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Doubt And Questioning

Bare trees overlooking Spring Valley
Bare trees overlooking Spring Valley

Some days I get so bogged down making the rounds of friends’ blogs, news sites and links from my Tumblr page that there is no time left for a post here. That is as it should be. Yesterday was one of those. Who knew that Millie of “My Boy Lollipop” did such a beautiful version of “Since I Met You Baby” and that Jacke Edwards, the male voice on her early records wrote this song. I had always thought it belonged to the Tex Mex border artists like Doug Sahm and Freddy Fender. Kevin is on a roll over at So Many Records.

Louise Wareham Leonard called my attention to a Louise Gluck passage on how writing never gets any easier. I find this fascinating because I recently had a conversation with Bill Keyser, a sculptor, painter and fellow art student at the Creative Workshop. He was telling me how he worries he is getting dependent on our teacher, Fred Lipp, and he wrestles with whether he should skip class for a while. He is torn because Fred has this amazing ability to always be there at exactly the right juncture to call your attention to the next concern. Only when you are ready to see it and be in a position to do something about it. Just when you think I’ve got it, this painting is done, Fred will turn your your head around.

I found this conversation so interesting, of course, because I have been there, still am. If you’ve read Louise’s piece you might want to take a look at this post I wrote a few years ago on the Midas Touch. Like Louise Gluck says “the fantasy exists.”

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Don’t Take Away My Cattle Prod

Ken Frank is at the top of his game. He plays in six bands and writes all of Hook Face’s material. They had their debut performance last night at Monty’s Krown, headlining a bill with another of Ken’s bands, The Crabapples. Hook Face was lean and mean. Driving bass and drums with enough air to hear Jack Schaefer’s sensational guitar parts and Matt Sabo’s vocals. We had heard their demos and some rough mixes of new songs and were thrill to hear them blow that stuff away with their live performance.

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Financial Hot Seat

View of race from Joe Marchese's office at Monroe Community College in Rochester, New York
View of race from Joe Marchese’s office at Monroe Community College in Rochester, New York

This morning was a mix of low lying misty clouds and brilliant sun and it looked especially dramatic from Joe Marchese’s fifth floor office at Monroe Community College. We would occasionally catch his one hour “Managing Your Money” show on WXXI and always thought he made a lot of sense. When a listener asked where he or she could get more advice he would say I do consulting on the side. He charges by the hour and neither buys or sells stocks or funds. He establishes an equity/fixed income balance that works for you and recommends a balanced batch of no-load funds that you can purchase on your own. We see him every couple years and think he’s the greatest.

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Art Check-Up

Paul Dodd "Local Homeless Kid" drawing and Dan McCormick photo at 2013 Rochester Contemporary Members Show
Paul Dodd “Local Homeless Kid” drawing and Dan McCormick photo at 2013 Rochester Contemporary Members Show

Interesting to think about why the person or people that hung the 2013 Rochester Contemporary Members Show decided to put Dan McCormick’s photo next to my “Local Homeless Kid.” It sort of works.

The annual Members Show is always the best show they have at RoCo. The place was packed last night and it preempted First Friday. It will be packed again tonight. The news, announced last night, that RoCo has met 76 per cent of their five year fundraising goal (to pay for the building outright) in the first year of five was welcome. This is a healthy organization with a great staff and great members. Now we could use a few more great shows.

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Troll’s Choice

Budweiser cans on Hoffman Road, Rochester New York
Budweiser cans on Hoffman Road, Rochester New York

If you do a google image search for “Budweiser cans Hoffman Road” you’ll see I have been covering this story for quite a while. Or do a Budweiser search in the search box on this page. I gathered up these cans today from the troll hangout near where the creek flows under Hoffman Road. We’ve never seen the trolls or the guy that has been habitually throwing these 22 ounce cans in the same spot for six or seven years now. We have a few suspects but we are not ready to name names.

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Ch Ch Changes

Fire hydrant in front of Diane and Bill's house
Fire hydrant in front of Diane and Bill’s house

I’m glad I snapped this shot the other day because today because these tall brown weed-like flowers collapsed under the weight of the wet snow. They look like the invasive species variety that now grow in the wetlands around here but these were planted by a gardener.

Everything is changing. Ticks bearing Lyme Disease are now in our area and their season is longer on both ends. Not all these changes are unwelcome. We heard realtor, Mark Siwiec, on the radio today talking about how our recent warm winters have bumped the start of the high season up by almost a month. A hundred years ago upstate New Yorkers were not able to have fresh pineapple for breakfast. But I’m still pulling for a cold winter with piles of fresh snow.

