Category: Field Recordings of the Future

How the World Sounds

Posted on

Spoiled

Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings at the Armory in Rochester, New York
Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings at the Armory in Rochester, New York

A thunderstorm forecast forced the move of Thursday’s “Party in the Parking Lot” into Rochester’s Armory, easily the worst sounding room in the city. My parents used to go to the circus here and it might still be an ideal spot for that. If only last night’s show was anywhere near as interesting as a circus. We walked in while an announcer was introducing “Chuck Prophet & the Mission Express” and you could not understand a word he was saying. The wild reverberation here swallows even a loud speaking voice. I have no idea what Chuck Prophet was singing about but the two guitar, keyboard, bass and drums was some of the most ordinary rock music I’ve heard. I am probably too old to voice my opinion but it was as if the whole punk thing never happened and rock music continued to get straighter and straighter for the last thirty years.

Sharon Jones at least sounds good with simple things like syncopation between drums and bass, rhythm guitar, not just strummed chords, and great backup singers. The Dap Kings have studiously copped the vintage R&B thing and look and sound like a studio band on stage. Nowhere near the heft and funk of the godfather but enough to pull off a good version of Gladys Knight & The Pips’ “Heard It Through the Grapevine.” It was good to see the crowd come alive, smell pot in the air and be in the right spot for some serious break dancing. I guess I was spoiled by some extraordinary music at this year’s Jazz Fest like Mederic Collignon, Hakon Kornstad, Terje Rypdal and Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey.

Leave a comment
Posted on

Best Movie We Never Saw

Kid's room at Lutheran Church, one of the venues for the Rochester International Jazz Fest
Kid’s room at Lutheran Church, one of the venues for the Rochester International Jazz Fest

Funny how no two people hear the same thing. We are so lucky this is the case. After Terje Rypdal’s performance last night we were talking to a friend who was disappointed he didn’t hear more Terje Rypdal solos (he only takes two in his score for “Crime Scene”) and then a comment to yesterday’s post about the abundance of solos. The beautiful bass solo at the end was one of our favorite parts in the score.

We checked out the lineup for last night before leaving the house and Peggi said, “When the choice is between music that transports you and music that doesn’t, there really is no choice.” So like a broken record, there we were in the front row for performance number three by Terje Rypdal and the Bergen Big Band. It sort of amazing to watch them virtually clear a house. No more than fifth of the people in attendance make it to the end.

A true crime buff, Peggi had scripted all the parts of this masterpiece in her head. She knew when the crime happened, when the getaway occurred, when the crowd was just standing around gawking and then of course when the crime was eventually solved. The Jazz Festival pulled out all the stops in booking this incredible band.

We were talking to the band leader after the forth show and he told us how they had played with Joe Henderson and Maria Schnieder and so many others but they absolutely loved touring Europe playing the non-traditional arrangements Terje had written. There were no sax solos, only parts with plenty of room for movement, and then sections that heaved and dug deep into Terje melancholia. This gets our vote for best movie we never saw.

Leave a comment
Posted on

Terje Is In The House

Terje Rypdal with Palle Mickkelborg at the Rochester International Jazz Festival
Terje Rypdal with Palle Mickkelborg at the Rochester International Jazz Festival

We primed ourselves for Terje Rypdal’s Rochester appearance by listening to his 1975 album, Odyssey, the one with him smiling, sitting in the back of an open van with his guitar and equipment. We grabbed front row seats in the Xerox Auditorium, right in front of a an orange-red, Fender Strat with a whammy bar on a stand between stereo Vox amps. Terje performed most of his 2010 recording, “Crime Scene,” with Bergen Big Band (a thirteen piece horn section with two bass clarinets plus drums) set up stage left and his core band (Hammond B3, electric piano, addition guitar, bass, drums and Palle Mikkelborg on trumpet bathed in reverb) stage right.

The 20 piece band came out first and then Terje, 38 years after Odyssey, with the support of a cane. Terje’s trademark sound has a distinct mood that has not changed since the seventies and his score for big band has only made it darker and richer. We felt like we had entered a dream state and I kept finding that my mouth was hanging open. This wild music is strangley comforting. We caught both performances and plan on hearing again tonight at the church.

