I was looking for a gimmick to make the Margaret Explosion email announcement at least sort of interesting. Its a stretch when you play almost every week. Then I realized that we’ve been doing this for ten years so I put up a page making that milestone and I added a few new photos. Pete LaBonne came up with the ME name when he and Shelley were house sitting here in 1998. We started playing Friday night happy hours at the Bug Jar and kept that gig for about three years while the band morphed. The lineup has solidified but we’re still trying to morph.
Scott LaFaro and Nick from the Seabreeze Inn in Rochester, NY
We did some overeating this weekend while celebrating my birthday. Peggi’s mom took us (we actually took her but she paid) to Mario’s on Monroe Avenue. It’s over the top Italian but well done and the food is sensational. We started with roasted calamari that was light and tender. We asked a few questions about its preparation and our waitress brought the recipe out to the table. They make their own breadcrumbs and lightly batter the squid with lemon, olive oil, Italian parsley (there is a difference) and salt and pepper. They grill it on an open fire for two minutes tops. Mario himself was sitting at the table next to us with his son. They had a fancy glass wine decantor on the table that looked like a bong. Tony and Tony wandered around the room serenading guests on accordion and guitar. They played something for my mother-in-law that only she recognized.
The following night my parents took us to Nick’s on Culver Road up near the lake. I couldn’t decide between the eggpant parm and the manicotti so I asked the waitress if she could split the order. She brought Nick over for clearance. When he gave his approval I did a quick little drum role on the table. Nick asked if I was a drummer. I nodded and he asked who I played with. I said “Margaret Explosion” and he winced.
Nick brought me over to a picture on the wall of him (down front with a big grin) and Scott LaFaro. Scott is center right in the picture above. He played bass on some early Ornette Coleman records and died in a car crash outside Canandaigua when he was 25. Nick managed Club 86 in Geneva during its heyday when Ella Fitzgerald, Louie Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Nat King Cole, Lionel Hampton, Buddy Rich, and Tony Bennett all played there.
Peggi started teaching a new round of Dreamweaver classes at the Genesee Center for the Arts last night. I rode downtown with her and then walked over to the Memorial Art Gallery for a lecture by local artist, Jim Mott. He travels the country trading paintings for hospitality and his “Itinerant Artist Project” was featured on the Today show. He talked over a PowerPoint presentation, sometimes talking about one thing while flashing paragraphs of type on the screen that had no relation to what he was talking about. But he had fun with it all and he seems like the the nicest guy you would ever want to meet. His photos and paintings are beautiful. They are small, like 6 by nine, so he can travel with them when they are wet in a plywood case with slots. His landscapes are relaxed and painterly but perfectly readable. There is a nice little slide show on his site.
I met Geri McCormick after the lecture and we went across the street to Village Gate to see Fay Victor and her band. They had just driven up from NYC and they were playing in the atrium outside the Bop Shop. They sounded great here, a little bit like the Art Ensemble with Fontella Bass. Avant and soulful at the same time.
I have a sticker on my drum case that came from MX-80 some time in the eighties. It reads “Just Say Nothing” and is their take on the “Just Say No” campaign that was so effective in staunching the thirst for drugs. I was reminded of it at our Margaret Explosion gig last night when Peggi suggested that some of us stop while we are playing, just leave some spaces in the music before plugging up all the holes again. We did so in the next song and we got rounds of applause in the two breaks. It is such a simple technique but incredibly effective.
We made up the music in both sets last night. That is, we didn’t play any songs. Some would call it jamming but if it sounds like a jam we consider it a failure. We try to hang melodies on a rhythm and develop and reinforce them in way that makes them sound like a song or at least a musical interlude. So without arrangements we need all the help we can get and this stopping thing works.
It alerts everyone in the room when the color of the sound changes and most importantly it alerts the other players. The space gives us some breathing room to solidify the parts or prompt a change in direction. It allows the person who is sitting out to think about their contribution before jumping back in. And when the other instruments do come back in it is a release for anyone who is listening. We don’t know what we’re doing and that is the whole idea. If we knew what we were doing, we’d be doing songs all the time. Leaving spaces makes it seem like we know what we are doing.
