We missed all sorts of cool stuff this weekend. Nod played at a house party on Plymouth Avenue and Jim Mott had a an opening at the Oxford Gallery. We spent most of our free time restoring my dad’s brand new computer.
Peggi decided to to try one of Tom’s yoga classes at the Downtown Fitness Club. Tom used to be in her class there when Jeffery taught there. Peggi walked in a little late (runs in the family) and some familiar music was playing. Peggi said, “That’s our our music” and Tom said “What do you mean?” “That’s our band,” she said. Tom explained that his friend, Paul, made the compilation cd for him.
Here’s Margaret Explosion – Floating At The Bug Jar.
I’ve will soon be able to cross one of the items on our summer to do list off. Our garage is almost organized. It had become a dumping ground since we moved in. People keep asking us if we’ve seen the Hoarders show. We don’t get cable so we haven’t but I can imagine. I’ve been pushing the limits of our Waste Management pick-up service each week for the last month. I have a pile of old paintings out there including the one above. I’m stripping the old canvases and saving the stretchers.
I’ve been a fan of Peggy Lee since “Lady and the Tramp“. Now that we digitized our music library iTunes calculates it will take months to hear it all but we can’t go an hour in shuffle mode without hearing a Peggy tune. As it should be. So I was ecstatic to see Kevin’s post this morning. We played it three times in a row. Stunning arrangement. Minimal for maximum impact. Please stop reading this and visit “So Many Records” now.
Our old band, Personal Effects, covered “Is That All There Is?” and our new band, Margaret Explosion, covers “Fever” and we don’t do very many covers. Duke Ellington called her “The Queen”.
Peggi and I were watching tv at her parents house in the mid eighties and a Peggy Lee tv special came on. We flipped out and scrambled to get a VHS cassette in the machine. Peggi’s dad said, “Not that old broad?”. Peggy (with a “y”) had already had a stroke and she was having trouble with one side of face but she was god like.
Soon after we visited Peggi’s (with an “i”) sister in LA and asked if she knew where Peggy Lee lived. She had a hunch so we headed up in the Hollywood Hills. We bought a star map and Peggy Lee was not on it. We asked around and had it narrowed down to a particular street in Bel Air. We walked the whole street and looked at every house so I’m sure we saw it.
We had to weigh our tomatoes to gauge the proportions in the sauce recipe we follow. Twenty one pounds of tomatoes had us multiplying each of the other ingredients by seven. It took us us two hours to chop the basil, onions, peppers, carrots, oregano and parsley and another hour to clean up. We had to borrow Rick and Monica’s restaurant style sauce pan (more like a bucket). It simmered all day and we froze about twelve big containers of sauce.
We had the blight in one of gardens but the other has gone to town. Six plants have produced over a hundred tomatoes. We have very few sunny spots on our property so we have set up shop in our neighbors back yards. They genuinely enjoy the company so it’s a fair shake.
Kevin Patrick stopped by last night with with a dj from a local station called “The Zone”. Can’t say that I have ever heard the station. I can only imagine what kind of stuff they program. We sat around the table drinking Guinness and talking about music. I was remembering flipping from WBBF to WSAY to WKBW (from Buffalo) in the mid sixties. The radio was some sort of lifeline back then. Now, I mostly listen to PBS which coincidentally happens to be at 1370 AM, the former home of WSAY. Kevin said his most recent post was for us because we liked “jazz”.
I’m totally sold on the idea of jazz forty-fives but I didn’t have the heart to tell him I can’t stand jazz guitar. Guitar should stay out of the way of jazz and I could almost say rock would be better off without it. I love rhythm guitar but piano and the organ covered that ground pretty well. Sax is a much better instrument for solos.
I heard quite a bit of music over the weekend, most of it on my iPod while I was cleaning out the garage but we did go out on Friday to hear Ed Downey and his son at the Village Gate. They were kinda Dylan-like. You knew the words were probably great but you couldn’t understand them in the live setting. Ed told Peggi he was playing in another band, an avant jazz band, later that night in a parking lot across the street from the Cinema so we headed over there. We found a young, old fashioned prog rock band there so we kept moving. John Gilmore was driving and Peggi was sitting in the front seat when she spotted Joe Tunis hanging outside a bar near Monroe and Goodman. We pulled in the parking lot and watched a band with twins on guitar and violin set up for their performance. Nuuj was sitting behind his homemade analog synth playing booms and chiks with random sweeps.