I’m keeping track of this year’s Jazz Fest over here.

3 Comments
Posted on

Smart Cowbell

Pedrito Martinez Group on break outside the big tent at the Rochester International Jazz Festival
Pedrito Martinez Group on break outside the big tent at the Rochester International Jazz Festival

We stopped by the back of the big tent to listen to a bit of Pedrito Martinez Group. We were sort of afraid to go in the front door because the group had been so loud at their Montage show that they chased people out the doors. The next thing we knew, three of the members came out the back of the tent while Pedrito was doing his percussion solo. I was amazed how quickly they pulled out their smart phones. The cowbell player (in the blue), a key player in Afro Cuban music, invited us back in so we took in the rest of their show from the side of the stage. They sounded fantastic.

Leave a comment
Posted on

Blue Notes

Street band in front of apartment building near Abilene in Rochester, New York
Street band in front of apartment building near Abilene in Rochester, New York

We were the first ones in line outside the Rochester Club for Luca Ciarla Quartet while the line for the Cuban band at Kilbourn, a show that started at the same time, had already wrapped around the corner and was confusing itself with the line we started. The “Mediterranean Gypsy Jazz” moniker works well for these guys. Laid back, warm and friendly, their personalties carry over to their sound. The crowd went nuts when violin, accordion, double bass and hand drums got into overdrive but they kept the volume in check and always followed it up with something sweet. From Monk to Nino Roto like tunes they reached beyond the gypsy songbook. The accordion player was outstanding.

The line we found in front of Harro East (remember when this place was the Triangle Theater and Wease worked the door and they had all those great reggae acts?) was gone so we stopped in for few songs. I like Catherine Russell’s great voice when she’s not belting it out.

We were kind of looking forward to the Monophonics, the “psychedelic soul” band from the Bay Area. I liked the single we listened to in the iTunes store, a real digital single, two songs for $1.98 and packaged with a big hole 45 and off white sleeve graphic. But, damn, there was nothing psychedelic about them. They were as loud as hell. The guy in front of us had his hands over his ears until he left. The tent was packed with glum looking people in plastic chairs. The gruff vocalist behind the B3 managed to get seven or eight kids up dancing to “Slippin’ Into Darkness” as we slipped out the back.

We were talking earlier to a fellow Jazz Fest passenger, a stranger, who said he has a problem with the Xerox venue because he always falls asleep. The auditorium’s warm sound is perfect for some acts and Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey is one of them. Man, did they sound great! Like the Flaming Lips, a fellow Tulsa band but on the rock side, they are adventurous. Aptly named, the Odyssey wander all over the musical map, with songs arranged but open like a free-range playground. We’ve seen these guys at two earlier festivals and they keep getting better and crazier.

There’s some photos of these acts over here.

Leave a comment
Posted on

Don’t Encourage Him

Kid trumpeter in the alley behind the Eastman Theater in Rochester, New York
Kid trumpeter in the alley behind the Eastman Theater in Rochester, New York

The couple in front of us in the line for Tom Harrell were like a bad trip. The woman was dying to talk, to anyone, and there we were. I tried to give detached answers to her questions but when she asked me if I needed help threading the cloth lanyard through my jazz pass I just said, “No,” in a scolding tone.

Behind us a mom was helping her son set up a busking station. She even chummed the waters or primed the pump by putting a dollar bill in the open trumpet case. She probably dressed him too because he looked like he had stepped out of a Norman Rockwell painting. As he warmed up his lip the guy in front of us said, “Maybe he’ll use the money for lessons.” The kid played the theme to an Ellington song and I clapped. The guy said, “Don’t encourage him.”

See more Jazz Fest notes by clicking on this year’s pass.

Leave a comment
Posted on

Jazz Notes

Pink and blue chairs at Jazz Fest in Rochester, New York
Pink and blue chairs at Jazz Fest in Rochester, New York

We made an extra effort to get out early on the first night of Jazz Fest 11 and we were in good shape for down front seats at Kilbourn Hall for the bass player Christian McBride but word spread that he was stuck in Newark airport due to wind. You’d think McBride could have made an extra effort to leave a few hours before the show or just driven up here.

