiot and Margaret Explosion this week so we tuned in. He picked some pretty cool tracks and I was kind of blown away by how well “Bring Out The Jazz,” “Suitcase of Beer,” “1969” and “OK Corral” fit together considering they spanned about thirty years of bands Peggi and I have played in.
ESPN2 broadcast the US Women’s friendly with Thailand. It was Heather O’Reilly‘s last match with the national team and they gave her a great send off. She played well too but that is a given. She is my all-time favorite player. But the announcers spent way too much time talking about Megan Rapino kneeling for the national anthem. We almost turned off the sound but we didn’t want to miss any Heather tidbits.
As most people know, a soccer match is divided into two 45 minutes halves and the play is virtually uninterrupted. There are fouls and penalties, of course, but the clock doesn’t stop and the station can’t cut away to a commercial. It’s perfect. When the match was over, we tried switching to the Bill’s game. There they cut away every time the ball changes hands. And the play itself comes in tiny bursts of action. We gave it try. We can’t do it.
I wish this Kinky Friedman poster didn’t have to be in every shot I take at Abilene but I’m digressing already. Lydia Lunch returned to the town she grew up in and took charge of the place. She stopped her performance, the way Joni Mitchell did her when she played with Bob Dylan, and pointed her fingers at a bunch that were talking loudly at he bar and told them to shut the fuck up! And they did. Like I said, she takes charge.
She recited and read over low volume ambient tracks, Sonic Youth-like rumblings or free jazz, but she sounded best when she killed that and went solo. She has not changed in all these years and her bleak but funny world view seems more pertinent than ever. She was riveting.
Phil Marshal followed Lydia with a different band from his last appearance. Same drummer of course, his son Roy, but Dave Arenas on stand-up bass and Mike Kaupa on trumpet. We had heard Kaupa in a trio setting at the Little. The band was doing standards but Kaupa is such a great player you can’t take your ears off him. He sounded fantastic with Phil sampling his lines, playing them back and then playing on top of it all. This band spun Phil’s songs in a looser, rich and deep fashion, a picture big enough to feature Rick Petrie’s poetry in a few pieces. A most rewarding night.
I consider myself one of the luckiest people in the world, to be in a band with Peggi Fournier. Over and over again, she pulls beautiful melodies from the thin air, marvelous stuff that you could hang your hat on. To my ears she is a rare breed.
The song below is from last week. I only brought two drums to the gig as my right foot is out of commission for a month or so. A young couple there, both of them nurses, told us they saw Margaret Explosion on their first date and they came back tonight because they both had off.
Chuck Cuminale, aka Colorblind James, was born the 23rd, the day before Bob Dylan’s birthday, and he was a lifelong fan which is not to say he loved everything Bob did. Far from it. I went to high school with Chuck. He always took music seriously and loved to share his opinion. I haven’t had a good argument with a friend about music since he died.
He wrote the following when he was working for City Newspaper. “The Margaret Explosion is not screaming for your attention. At its weekly Friday night happy hour gig at the Bug Jar, the band sets up in the darkest corner of the club. It makes no announcements or introductions. The musicians don’t take flashy solos, or make grandiose musical statements. What they do, from their dark corner, is provide the crowd with a cool, knowing, improvised soundtrack for its early evening activities. They cast a bohemian glow over the room, and, like magic, people look more interesting, conversations become more engaging, and Rochester seems like a better, hipper place to be.”
Margaret Explosion plays one more Wednesday at the Little Theatre and then we’re off for the summer.
Peggi was chatting with our teacher, Jeffery, after yoga class. I had climbed out on the big rocks that are protecting the docks at the Rochester Yacht Club. I was taking a photo of the Charlotte pier and I looked down at all these pieces of driftwood that had gotten trapped between the rocks. They were all about the same size but there was such beautiful variation in the color. I rounded up an armload and took them home. Each one is a finished piece of art.
The guy standing next to us was screaming so loudly at the tv in O’loughlins he must have bet the farm on “Gun Runner.” His horse was in the lead for a bit but only showed in the end. We were down there years ago on warm Spring day, watching the boats pass by, when we realized it was Kentucky Derby day. The bar owner was selling tickets for a pool and we bought a few but our horse didn’t come in. The Kentucky Derby was Peggi’s and my first date, the real thing, in Kentucky. We were there the year Secretariat won. Anyway, we come down to this joint every year to have a pint, watch the race and look out at he river.