Rob Nuuja’s homemade analog synth
We visited Peggi’s mom on Saturday and I ducked out to check up on our nephew who works at a nearby at pizzeria. I was happy to find he still had his job. I swung by Ken Frank’s place and interrupted his lawn mowing. He gave me an advance copy of a nasty sounding SLT record. “All killer, no filler” as Duane would say. I was listening to a German opera, probably something from Wagner. I know how much my mother-in-law likes opera so I tuned it in back at her place but first I had to turn the sound down on the tv. We watched “Animal Planet” with the opera as a soundtrack for about twenty minutes, a surreal experience, and Peggi’s mom said, “This is the weirdest music for this show”. Peggi suggested that we pop the André Rieu dvd in instead and we hit the road. About an hour later Peggi’s mom called and asked if we could come pick her up and give her a ride home from the concert. She was home, of course, bit it was nice to know she escaped for a bit.
Leo, our next door neighbor stopped by to see if we knew where his big magnet was. He had lost his hearing aid and thought he might be able to find it with the magnet. Peggi helped him locate that and we took a long walk in the neighbor next to ours stopping frequently to look at the silly things people do with their lots. The mini installations are every bit as interesting as the art you see in Chelsea.
Monica’s brother rode in on his Harley, the first one to show up for our neighbor’s house concert on Saturday. This one featured San Francisco via Buffalo singer songwriter Peter Case. We got in free for supplying the mic, cords and stand. Between songs Peter read the second chapter of his book, skipping the first one that concentrated on psychedelics. That was our favorite part and Peggi bought a copy. Monica’s brother and a couple from Cleveland stayed over and Monica came by on Sunday to borrow all our eggs so she could make breakfast for them all. I went back out to the garage and listened to some Sun Ra.
We tossed the toxic hard plastic bottles that WXXI gave us for joining and we bought these stainless steel Bios water bottles. It was hot in the woods today and we both finished our bottles. On our return we walked right by our house, grabbed our mail and our next door neighbor’s mail and headed straight for the pool where we plopped these things on the table.
Peggi had picked up the two autumn colored leaves in the lower right corner and I found the apple in the road. I found four golf balls when we crossed the course. I always like finding Nikes especially the Number ones although I learned they are no better than the other numbers. And I found a Callaway which I’ll give to my brother. That’s all he uses and the last time I saw him he was wearing a Callaway hat.
That’s our mail on the top with the two cds I ordered. Here I am trying to get rid of those things and buying more at the same time. One is the Chico Hamilton soundtrack to Roman Polanski’s Repulsion and the other is a recent Sun Ra re-release of two of his old self pressed Saturn lps. I bought two of those Saturn lps from the band when they were at Red Creek in early eighties. They were supposed to be ten bucks but the two I got had no sleeves so they were five each and one had a pure white label so I asked Sun Ra to sign it.
And that’s Peggi’s hand in the upper left hand corner.
8-tracks for another lifetime: David Bowie, Low; Ramones, Leave Home; James Brown, Reality; Patti Smith, Radio Ethiopia; Muddy Waters, After The Rain; Ramones, Ramones; Kinks, Village Green; James Brown, Hell; Beach Boys, Holland; Toot & THe Maytals, In The Dark; Fela Kuti, Africa ’70; Bootsy, Player Of The Year; Iggy Pop, The Idiot; Bootsy, Ahh…The Name Is Bootsy, Baby; Patti Smith, Horses; Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan at Joujouka; Sun Ra, The Magic City; Lou Reed, Metal Machine Music
8-Tracks have to be one the clunkiest mediums ever invented for playing music but in 1969 they seemed wondrous. My college roommate had a white Plymouth Barracuda and a collection of ten or so 8-Tracks. I couldn’t get enough of Led Zeppelin’s first but the one that seemed absolutely perfect for our off campus outings was Paul Butterfield’s “In My Own Dream.”
Elvin Bishop played guitar on that album and I always figured it was him that sang the title song but Bob Mahoney straightened me out. It was Paul Butterfield singing and playing the slinky guitar part. Philip Wilson had left the Art Ensemble and he played drums on this album and a young David Sanborn played sax but the gorgeous sax solo on this track is credited to Gene Dinwiddie. In my own dream, what a place to be!