Hatch Recital Hall, the newest addition to the Jazz Fest venue list is easily the best sounding room in the line-up. It’s not a room, it’s a performance space and it only holds about two hundred people. It’s like sitting in front of a big speaker but in this case the tweeter is a Steinway Grand and the woofer is a gorgeous sounding stand up bass in the capable hands of Canadians Don Thompson and Neil Swainson. They have played together for thirty years and know over two thousand songs so they were melodic and lyrical as twenty first century musicians can be.

We had seen “Get The Blessing” before at an earlier Jazz Fest and we gave their straight ahead trip hop a second try. Elements of jazz, the two horns, with plenty of effects on top of a clubby rhythm section in the cavernous Christ Church seems like it could work. The drummer and bass player had success with Portishead but here their instruments had a wide dull rumble sound like a rock band down the street rehearsing.

Goran Kafjes Subtropic Arkestra at the Lutheran Church borrowed the the name of Sun Ra’s band. They built their songs around somewhat repetitive keyboard progressions and with seven players they managed to sound like a big band but they didn’t swing like Ra or visit the astral planes. Jonas Kullhammer was in the band which was sort of odd. He was such a dynamo with his own quartet in years past. But still I liked this band quite a bit. It was trumpet player, Goran Kafjes’, birthday and their music was fun like a Bollywood soundtrack.

Ingmar Bergman comes from the Faroe Islands and there is something of that austere quality in Yggdrasil’s delicate sensitive music. Like the early, hippie, new age ensembles Paul Winter Consort or Oregon, they look for inspiration close to the earth. Yggdrasil performed a beautiful nine part piece devoted to the Inuit and Native American tribes of North and South America. With chanting, piano, bass, flutes, violin, drums and an electric guitar player in a Pink Floyd shirt they were quite extraordinary.

I’m keeping track of the Jazz Fest over here.

Leave a comment
Posted on

No Dirt On The MBA Candidate

Eric DuFaure and Dwight Glodell in PCI Studios in Rochester, New York mixing Personal Effects' "So Hard"
Eric DuFaure and Dwight Glodell in PCI Studios in Rochester, New York mixing Personal Effects’ “So Hard”

I love this Polaroid because it perfectly captures the vibe between Eric DuFaure, who signed Personal Effects to Cachalot Records and Dwight Glodell who produced our first ep. We had dinner with Eric and his wife last night, the first time we had seen him them in thirty years. They have been living in Paris and we had a lot of catching up to do.

Eric had just visited Hal Willner in New York and he showed us some photos of Hal and his puppet collection. Howdy Doudy was in there. Eric told us he and Mitt Romney were in the same Harvard MBA class so he has been fielding a lot of inquiries lately from the press looking for salient Mitt stories.

When we first met Eric he was living in a loft on Mercer Street, we recorded tracks at nearby Sorcerer Sound and Cachalot’s office was at 611 Broadway at Houston, a building with lots of characters. Kieth Haring was downstairs, Ed Steinberg, Bob Singerman Management and Peter Leak. Neil Cooper, who founded the cassette only company called Reach Out Records (ROIR) was right next door to Eric.

We picked up right where we left off, so much so we wound up looking at old PE videos and Eric fell in love with “Bring Out The Jazz“, a song he never heard because we recorded it in our basement a few months after we parted ways. On the way out the door he suggested hiring some young kids to lip sync to the song and make a hit.

3 Comments
Posted on

Astral Traveling

Logo on door of old police station in Penn Yan, New York
Logo on door of old police station in Penn Yan, New York

A call on our home line from “FOB NY” got us out of bed this morning. Even though that line is on the “National Do Not Call Registry the cops get an exception for their extortion-tinged cold calls.

We borrowed my fathers car because ours is in the shop. He keeps his radio tuned 90.1, the jazz station, so we left it there and heard Pharaoh Sanders’ “Astral Traveling” on the way home. First song I heard back home was Sun Ra’s “We Travel the Spaceways.” I doubt that “Support the Police” sticker they would have given me if I had donated would do me any good in these worlds.