The funny thing about it all is that we don’t have to play any better during the breaks. We don’t really need to solo or anything. All we need to do is have someone stop. In the old days, in previous bands, we would work breaks into our tightly arranged songs and invariably the loudest cheers of the night were when one or two of the instruments stopped. The fist pumping crowd down front loved that stuff. The bass player and clunky drummer would just keep playing exactly what they were playing under the music and the crowd would start cheering just because someone had stopped.
Margaret Explosion photo by Richard Edic. Bernie Heveron is playing bass with the band.
Last week Bernie Heveron sat in on bass for a song with Margaret Explosion. That’s all it took to transform this lineup into Personal Effects. So we did “Big Man” from the PE repertoire. Tom Kohn has scheduled a “Scorgies Reunion” at the German House for November 21th. That was thee club back in the day. We have never had a Margaret Explosion rehearsal but we may need a few for the Personal Effects gig.
Richard Edic took this shot. Bernie wasn’t the only PE bass player. First there was the infamous, Martin Edic and after Bernie there was Robin. She is featured in the video below. And then Martin came back. Margaret Explosion plays tonight at the Little Theater Cafe.
There is a pool on a vacant lot on our street with a swimming pool that was built in the mid sixties. Tonight we started our first of two years as pool club presidents. We had a meeting on our deck and decided who’s going to do the lawn this year, who’s going call the power company to turn on the juice and when to open the pool (in three weeks!).
As presidents we get to balance the chemistry. Last year’s president let it get away from her twice and the water turned green. We have a little chemistry kit that we will check the water with and we’ll add chlorine cakes as needed. We also get to make a schedule for what week each neighbor is responsible for skimming the pool and running the underwater vacuum.
Our neighbor, Rick, told me that Bob Mahoney reviewed the Pete LaBonne house concert. He did a lot better job than I did.
Pete LaBonne’s performance in our living room was nothing short of amazing. Peggi and I have been singing “You’re a hundred monkeys typing on the bottom of my heart” all morning. We had about twenty people here. Peggi made banana nut bread and I made my best yet of hummus. We videoed the performance and will have something on YouTube soon. Just have to clear a few legal hurdles.
And just as I was extolling the virtues of our newly digitized music collection, iTunes froze up on me. It was about two minutes into Sly and Family Stone’s, “Sex Machine”and the dance floor was full. While I rebooted I played a forty five that had been sitting on the turntable for the last few weeks, “Hot Chocolate’s Don’t Turn It Off (I Kinda Like It)”. Damn did that sound good. Full and warm, not cold and digital. That may have been the number that got people taking turns dancing on our coffee table.
An article in yesterday’s NYT said today is Record Store Day. It coincides with the Grand Opening of Record Archives’ new store in Rochester. There are a bunch of bands playing there and we head over there. Might pick up some vinyl.
Pete and Shelley are here so we decided to follow in Rick Simpson’s footsteps and have a house concert. Show time is 40 minutes away. Some of the email invites went out only a few hours ago. We’ll see who shows up. Two guests are already here. The sun will be setting behind Pete LaBonne when he hits the stage in our living room. We have the Sony mini disc in record mode and Peggi plans on videoing.
The Stones movie was sensational. The sound was better than any concert or movie I have ever been too. This was the first movie we’ve seen at the Imax theater in Gates. We had the best seats in the house for the 9:40 show and felt like we sitting on the stage. Mick was in full aerobics mode and the band looked was clearly having as good a time as we were.
I made a fire this morning even though it was near sixty and sunny. I was crumpling up yesterday’s paper and Peggi was reading Frank Rich’s op ed piece aloud from today’s paper.
“. . . a mini-Tet that belied the “success” of the surge. Even fewer noticed that the presumptive Republican nominee seemed at least as oblivious to what was going down as President Bush, no tiny feat.”
“Can you read that last sentence again”, I asked. She did and I looked down at my feet. “I don’t get the tiny feet part” I said. She read the line again and I finally got it. Do other languages share the same pronunciation of differently spelled words? I’ll ask Julio, a native of Spain, when I see him later for dinner.
Last night was the annual “Jazz Night” at Mountain Rise United Church of Christ in Pittsford, NY. Peggi’s mom belongs to this church and she invited us out. This is the same UCC organization that Obama belongs to. I wanted to tell the minister at this church that I pretty much agreed with the Reverend Wright but I resisted.