8-tracks for another lifetime: David Bowie, Low; Ramones, Leave Home; James Brown, Reality; Patti Smith, Radio Ethiopia; Muddy Waters, After The Rain; Ramones, Ramones; Kinks, Village Green; James Brown, Hell; Beach Boys, Holland; Toot & THe Maytals, In The Dark; Fela Kuti, Africa ’70; Bootsy, Player Of The Year; Iggy Pop, The Idiot; Bootsy, Ahh…The Name Is Bootsy, Baby; Patti Smith, Horses; Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan at Joujouka; Sun Ra, The Magic City; Lou Reed, Metal Machine Music
I stopped in to see our neighbor, Leo and found him going through a pile of boxes. He was looking for his crock to make sauerkraut and he looked up at me and said, “Look at this mess. A good fire would solve all my problems”.
I am determined to straighten our garage out this summer. It’s been a dumping ground since we moved in here. I found a few boxes of 8-tracks. I would love to get rid of them before I have a fire.
Reduced table at AJ Wright’s in Culver Ridge Plaza, Rochester, N
I do most of my clothes shopping at AJ Wright’s in Culver Ridge Plaza. I stopped in for a new pair of shorts and picked out a plaid, Phat Farm pair for ten bucks. Up at the checkout the lady in front of me was complaining to the cashier about the amount of merchandise on the floor, literally on the floor. The cashier explained that they don’t have enough employees to keep the place up. While they talked I took this shot of the reduced table.
We played an art opening at RIT over the weekend and during the break a guy came up to me and introduced himself as an old neighbor. I was his paperboy and when I was a little older I babysat for his daughter. His daughter was there too with her husband. They had all just arrived and had not heard us play yet. The daughter’s husband looked at Peggi’s soprano sax and asked, “So do you play the kind of music you snuggle up with?” He winked while asking this. I said, “No, it’s more like the kind of music you drive off the road to.”
After the gig we drove out to Jeff and Mary Kaye’s place to help them with their stereo. They were going to have a pizza party the next night and they wanted to hook their computer up to the stereo so people could dance. Driving along the river on the way home we found a station playing Donovan’s “Catch The Wind” and the dj followed that up with “Wild Is The Wind”. Talk about “driving off the road” music! We were thinking it was Antony singing it but it turned to be Nina Simone. Guess it’s pretty clear where he got his thing from. We were so taken by this song that we found ourselves in the lane for 590 South to Corning. I had to swerve at the last minute to point the car toward Rochester.
Our friend, John Gilmore, won a pair of tickets to the Further show at Highland Bowl. He was the ninth caller to Scott Regan’s WRUR morning show. He already had tickets so he gave them to us and encouraged us to go. He was there early enough to hear the sound check and stake out the perfect spot for his chair. We got there just before the show and wandering around looking for him for whole first set. The Bowl was packed, wall to wall tie dye, and if that was Frederick Douglas instead of a statue of him looking out over the crowd he would be stunned at what post emancipation looks like. We watched a guy pass out as he walked. He fell over a group of people who were sitting on a blanket spilling a woman’s beer. She jumped up and said, “That beer cost me seven dollars.”
The band opened with Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away.” We had just seen a “Not Fade Away” t-shirt and another one that said, “Wish You Were Beer.” The smell of pot filled the air, not the old fashioned scent but pungent, skunky stuff. The band was playing Traffic’s “Feelin’ Alright” when a group of kids in front of us asked if we had seen a bone bowl. I could barely hear with my earplugs in and said, “What?” “A small bone bowl pipe. I just had it a second ago.” The band sounds like the Dead on steroids doing athletic versions of their classics and crazy covers like “Strawberry Fields” and Pink Floyd’s “Time”. The sound was fantastic. The intermission music was all James Brown.
Phil Lesh and Bob Weir’s band includes a guitar player from a Dead cover band who sounds like Garcia when he sings and sort of sounds like him when he plays and a piano/organist who is the musical foundation. They do an admirable job of carrying on the Dead legacy. I’m glad we were beer.
Anne Havens hired us to record her sound sculpture installation piece called “Grace” and I can’t think of a better job. The work will be part of the upcoming MAG Biennial. Anne filmed it when it was shown at the Hungerford building but the mic on the video camera picked up a hum from the the fan that moves air on the hundred or so spoons that hang from pieces of string. It also picked up noise from the railroad yard out behind the building. We brought our mics over to her apartment today and we plan to drop a new soundtrack on her video.
Anne is such an inspiration. She surounds herself with art and treats everything she does as an art project. She has just returned from Florida with thirty or so new paintings based on Milton. Why Milton? It has something to do with happenstance.
I’m behind on the World Cup and my work but I’m keeping track of the Jazz Fest here.