Leave a comment
Posted on

Pots & Pans

NEXUS Percussion Ensemble at Parkleigh Pharmacy with the Eastman School of Music's John Beck sitting in (on far left)
NEXUS Percussion Ensemble at Parkleigh Pharmacy with the Eastman School of Music’s John Beck sitting in (on far left)

The Percussion Rochester festival has popped up in Parkleigh Pharmacy. We used to buy the New York Times here on Sunday mornings when we lived in the Park Avenue area. It is no longer a pharmacy and has morphed into a high end trinket shop. My sister works here and I was hoping to see her but she had finished her shift and was out waking the dog by the time the NEXUS Percussion Ensemble started playing in the Mckenzie Childs section of the store. That’s Steve Gadd’s (Kate Bush, Paul McCartney, Paul Simon, Steely Dan, Joe Cocker, Chick Corea, Eric Clapton, James Taylor, Carly Simon, Jon Bon Jovi, Chet Baker, Paul Desmond, The Bee Gees) drum teacher, John Beck, the longtime Eastman School of Music faculty member and Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra percussionist on the far right. Peter Erskine performs music from Weather Report tonight.

Leave a comment
Posted on

How Does It Feel To Feel?

Side of yellow wooden building on Goodman Street in Rochester, New York
Side of yellow wooden building on Goodman Street in Rochester, New York

Vinyl does sound better even when it’s an mp3 file made from a 45 from 1967 and especially when the song is by The Creation.

In my reading the newest release from MX-80’s Bruce Anderson and Rich Stim, the heroic “Bar Stool Walker” nods a few times to Rochester’s Margaret Explosion. The music is lyric free, there are songs called “Happy Hour“, a video shot on the Golden Gate Bridge and “Tall Boy” and they have a clumsy drummer.

Bar Stool Walker is a multilayered project and I can’t say for sure that this is the case but we haven’t found any sax in there yet. Rich Stim taught Peggi to play sax. Her first song was “Hava Nagila.”

Rich Stim wrote a popular Personal Effects song, “So Hard.”

Many of the songs on Bar Stool Walker are already fully realized videos but it looks like we will have to wait a bit for the luscious Beach Boy cover “The Warmth of the Sun.”
Happy Hour
Calcutta Cutaway
Smoky
The Unsuspected
Major Pipe
The Bridge
Paper Hat
Hodaddy Humanoid
Tall Boy
The Warmth of the Sun
Bar Stool Walker

3 Comments
Posted on

Slag Heap

Twenty years ago Chris Schepp organized the first Infest, an all day concert with ten bands in the Olmstead designed Genesee Valley Park. Pete LaBonne put a band together for the affair and called it “Pete’s Rock Band.” Buffalo’s Bruce Eaton played bass and I played drums. I can’t remember who the other bands were but SLT must have been one of them because Matt Sabo, Pat Lowery and Marathon Mark can all be seen in the video footage we have. I used to have an “Infest” t-shirt and an “Infest” cassette but they’ve slipped away. We came across this vhs tape and Peggi edited a clip for YouTube.

Pete joins Margaret Explosion on piano Wednesday night at the Little Theater Café.

2 Comments
Posted on

Sitting, Thinking

White popcorn tree in bloom on March 16 in Durand Eastman Park
White popcorn tree in bloom on March 16 in Durand Eastman Park

I’m not sure what this tree is but it is in an area of the park where they have all sorts of fruit trees. The nearby pink flowering tress are identified as apricot trees so maybe it is in that family. It looks like a Popcorn Tree. Everything is coming on so fast in this summer like weather. We received some mail from the daughter of the former owner of our house. I dreaded opening the envelope thinking it must be a death notice but it was an invitation to his 100th birthday. Imagine how fast time is going for him.

The Spider and the Fly

2 Comments
Posted on

Mi Ricordo

Margaret Explosion at Abilene performing a soundtrack to circus movies
Margaret Explosion at Abilene performing a soundtrack to circus movies

Margaret Explosion plays an early show at Abilene tonight in the swanky upstairs lounge at 7:30. We’ll be performing a soundtrack to a collection of silent circus movies. Admission is free. Peggi has been warming up for the gig by playing sax along with Nino Rota’s soundtrack to Fellini’s Amacord. We have the lp but the digital files at Amazon were only $6.99 ($9.99 at Apple) so we downloaded a fresh copy. Don’t expect as many key changes tonight.