Parishioner and piano player Rob Blumenau put a great band together. He said their average age was 43. The bass player was an Eastman student, the guitar player was still in high school and the other two weren’t giving their age up. But Rob did say the the drummer, Brad Paxton, brought the average up more than he did. And the drummer was a wild man! He has played with a long list of famous performers. He and Rob were having a great time. We did too.
We picked up some Chinese at Golden Dynasty to take out to Peggi’s mom’s place. I ordered Jalapeño Tofu which I love because it tastes like the pepper and onion mixture that street vendors dump on an Italian sausage. My fortune was was stellar. “Ideas you may believe as absurb ultimately lead to success!”
Back at home we watched “We Jam Econo”, the Minutemen documentary. Main Minuteman D. Boon, in the center, was a lovable teddy bear who advised moms and dads to teach their children about art so they could teach their children about art. I tracked down their double album, “Double Nickles On The Dime” in the basement this morning and plan on taking it for a spin tonight.
It snowed yesterday, a wet snow, and during the night clumps of snow fell off the pine tree that hangs over our bedroom. It sounded like squirrels jumping from the limbs to our roof and it sounded like they were digging into something. I figured they had found a way into our attic which is about a foot and a half tall at the peak. I imagined they were tearing up the place. I got the ladder out in the morning and went up on the roof. There were no footprints.
It was good packing. We rolled up a dirty snowman.
Work is so slow, I’ve been spending days organizing my digital life. I have all our mp3s on one drive and a backup of that folder on another drive. Each computer had its own folder of photos and random backups were scattered about. Never again. Our photos are all on one drive and we have a backup of that. Our primary computers are all running Time Machine. And there is a hard drive next to the stereo with the mp3 library on it. New cds get ripped when they walk in the door. I’m even letting iTunes manage the batch.
With all our mp3s in one place the Party Shuffle feature gets a good groove on. We just listened to a Coltrane tune from Impressions, Ain’t Nothin’ Goin’ On But The Rent, a 20 minute Mingus Medley, Respectable by the Stones (their last good album), Eric Dolphy Springtime, The ChiLites Oh Girl, Tommy James Cellophane Symphony, Bob Dylan I’m Not There, Maggot Brain, I Got It Bad by Peggy Lee and Marquee Moon.
Dwight sent us this shot of fours guys who went out to hear Margaret Explosion last night. The shot looks like it was caught caught on a surveillance camera. The Little closed the Cafe for a private party last night. Sorry about that. We’ll be back next week.
Peggi spent many hours preparing for today’s pre-hearing on our tax reassessment issue. As we headed into the library for encounter we noticed another couple coming out. The woman had a manila envelope and the man had his hands in his pockets. So I put my hand my packets. We signed in at a desk in the basement in front of three tables where people were making their cases. This was a carpeted rec room with colorful signs on the walls. One read, “How Many Ways Can You Tell A Story”. Others read, “Tell It With Stories”, “Have Fun With Words”, Some Words Rhyme” and “Tell It With Puppets”. We started laughing while picturing the idea of Peggi presenting our case with puppetry.
Last Wednesday’s Margaret Explosion gig started real slow with only two people in attendance, a couple with broken English accents. They have been here before and they stayed for full ride. We had a pretty good crowd by the end of the night and on the way out the couple said, “See you next time”.
This gig is so casual, it is perfect for Margaret Explosion considering we don’t have any set list, we never practice and we make up most of the night rather than play songs. We have this affliction where our songs never sound as good as they did the first time, when it really wasn’t a song at all.
Truth is most of them are a lot closer to daydreams than songs. This first tune from last week just sort of floated by for that couple.
We skied into the woods this morning under pure blue skies and ahead of the 40 degree temperatures. Peggi had rubbed glide wax on our waxless skis and they were so fast they wanted to go right out from under us. My right right arm felt sore and then I remembered arm wrestling with Monica over the weekend. I will not underestimate her one hundred pounds again. She challenged me and we wrestled to a draw. Actually I called the draw and quit. She is amazing.
Peggi and I hooked up Rick and Monica and skied up to Lake Ontario over the weekend. They invited us over for lunch. We had leftovers of mushroom barley soup from Polska Chata and artichoke, roasted red pepper, Kalamata olives hard Sicilian cheese ($2 extra) from Nino’s. Rick let us borrow a Dick Cavett set of dvds.