Francois Bourassa Quartet performing at the 2010 Rochester International Jazz Festival
Every Jazz Fest we stumble on one one act that is so good we see both the first and second show. Dave Liebman Quartet and Blake Tartare were both in that category a few years ago. This year it was Francois Bourassa Quartet from Canada. Three quarters of the band have been playing together for twelve years it shows as they complete each others thoughts and delicately support one another as they solo. The wild card here is the young Philippe Melanson on drums. Like a Warhol Factory star you can’t take your eyes off him and he plays in a completely unique way so you can’t help but tune in.
I’ve been keeping track of some of the Jazz Fest here.
Charnette Moffett at the Rochester International Jazz Festival
Chuchito Valdes, the son and grandson of famous Cuban bandleaders, opened at Montage with a rousing Cuban number that came on like a tropical storm and brought the crowd to their feet. This guy is sensational! His piano playing is every bit as powerful as the powerful drummer who was sitting on the other side of the stage from him. And then it was as delicate as can be on a beautiful rendition of “Over The Rainbow.” It’s kinda creepy when someone makes everyone every other band at the festival sound like a toy band.
Charnette Moffett was named after his father, Charles, and Ornette Coleman, who Charles played with. Charles plays drums on the fabulous “Golden Cirle” albums from the mid sixties and Charnette plays bass on two of my favorite Onette cds, the two “Sound Museum” releases. We had to check him out and we were richly rewarded. Although billed as a trio he opened with a mindblowing solo performance on stand up bass. He switched to the electric bass after a half hour or so and was joined by a woman on tambura for a beautiful version of “Nature Boy”. A drummer joined next on tablas and drum kit and then a piano player and a trumpeter. They proceeded to take it out! During there last song an alarm went off and kept going off at regular intervals every twenty seconds. Charnette stopped the band started playing with the siren, wrapping melodies around the mournful siren.
I probably take a picture of the Rochester Gas & Electric (there’s a monopoly for you) power plant every year during the annual Jazz Fest. I put my three year old, pocket, point & shoot in “Scene, Night Portrait” mode, set the timer and placed it on the curb.
We rode downtown with John Gilmore and were almost there when I realized I had left my Jazz Pass in our car so I wouldn’t forget it. Peggi had listened to the sound samples and had a club hopping route sketched out but this wrinkle rearranged the evening for us. We started with Katherine Russell and then ran into Rick and Monica in the newly carpeted tent. They highly recommended the Scottish sax quartet at Christ Church so we left and walked in the rain stood in back of the church while they played their opening number. The church was packed but I hatched a plan for a seat. I figured someone would hate them and walk out when the song finished. We planned to walk right down the center isle and grab the seats of whoever left. We kept walking toward the alter and no one left. We got to the front row (or pew) and a couple got up. Best seats in the house and the saxes sounded fantastic with the cathedral ambiance.
Chris Grell, Donna Grell, and Patty Cowie at the Rochester International Jazz Festival
I got in to see my doctor on a day’s notice so that he could take a look at a tick bite that I have on my leg. I spotted the tick as I was getting ready for bed and suspect I picked it up when we walked in the woods that morning. I crushed it as I tried pulling it off and then dug the rest of it out with some tweezers. My doctor said there has not been a case of Lyme disease in Monroe County so he said keep an eye on it and if it acts up he will prescribe antibiotics. There is a lot of worrisome tick bite info online.
Went straight to the Jazz Fest from the doctor’s and started with Billy’s Band, a loungey, Russian Tom Waits-like combo. Worked our way over to the Xerox Auditorium to hear the Lynne Arriale Trio. She plays like Keith Jarrett, lyrical and relaxed and the band listens deeply while backing her.
Most fun of the night was out on Gibbs Street. There were too many people to hear the band so we hung out in the back by the merchandise booths. We got in line for a Downbeat photo session and a woman in front of me asked if she had just butted in line. I said I think so but that’s ok.” Turned out to be Dave Mahoney’s high school flame and a couple of other rockin’ women that I went to high school with. I grabbed a bootleg copy of their photo (above).
Does the Great Blue Heron sound anything like a vuvuzela? Not really but I’m trying to make sense of this collision of coincidence. Rich sent us a photo of a Heron in Sausalito and we just spent some time watching one practice tai chi in Eastman Lake. The World Cup and the Rochester Jazz Fest both start today! I’m a little worried about how we’re going to keep up with our work in the next few weeks.