Leave a comment
Posted on

We Found Love In A Hopeless Place

Ski path to Lake Ontario in Rochester, New York
Ski path to Lake Ontario in Rochester, New York

A foot of snow changes everything. We cut the trail through the woods, skied along the ridge up to the lake and even took a loop around the luge hill. We were so tired we decided to sit on the couch and watch the Grammys.

Our “over the air” connection kept breaking up so we may have misread some of the intent but this is what we got. Bruce kicked it off with a pumped up, selfish sounding, ‘god is on our side’, pep rally anthem, setting the tone for the evening where it became clear that all of the successful songs repeat one line for the length of the tune. “We take care of our own.”

MC LL Cool J said a prayer to the heavenly father! Bruno Marks, a combination of Little Richard, Prince and a gay James Brown, had the best line of the night when told the crowd to “get off their rich asses.” An athletic Chris Brown auto tuned “Put your hands in the air.” Reba McEntire has had some serious work done on her face. Rihanna sang “We found love in a hopeless place” 64 times.

Lady Gaga was in the front row and caught in some sort of netting. The Beach Boys looked like they were curiosities in a songwriting museum. Unlike the guy in a cowboy hat who won an award, Taylor Swift was cute and actually sounded country. An alien looking Katy Perry sang “This is the part of me that you’re never gonna ever take away from me” over and over. The Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl lectured us about music. “Long live rock and roll.” Please. They couldn’t get this guy off the stage and even cut to him dancing to the big mouse dj.

Adele can really belt out a tune. Bon Iver managed to look disheveled in a suit as he thanked his parents. Jennifer Hudson sounded great singing Dolly Parton’s song in tribute to Whitney Houston. They should have just shown that clip, read a list of the award winners and edited out the rest. Instead we went three hours and then turned the thing off at eleven before Sir Paul did his Beatle thing.

2 Comments
Posted on

Coming Together

Ossia performing Frederic Rzewski's "Coming Together"
Ossia performing Frederic Rzewski’s “Coming Together”

Artists talks are not for the faint of heart. We bravely attended one at the new I-Square gallery last night where four artists talked about their work and so much more. It was exhilarating. Richard Harvey talked mostly of process but his is multifaceted and interesting. Wendy Menzie started making art after primal therapy in the 70’s. She quoted Philip Larken, “Your mom and dad fuck you up. They don’t mean to but they do” and spoke of her journey back to the child inside. Ed Buscemi stressed the importance of improvisation and relayed a dream he had thirty years ago where people were moving by him on a conveyor belt and he jumped on and tried to shake the people but he couldn’t bring them out of their trance. It seems to be his modus operandi. He is fond of asking “Are you kidding me?” in an animated fashion and he admitted to being hooked on conspiracy therories. Todd Beers discussed his breakthrough painting which is on view until tomorrow and told a beautiful story of his encounter with a dove on the fire escape he was sleeping on. He dimmed the lights and wowed us with his poetry. Harvey, Menzie and Buscemi all studied with Robert Marx who has his own opening tonight at Rochester Contemporary. He is featured in their Makers Mentors show.

We scurried downtown for the Ossia show at Kilbourn Hall but missed the opening toy piano number. We caught “I Can’t Concentrate” by the Brooklyn band, Zs, a mathematically challenging, post jazz, brutal-chamber piece. And then were blown away (again) by Ossia’s performance of Frederic Rzewski’s “Coming Together.” From the liner notes – “The work consists of a bass line accompanied by a series of instructions which can be realized by any group of instruments. With each performer acting as composer, the work allows for a variety of performance outcomes and is essentially an experiment in compositional anarchy.” A vocalist read a letter from Sam Melville-in prison in 1970 for series of radical bombings in Manhattan where no one was hurt-to his brother on top of the music. The twenty minute piece was trance-like and hallucinatory like a deep dream.