We watched “The Woodstock Show” last night. I remember watching that with Dave Mahoney after he talked us into leaving Woodstock early because he thought they were going to run out of food. Joni Mitchell made the Jefferson Airplane look silly with her a capella version of “The Fiddle and the Drum”. Up next was Sly and the Family Stone and Debbie Reynolds (ouch). Sly was very cool but Dick Cavett acted like Sly was incoherent. He was just being Sly for crying out loud. Dick Cavett was starting to piss me off. Janis Joplin had a real dorky band but she was still amazing. Dick fawned all over her because she read a book or two. David Bowie looked kinda geeky and nervous fiddling with his cane. Maybe it was speed. Mick Jagger took complete command of the camera and made Dick Cavett look tiny.
We still have another disc or so to go. I wish they had left the original commercials in there
Bootsy Collins at King All Stars recording session at PCI Studios in Rochester, NY
I spent the morning in the basement working on a painting that required a fair amount of attention to detail. The face I was working on emerges from a white background and I was struggling with the edges so it wouldn’t look like a mask. Every move I made felt heavy handed so I’d paint it out and sneak up on it again. Bootsy Collins’ “Can’t Stay Away”, especially the falsetto refrain, was stuck in my head. I find the only way to deal with something like this is to play the song and exorcise it so I came upstairs and cranked it.
4D Advertising did a cd cover for “The King Allstars” on After Hours Records and I’ve had this Polaroid of Bootsy in my desk drawer since whenever that was. Tom Kohn and Marty Duda brought all the King Records guys to Rochester and recorded them in PCI Studios. We did the packaging for the cassette and lp as well in those days.
Peggi and I saw Bootsy in the late seventies at the War Memorial with Parliament and Funkadelic. Anita Ward opened the show with a twenty minute version of “Ring My Bell”. Don’t get started with that song. That’ll stick in your head for a while. We saw George Clinton in the eighties at the Warehouse in Rochester and Bootsy was a special guest. He was sensational and stole the show both times. What’s Bootsy doin’?
Bob Martin, who plays guitar with Margaret Explosion, arranged for Claudia Engelhart, Bill Frisell’s live sound engineer, to talk about her craft for Bob’s business client, BSW. Frisell was in Buffalo last night so Bob got some free tickets. Ken Frank, Peggi and I met at Bob’s office and got in his VW for the trip to Buffalo. The four of us (that would be all of Margaret Explosion) were going to have dinner when we got there and the trip usually takes about an hour. It was snowing and the expressway was moving pretty slowly. We passed a few cars that had spun off the road and decided to wait until we we got to the New York State Thruway to see if it was in any better shape. It wasn’t so we turned around and came back.
It was still snowing when we woke up and we have another ten inches or so coming today. We’re supposed to play at at the Little tonight. We will have to do some shoveling and skiing first.
We stopped in on the Dave Cross family benefit at the German House last night and walked in just as Phil Marshall was ending his set. We heard he did a great version of “September Song” and told a few stories about Dave who recently died of a brain tumor. Phil played in a version of Coffee with Dave and they did a cover of a Raymond Scott tune that wound up on a European compilation. They played a gig at the Bottom Line in New York and Dave was smoking joints all the way down there. Phil said he was pissed that they were jeopardizing the performance but it came off flawlessly and Phil learned some sort of lesson from this.
Nod at the German House in Rochester New York
Nod took the stage next and the sound was big. Chris Schepp made it bigger on magical keyboards. Peggi wanted to dance but didn’t. The only ones up close were the little kids playing on the dance floor. Nod has a new cd coming out in a few weeks. Chris was excited about the art work he did for the package. He recycled some commercial piece that he originally did for Dick Poole’s agency.
We were standing with Martin Edic during Nod and it was impossible to talk. He appeared in Peggi’s dream last night offering some advice on a dispute we were having with some neighbors in Mexico. I guess we had bought some beachfront property in Cozumel or Playa del Carmen and strangers were swimming in our pool. We were considering building a wall. Martin offered his advice and Peggi wrote him a check for $500.
After Nod, we walked down to Tap & Mallet and had a pint of McBane’s Bitter. I checked in on the paintings I have there. The place was packed. We chatted with Joe Tunis and Chris Reeg who had just finished their “Deciduous vs Conifer” gig at House of Hamez and then called it a night.
Respect Sextet played the Village Gate Atrium on Tuesday night so there was a serious conflict with my painting class. I checked their website and it said they would be be doing a clinic at their alma mater, the Eastman School of Music, at 4PM that same day.