Maybe it is just the sort of distraction we need to wean us from obsessive Jazz Festival devotion. The organizers added a new venue, a tent in parking lot at Abilene. We were excited about hearing jazz over there but then found out all those acts are Americana, a categorization that bothers me. And the success of the last eight years seems to have only diluted the presence of American jazz. Still no Ornette, Pharoah, Joe McPhee, McCoy Tyner, Art Ensemble but Bernie Williams is here. We have the Club Pass and we’ll wander and we always find some cool stuff so I’m optimistic. Pay no attention to me.
Someone named Mike Weber took video at the annual Bob Dylan Birthday Bash. Chuck Cuminale started this tradition about thirty years ago and the last incarnation of his band, The Colorblind James Experience and now Hunu, carries the tradition on. It is always fun but a bit melancholy without Chuck. Chuck, real name James and really colorblind, was born a few days before or after Dylan and he was always one of Bob’s biggest fans but not all of Dylan. He was very particular. I know he liked this song because I remember Peggi singing it with him. That’s Ken Frank, CBJ bass player from the classic lineup, on bass in this video.
Our neighbors were headed home from the beach when an SUV pulled in front of them. A guy hopped out and offered to sell them his homemade cd for ten bucks. They made another offer and came home with the goods and then let us borrow the unlabeled cd. It was produced by Bricksonion and his studio is in his car! The same car that pulled in front of our neighbors. If you get the itch to lay down a few tracks, give a call. Check out his YouTube Channel and you’ll see local rappers performing in his car.
Bricksonion (“like Smithsonion”) wasn’t around when the Stones recorded “Exile On Main Street” but it too was recorded by a mobile unit. I’m reading the 33 1/3 book on “Exile” now and it’s coinciding nicely with all the press from the re-release of that double lp. This 33 1/3 series would make good ebooks. Wish this one wasn’t so tedious. It doesn’t even make me want to put the lp on. It wasn’t the Stone best either.
I just checked back with the Amy Rigby/Wreckless Eric video that I took when they were here last year. I expected more that 478 views but there are two other versions of “Dancing With Joey Ramone” up there. I wish I could inflate their numbers. This is a sensational song. They’ll be back in town tomorrow night at the Lovin’ Cup in Henrietta and they are not to missed.
It seems all good home cooked meals begin with onions and peppers. Agreed?
Roy Sowers goes to a lot of garage sales. And he likes to share the curiosities he picks up. He comes to see the band a lot and in the last year he has given us an old Miles lp, a drum case, Dr. John’s “In The Right Place” and a Benny Goodman lp with Gene Kruppa on drums. A few weeks back he gave us a 78rpm Count Basie set. I was pretty sure our Stanton turntable could do 78s but when I got home I couldn’t find the setting. I considered recording the lp at 45 and speeding the files up on the computer but I returned the recordings to Roy.
While listening to the stack one dollar lps that scored at Record Archive I spotted the 78 setting on our turntable. You press 33 and 45 at the same time and of course, you get 78. I never put this together until now.
Vinyl records purchased at Record Archive Sidewalk Sale in Rochester, NY
Peggi headed out to pick up her mom and stopped to talk with our neighbor who’s putting up a new fence to combat the deer. He pointed out that our left rear tire was low so Peggi turned around and asked me if I wanted to pump it with our bicycle pump. I had done this before but it’s a lot of work so I suggested she stop at the corner and visit the 50 cent air machine. When she returned home with her mom she informed me that “Air is now a dollar.”
This reminded me of the conversation I had with John on Saturday night as we sat around the picnic table out behind Abilene next door to world’s loudest air conditioner. John is an antique dealer and he was telling me that he could buy anything for a dollar. “Everything can be bought for a dollar.” “Things used to be rare,” he said. “Now, nothing is rare.” He pointed to the Labatt Blue bottle in front of him and said, “If they stop making this beer I could still buy it online.” I knew John was right but it still sounded astonishing.
We had been at Record Archive’s Sidewalk Sale on Saturday morning and they had a row of tables set up with $1 CDs and $1 LPs. Jeff Spevak was just finishing sifting through the boxes of vinyl. He told us, “I got all the good stuff.” I couldn’t tell if he was kidding or not but he did have a nice looking George Jones lp in his stack. We found fourteen treasures and sure enough each one was a dollar.
The Last Poets lp is beyond astonishing. “White man’s gotta god complex.” And the “Flamenco Moods” record turned out be a hard core mournful flamenco mood. Already had Peggy Lee’s “Is That All There Is” but it too was only a dollar.