Leave a comment
Posted on

Monk Minus Piano

Dr. Carl Atkins playing Bye-Ya at the Baobab Cultural Center in Rochester, New York
Dr. Carl Atkins playing Bye-Ya at the Baobab Cultural Center in Rochester, New York

I had the best tofu I have ever had at Edibles on University Ave. It was marinated in a ginger sauce and grilled in some fashion that left it moist and soft on the inside but slightly charred on the outside with a caramelized sauce. We had dinner with our neighbors before heading down the street to the Baobab Cultural Center where noted Jazz authority, saxophonist, and RIT Professor, Dr. Carl Atkins and his group, “Culture Clash” gave a lecture lecture-performance. He was Co-Director, along with bassist Ron Carter, of the Thelonious Monk Institute. He led a very cool group of bass, drums and vibes and w would up with, “Epistrophy” and “Ruby, My Dear” and “Well, You Needn’t” swimming around in our heads. That led us to YouTube this morning where watched and listened to main ingredient. And then we dug up dvd copy of “Straight, No Chaser” that Jeff Munson gave us. That’s now number one in our queue.

Leave a comment
Posted on

Better Than France

Amy Rigby and Wreckless Eric at the Lovin' Cup in Rochester, New York
Amy Rigby and Wreckless Eric at the Lovin’ Cup in Rochester, New York

Wreckless Eric and Amy Rigby have taken a liking to Rochester. They’ve been here four times in the last few years and came up tonight to play a benefit for Tom Kohn and the Bop Shop. Amy told the crowd that when they decided to move from France they considered considered moving to Rochester but Eric interjected “it would have been a good choice if it wasn’t for the weather and it’s proximity to Canada and the the fact that it is so far away from everything else.” “It’s better than France” Amy insisted.

They played a fantastic set. They are perfect as a duo, with piano, guitars, bass and harmonies. Thoroughly seasoned performers they somehow manage to sound like the first band your friends put together. If only they would fire that drummer, the drum machine on Eric’s laptop that flattens the songs they use it on. They finished with a beautiful version of Johnny Cash’s “I Still Miss Someone.

Chandler Travis opened the show before driving to Trumansburg outside of Ithaca for another gig tonight. He brought the house down with a version of Pete LaBonne‘s “Turning The Page.” Amy told the the crowd she felt like she was tripping when Chandler and his bandmates came out into the crowd to perform this gem a cappella.

Here’s a live version of Pete LaBonne’s “Turning The Page”

Leave a comment
Posted on

Juggler

Juggler in streets of Barcelona, Spain
Juggler in streets of Barcelona, Spain

My punishment for going away is that I have to wade through and catalog all of the photos I took. We watched this guy for a while, waiting for the light to turn red and then darting out in front of the stopped cars to juggle for a minute and then hit the drivers up for money. Better than someone spitting on your windshield and then using a dirty rag to wipe it before accosting you for spare change.

Listen to Margaret Explosion “Juggler” with Jack Schaefer on bass clarinet

Margaret Explosion 45 RPM "Juggler/Purple Heart" (EAR 16) on Earring Records, released 2011 on black vinyl.
Margaret Explosion 45 RPM “Juggler/Purple Heart” (EAR 16) on Earring Records, released 2011 on black vinyl.
Leave a comment
Posted on

Modern Art And Poetry

Art opening at ISquare in Rochester, New York
Art opening at ISquare in Rochester, New York

Back just in time for winter and last night’s art opening at I-Square at the future four corners of Irondequoit. I have a few pieces in a show with Wendie Menzie, Ed Buscemi, Todd Beers and Richard Harvey. That’s Richard Harvey’s work shown to the left of mine in the photo above. It was a cool little gathering with coffee and homemade sweets. Peggi made ginger snaps with cayenne pepper following Shelley’s recipe.

We met I-Square developer, Mike Nolan, and our friend Charlie’s little sister. It gave me the opportunity to tell her the story Charlie told me of their other sister taking the ring off a famous dead man’s finger. I told the story to Chuck Cuminale and he wrote a song about it for Colorblind James. Charlie and Chuck are both dead now and Charlie’s sister had no idea there was song about all this.

Poet and artist, Todd Beers, said he gets all fired up at openings and can’t wait to get back and start work on something. I told him openings have exactly the opposite effect on me. Todd said he saw Peggi and me in my two portraits and he a sang a line from an old song of ours.

1 Comment