If you are gonna come home with your ears ringing it might as well be for good band. We heard NRBQ in the park yesterday and just like dozen or so times we’ve seen this band, we got right down front, on Terry’s side. He had the same lineup as last time he was here but a different drummer, a young kid, and he sounded great. Couldn’t swing like Tommy could, but right-on otherwise. Even sounded great on “Sitting In The Park.”
Twin Talk performing live at Bop Shop in Rochester, New York
Katie Ernst plays bass and sings. The two sound beautiful together and they are made more beautiful by her choosing to not sing words in most cases. She is accompanied by a tenor sax player and a drummer and the Chicago trio, Twin Talk, played last night at the the Bop Shop. Their sound is youthful and fresh, as in a few years out of school, but rich and melodic. Katie, the bass player, went to Eastman. Here she is playing on the street in 2009.
As abstract as their song structure is, the band is extremely musical and very enjoyable to listen to. They color their songs with everything at their instruments’ disposal. Not swinging club jazz, not even close to the traditional bebop thing, they are arty and idiosyncratic. My kind of stuff. They get under your skin and you are not sure why. All three players wore watches, not Fitbits or Apple Watches but the old school kind. Katy is a hell of a bass player and that may be why.
Peggi Fournier, Dale Mincey, and Robert Marsella at Dale’s apartment in Rochester, New York
Still in tidy-up mode I found this photo. Taken somewhere in the late seventies, I may not come across again for another thirty years. Dale Mincey, stretched out across the couch, was the lead guitar player in New Math when I was in the band. Robert, with the shades in his hand, was the bass player. And I found a yellow Post-It note with my father’s Spotify password on it. Not that we could forget. The Mayflowers, the May Apples, the Trillium and every other wildflower he introduced us to, remind us of his passing. And we are tuning into the birds.
I came across this this quote and it has fired me up. “Failure is my best friend. “If I succeeded, it would be like dying. Maybe worse.” – Alberto Giacometti
Margaret Explosion plays the four Wednesdays in May at the Little Theatre.
We kind of thought the Spontaneous Duets event would be crowded so we said we would make a point to get there early. We didn’t and it wasn’t. The event was on our calendar so it showed up on my watch but the 4pm start time really caught us by surprise. The sound in the unlikely Eastman rehearsal space on the corner of East And Gibbs is really nice. Surrounded by glass, there is no need for sound re-enforcement and the grand piano sounds magnificent in here.
This year’s round robin started with a woman playing alto sax by herself. A six string electric bassist joined her after five minutes and five minutes later the sax player sat down when a vibraphonist joined the bassist. A piano player joined the vibraphonist and then a trumpet player took the vibraphonists’ spot.
The room got downright raucous when a tenor sax player reached for the sky with the trumpeter. A bass player, who we had just heard playing with Rich Thompson’s quartet, joined the sax player and the music settled down into pure beauty’s with long sustained notes. Then drums with bowed bass followed by trombone and drums. Finally a guitar with the trombone and then the guitarist solo. This is a really cool concept, part of International Jazz Day. Today.
We stopped over at the Little for the Prince event. Spevak was there to cover it and a WDKX dj was supposed to be spinning Prince tunes in the café but they didn’t show up. A women in line with Peggi said “I was just listening to the station in my car and they’re playing all Prince.” So Marian climbed up on the counter and pulled the rabbit ears out of the radio. We told Jeff we liked his recap of the local Music Hall of Fame event. He spilled quite a bit of ink on the Plasmatics and I told him Wendy was in my high school class. She lived over the right field line of the baseball field at the end of my street. Doug Klick was a lefty and he used to pull the ball into her yard where she was sunbathing. And then, of course we’d run in there to retrieve it.
Calm Lake Ontario outlet between the two piers at Sea Breeze in Rochester, New York
The Society for Chamber Music was an early 4D Advertising client. This was back in the eighties and I remember the two women who ran the group smoking like chimneys. It was sort of a stuffy organization but we tried to have fun with the layouts for their brochures. And we went to a few of their sleepy performances.
Today chamber music really appeals to me. Not all of it, of course, but I would much rather listen to a small group setting than an orchestral one. I like being able to clearly hear the individual instruments and interplay. It even works in a jazz setting where the players are free to improvise. Chico Hamilton’s group, especially the one with the multi-instrumentalist, Eric Dolphy, and cello, paved the way for “chamber jazz.”