So we found our way to Room 305 and sat in the back in desk/chairs. The word “idiomatic” was underlined on a chalk board and under it were three descriptions,” dance based”, “variation” and “improvisation”, three things that don’t immediately come to mind when you think of this prestigious school of music. The other green blackboards were permanently lined with musical staffs. The G clef was waiting.
There were about twenty five people in the room, most of them Eastman students. Josh Rutner, the group’s sax player, closed the door and the group launched into one of drummer, Ted Poor’s compositions. They started reading and just as quickly moved to playing and the band sounded great. It felt like we were inside a big, warm speaker. I gather most of them graduated in 2003 but they sound like seasoned pros, in full command of some meaty music.
Between songs they discussed making money with music, getting gigs, doing without health insurance, and life in NYC versus Rochester. Bass player, Malcolm Kirby and Ted Poor are apparently making a living with their music. Josh said, “I think I’m happy”. The Eastman students all talked of moving to New York, Boston or Europe after graduation. Trombone player, James Hirschfeld, in a Sun Ra t-shirt, said getting together to play involved an insane amount of travel. “It would be like driving from here to Fredonia to rehearse.” They emphasized the importance of their formative weekly Wednesday night gig at Java’s while they were here going to school. They released a 3 inch cd of Sun Ra’s “A Call For All Demons”. It was recorded live at Java’s in 2002 and gives you an inkling of what you missed.
I snuck out of painting class at the Memorial Art Gallery and caught a few of their songs outside the Bop Shop in Village Gate. These guys are my favorite group to have ever come out of Rochester.
The Chiropractor (Gary Seidel) from the “Community Icons” series by Paul Dodd. Acrylic house paint on billboard paper, 54″ wide by “60” high 1989
Steve Hoy was in Rochester and Personal Effects was playing down at Scorgies. We were hanging around after the gig and we started hopping parking meters. I landed wrong and jammed my leg up my back like I was trying to shorten it or something. I had muscle spasms and saw my doctor about it. He prescribed muscle relaxers which didn’t do much. The pain continued so I saw him again. He prescribed pain killers which did quite a bit. Except I was working as a free lance graphic artist and I couldn’t work while taking them. Friends kept saying, “Go to a Chiropractor” but I gave my doctor one more shot. He told me there was not much choice but to get in bed and rest for a week.
I checked out Dr. Donald Siedel, a Chiropractor whose office was around the corner from my house on Culver. He put me on my back and had me hold out my arms and he pushed against them. I had no strength at all in some positions. He rolled me over and told me to take a deep breath. When I exhaled he popped my spine so the knobs lined up. He didn’t prescribe anything, he just manhandled me. Fifteen minutes later I was standing outside of his office wondering what the hell had happened. I felt dazed like he had zapped me with something. And my back felt great.
In follow-up appointments he taught me how to “free” myself. He gave me a little pamphlet and circled the exercises that help alleviate my problem. I do these all the time when I feel locked up. But every once in a while I go through a bad patch where the exercises don’t help. I swivel my hips like Elvis. I do the egg. I do the dog, leg openers and hip openers but I still feel stuck. I miss Dr. Siedel. I heard someone filed a bogus complaint against him and he had to leave town.
As we were leaving town to celebrate Peggi’s birthday on Friday we got an email about a a Nod show at Monty’s Krown. Nod shows are kind of rare these days and we were bummed that we would have to miss this one. Chris Schepp (see Chris’s reviews of Pete LaBonne) is playing keyboards with them now and we haven’t seen him with the band yet. Frank De Blase interviewed Nod for “City Newspaper” this week and he asked them what they had that wasn’t being offered. Joe Sorriero (guitar and voacals) answered, “Just a lack of freedom. Sometimes you see music and wonder, “Why doesn’t this person explode in some manner now?” Or “Why isn’t there one part that’s just off-kilter or wacky before coming back to the song?”
These few sentences perfectly describe Nod’s indescribable music. They have released a few cds on Steve Shelley’s “Smells Like Records”. 4D did the scan of Sue Stanton’s needlework for the cover of the cd shown here. Joe and Sue got hitched this summer and Tim and and Brian (Nod’s bass player and drummer) did a Nod tune during the outdoor ceremony. I’m looking forward to hearing the whole threesome with keyboard next time.