In the late nineties, when Margaret Explosion was playing a happy hour gig at the Bug Jar, one the original owners worked the bar. It was his only night there. He had a day job at Merrill Lynch and after a few years he convinced us to meet him downtown to talk about money. He became our guy but he worked his way up in the company and passed us off to his assistant. That guy now works for Wells Fargo and he invited his clients to lunch at the Monroe Golf Club. He talked about the markets while we sipped lemomade and ate our salads and then three members of the Chamber Music Society performed, a violinist, an oboe player and a guitarist. One of the board members is also a client.
They did two pieces back to back that were composed by Frenchmen but sounded Spanish. Our ears perked up. Maurice Ravel apparently grew up in the Basque region near the border. Juliana Athayde, the violinist, is the Concertmaster of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra and she teaches violin at the Eastman. Someone asked if they ever had a bad performance and she offered the same advice she gives her students. “Don’t let your mistakes have babies. Just move on and stay in the moment.” They finished with a rousing arrangement of Astor Piazzolla’s “Nightclub 1960.”
Getting the jump on Earth Day, Margaret Explosion has released a new song recorded live at the Little Theatre just a few weeks ago. Margaret Explosion plays the Little Theatre Café tonight.
Listen to Margaret Explosion – End of the EarthLeave a comment
John called yesterday to confirm that we were “still on” for today. We had agreed to help him downsize. He’s converting his music room, the place where his stereo, records, cds, cassettes and posters are stored, into a bathroom before selling the house he built in the seventies. His friends all pitched in with the construction, except for me. I was doing nightly rehearsals with New Math back then. There was a big party when he finished the house. When we got there John was sitting on the hood of a car as it circled the house. One of his college buddies was driving and the sound system was cranked. John was singing along to “Crown of Creation” at the top his lungs.
Today, a couple of professional tradesman were unloading brand new bathroom fixtures when we got there. I wore my Kodak t-shirt for John. It took us four hours to peel the posters off the wall and pack up the various music formats. Cassettes outnumbered the rest, probably due to all the driving John did between this house in the boonies and EK. As promised, John made dinner dinner for us. Angel texted while we were eating to tell us Kevin Patrick was on Howard Thompson’s “Pure” radio show. We found an archived version of the show when we got back.
Red ball in front window at Kneads & Wants Bakery in Rochester, New York
It’s time for the snowbirds to come back north. The daffodils are up, the purple myrtle flowers are out, the lenten roses are in full bloom. The crocuses and winter aconite are already folding up, Another few weeks and the wildflowers in Edmunds Woods will be out. We bought spinach, lettuce and “Detroit Red Beets” seeds today at Aman’s and planted them in potting soil. This is all true but I’ve been around here long enough to know we could still see some more snow. So our skis and poles are standing in the corner just outside the door.
We always sit in the front window at Kneads & Wants. With coffee and pastry we watch the Lake Avenue world go by. This morning we watched a group of revelers in green clothing get on the bus, probably headed to the Saint Patty’s Day parade downtown. I took this photo from our seats. The blurry building wth the green spires is now the Charlotte Post Office but in the early sixties it was Doug Duke’s Music Room. Born Ovidio Fernandez in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Doug changed his name and drew guests like Coleman Hawkins, Teddy Wilson, Lionel Hampton, Marian McPartland, Charlie Byrd, Roy Eldridge, Ray Nance and Toots Thielemans to the club. Doug held court behind the organ but doubled on accordion, bassoon and trumpet. I told the women who run the bakery about this place but they were hardly impressed.
I’m going to try and beat this time change thing by going to sleep an hour early tonight.
Here is Coleman Hawkins performing Body and Soul with Doug Duke in the club on Lake Avenue near Latta.Leave a comment
Today’s blue skies had me in lockstep with this MX-80 song from their newest, “So Funny.” It is a pretty healthy pace for the woods. We passed a neighbor and she was listening to the Saturday afternoon broadcast of the Metropolitan Opera. We never take sound producing devices in the woods and why would you need it when you can’t get some songs out of your head?
I miss the hard-core drive of Dave Mahoney’s drumming and I wish people would quit dying but Bruce Anderson’s guitar is still stellar and the band sounds more melodic than ever. You can watch the entire lp, cd or whatever it is on YouTube or FB.
We bought a new light, a floor lamp to stand in the corner over our drawing table and pretty much light up the whole room when we need it. I had a homemade rack for cassettes under the table and it just looked ridiculous with the new lamp. And when was the last time anyone but a hipster listened to a cassette? Well, today! We got into it, Playette, a mix tape from ’84, my recording of Talking Heads from the Village Gate as a threesome in ’77. It’s all stuff that doesn’t exist in any other format unless that Roir Stuff eventually went digital. Even Pete LaBonne has gone digital.
I put all the tapes in a box and we’ll probably never listen to them again. I was intrigued by one labeled “10 Commandments” from 1985, the same year as the video above. 10 Commandments opened for Personal Effects at Scorgies. and the band was us, Personal Effects, doing other bands’ material. So I kept that one out for a future listen. Funny thing, Taana Gardner’s “Heartbeat” was not in the set. Now you know this just don’t make no kinda sense.
Here’s the 10 Commandments’ 1985 set list: “Heaven” – Talking Heads “What Goes On” – VU “Connection” – Stones “End Of The World” – Skeeter Davis “Big Bottom” – Spinal Tap “More Than Good” – MX-80 “Sex Machine” – JB “Maggot Brain” – Funkadelics “She Belongs To Me” – Dylan “It Came Out Of The Sky” – CCR “FunTime” – Iggy
Orange cone on golf/ski course at Durand Eastman in Rochester, New York
I don’t have a photos of these two scenes but I will do my best to describe them. The settings for both are the same little room, the computer room, at my mom’s apartment building. Two days ago I walked by and two grey-haired people, one man, one woman, were sitting in front of the two Windows machines. Both were looking intently at the monitors playing Solitare. The next day the same woman was alone in the room playing Solitare. At least it looked like she was playing Solitare before she nodded off.
We ran into a guy on the golf course today. It was too warm for the woods. The packed down, well travelled paths on the golf course are still skiable when the temperature gets in the upper thirties. Anyway we were stopped, just kinda looking around, he stopped and said hi. After some small talk he asked why we looked so familiar. “Did you play in a band?” Peggi said, “We still do. Margaret Explosion.” “No,’ he said, Personal Effects.” Peggi said, “That was like thirty some years ago.”
Personal Effects “It’s Different Out There” on Earring Records 1985 EAR 3
Personal Effects – “Nothing Lasts Forever”1 Comment
The most efficient way to to store stuff is digitally. After that there is flat filing cabinets. I put my father’s old cabinet in my studio and that set off a chain reaction of purging to make space for the new. Out with a pile of paintings and older work, sifting through piles of junk and then into the closets where we found boxes of 4D Advertising samples. All to the trash. Now, what about this box of teeth molds that our former neighbor, Leo, an orthodontist who often worked out of his house, left in his basement when he passed? I took a photo and thought about Leo.
Phil Marshall has a rubber soul. We are friends and have played together but I was not aware of his Beatle affinity. We recently donated to his Indiegogo CD project. Our level entitles us to have Phil as a guest on a podcast. Our promo copy of the cd arrived in two versions, “Scatterbed,” fleshed out tracks with guest musicians, and “Scatterbed Sleeper,” basic tracks of guitar and voice performed simultaneously, described as “the album in its rawest and most immediate form.” Both are produced by Chris Zajkowski and they sound fantastic.
While in hospice my dad occupied a scatterbed at St. John’s. He filled an open bed on the fifth floor next door to long-time nursing home residents, wanderers and people who talk non-stop in non-sequiturs. This is David Greenberger Duplex Planet territory. We intended to engage Phil to play music for my father while he was there, a few Johnny Mercer songs between the madness, but it never happened. Phil is a professional music therapist, what must be a heroic profession. “Scatterbed” arrived two weeks after my dad’s passing and Phil’s self described “reflection on loss, grief, faith and the lack thereof” resonated big time.
Our listening session began with “Sleeper,” the basic tracks. The first song, “Heaven is Waiting,” made me cry. As rich as Gershwin or Nilsson. The rhythm guitar in the next song, “Black Ice,” immediately called to mind Beefheart’s, “Harry Irene.” “In the final instant, Beyond all love and fear, Is there a perfect moment, When everything is clear?” “Faith,” which is inevitably called into play in the final hours meets a worthy opponent. “Faith, I doubt, is true, Faith, in love I do believe.” “Ebb And Flow’s” innocence echoes the Velvet Underground’s “After Hours” as it looks death in the eye. “Surrender it all to ebb and flow.” I’m quoting the lyrics here but, more importantly, Phil’s gorgeous melodies get under your skin and stay there.
Our session was interrupted so we started over the next day. “Sleeper” to “Scatterbed” full blown. I found myself thinking not only of my father but our departed painting teacher who also left a huge hole a few months back. We let a week go by and played the two in reverse order. “Sleeper” speaks more clearly, more directly and I am thankful to have a copy. For me the ideal transition from “Sleeper” to “Scatterbed” would have gone more raw, more fragile and more vulnerable. But then, Stella, our eighteen year old cat is in hospice as I write this.
I brought a short stack of my father’s cds home last night, ripped them and brought them back today. We listened while we ripped. “The Lyrical Stan Getz,” “Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers with Thelonious Monk,” Joe Williams “Having The Blues Under A European Sky,” a live Oscar Peterson Trio cd and another collection, two Duke Ellingtion compilations and three Bill Evans cds, one live, a collection and one with Stan Getz. I know I told my dad that Scott LaFaro used to play with Bill Evans. There was a poster of Scott right near the regular table that my dad’s Kodak buddies sat at for twenty four years. Scott LaFaro was in the owner, Nick Massa’s, high school class. These recordings made for an enjoyable evening.
In our local paper the other day one of the questions to the computer guy was from someone who took advantage of the free three months of Apple streaming and then forgot to cancel so they were being billed ten bucks a month by Apple. They wanted to know how to go about canceling. You wouldn’t think you had to be a computer expert to figure that out but Nick Francesco addressed it. The reason it caught my eye is that I, too, never canceled. I haven’t had time to stream but I do plan to check it out before canceling.
We stopped by Martin’s place on New Year’s Eve and he was streaming some JB for his lady friends. He had the place hopping but he told me it was hard to create a Apple streaming dance playlist without having the albums to look at while you’re choosing.
“So Hard” was the first song on Personal Effects” first record. The song was written by Rich Stim and released on cassette by his band, Playette. I’m quite sure we did a version of this song with the Hi-Techs. The song always went over great live and when we went into the studio as Personal Effects in 1982 we added the middle (reggae) section.
The song, as recorded by Playette, was originally called “So So Hard.” Rich went on to play saxophone and guitar as well as sing with the great MX-80 Sound. There was a Rochester connection to MX-80. Drummer, Dave Mahoney, drove the classic MX lineup until his passing ten years ago.
So Hard was co-produced by Dwight Glodell and Eric DuFaure and released on Cachalot Records in 1983. Thirty three years later, MX Rich has created this video!
I looked for Playette’s version of So So Hard but could only find Roomful of Voices by Playette. Dave Mahoney does the vocals here.
Playette cassette cover art. Release includes So So Hard featuring Dave Mahoney.
Mary Heilmann Table and China at the 303 Gallery in Chelsea
Art, viewing or making, can be easy or difficult. Mary Heilmann makes both look easy. This table and china set is part of an installation in the back room of her current show at the 303 Gallery in Chelsea.
Not sure if it is a good thing or a bad thing, playing on Thanksgiving eve. It used to be a great night when we were in a rock ‘n roll band. Margaret Explosion has been playing at the Little Theater for thirteen years or so and this night can get too loud to hear ourselves play. Ken’s standup bass has no amplification other than from the ingenious design of the instrument itself.
We use a Zoom recorder and it sits between the guitar and the sax. The bass and drums set up in the corner behind those two. If Peggi stands in just the right spot the Zoom recorder gets a nice mix or her natural sax sound the reverb from her amp. Of course the damn drums don’t need any amplification. I work my ass off trying to play quietly. The mic positioning captures a perfect crowd mix. The Little has a row of lights for the performers and one dimmer controls them all. If we keep that thing in the off position the sound pretty much comes together.
Dave Liebman solo performance at the Bop Shop in Rochester, New York
Dave Liebman is an educator as well as a musician so of course he had to do long introductions to each song. Educators like to hear themselves talk and the good ones have a lot of great stuff to say. Liebman fits both of these bills perfectly. He performed solo at the Bop Shop tonight to the biggest house I have ever seen there.
Liebman played saxes and flute with Miles in the heady seventies. He played interpretations of couple of colors on soprano sax, choosing turbulent red and contemplative grey. He soloed on tenor sax and switched to piano to perform a beautiful version of Ornette’s “Lonely Woman.” He let the piano sustain while he soloed on top with a wooden flute. He called Ornette “the most melodic musician ever.” I would agree. Next up was Sydney Bechet’s “Petite Fleur” on soprano sax.
Liebman has played with some of jazz’s best drummers, people like Elvin Jones and Al Foster and guess what, Dave plays drums too. He sat behind the Bop Shop’s kit for a drum solo but not before talking about his favorite scene in the James Brown movie where James informs the horn players that everyone in his band is a drummer.
He finished on tenor with Coltrane’s “Peace On Earth” and then invited Bill Dobbins to join him on piano while he played “Autumn Leaves.”