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Prime Of Life

Rocket launch in Durand Eastman Park
Rocket launch in Durand Eastman Park

Are boys in the prime of life at fourteen or fifteen? We followed this pack of kids to the park the other day and judging by the way they were laughing and carrying on I would guess so.

Inside the park we hid behind a big tree as they tried to set off this small orange rocket. They failed to get launch so we moved on after a few minutes. We were at least a mile away when we heard a big boom.

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I Am Tam Tam

Ossia performing Ligeti's "Ten Pieces for Wind Quartet" ay Kilbourn Hall in Rochester, New York
Ossia performing Ligeti’s “Ten Pieces for Wind Quartet” ay Kilbourn Hall in Rochester, New York

We feel as though we have adventurous musical tastes but we are probably just as stuck in our ways as the next guy. I know we are lucky to have the Eastman School of Music in our community and their student run program of modern music, called Ossia, is sensational. Tonight’s performance included five wildly different compositions all expertly performed. And just look at how young these students are. They are seen here performing Gyorgy Ligeti’s “Ten Pieces for Wind Quartet,” my favorite piece of the evening. Peggi’s favorite piece was sung by an operatic, solo soprano.

The most radical piece was Stockhausen’s “Mikrophonie I,” in which two people played a tam tam. Two people played microphones, one on each side of the tam tam, and two people, off stage, ran the filters for the microphones.

They struck and scratched the tam tam with an assortment of things you might find in your kitchen or storage closet and the ever moving, hand-held mics were panned hard left and right. The filtered sound was amplified and sent to the giant speakers that are above the two double door exits. The wide stereo experience was like something off of Led Zeppelin II.

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Service Cat

Service Dog paperwork
Service Dog paperwork

The hardest thing about leaving town or even thinking about leaving town is leaving your pet behind. This condition probably gets worse as you get older. I know I have a hard time falling asleep if our cat isn’t up on the bed. She is always up before us but she lets us sleep until we open our eyes. Once she senses we are awake she meows to be let out while I grab the paper and then she must be fed before I make the coffee we hear about it. I love this routine and I can’t help but think she would be upset if we weren’t here for it to unfold. It would be so much easier if we could travel with our cat.

We had dinner with a couple who were up from upstate (an hour north of the city) and they showed us the “Service Dog” get-up they purchased online. For a hundred and fifty bucks you get this dog vest with pockets for badges and official looking identification. They had just used the badges at a downtown hotel that was not dog friendly. In fact their dog was back in the hotel room while we were dining.

The front side of the card reads “In Accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990: This card identifies (so and so) as the rightful owner of the service dog named below” and to protect the company that prints these the the back side makes it clear that the card has nothing to with the Department of Justice.

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We Live like Kings Again

Red berries mixed with a brown weed vine
Red berries mixed with a brown weed vine

The glorious color of Fall has peaked. Most of the leaves are brown and under snow now but the late Autumn palette is still in full display. The quantity has been reduced but the appreciation level for what remains has risen. The advance of Winter is a welcome refresher course in minimalism. But first we feast.

We shared Thanksgiving with our friends, Matthew and Louise, in their new home and took turns around the table giving thanks for a few things. Mine were just off the top of my head but I suspect we could have spent the entire meal itemizing our bounty but then we wouldn’t have had time to discuss misogyny in New Zealand or who it was that actually wrote Shakespeare. We were honored to be invited and had no idea Matthew was a gourmet chef so the evening was both a delight and a surprise. The turkey was there but only a minor player in the parade of red pepper soup, roasted brussels sprouts, lemony greens, stuffing with apples, cranberry with ginger, sweet potatoes with melted cheese and tawny port. You know how a drummer sometimes does a quick roll at the conclusion of a song? Well, a bowl of imported English licorice punctuated last night’s performance.

Listen to We Live Like Kings by Pete LaBonne
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Black Thursday

Water silhouettes on Hoffman Road in Rochester, New York
Water silhouettes on Hoffman Road in Rochester, New York

The night before Thanksgiving is usually a good night to play out. People are in town visiting relatives and air is festive but then some people leave town. Margaret Explosion guitar player, Bob Martin, is in Chicago visiting his son and bass clarinetist, Jack Schaefer, is picking his son up at the train station so we may be doing this one as a trio. Not the first time. Somebody say, “bowed bass solo.”

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Finally, Tangible Form

Two skulls in art class
Two skulls in art class

If you want really good cheekbones you have to move a little closer to death. Our painting teacher went into the storeroom during our last class and brought these two guys out for me to look at. I had drawn a woman who he said, “Looks like she has the mumps.” In attempting to describe the outside profile of her face with line I brought them forward, flattening her face and completely neglected to bring her cheeks forward of that. Just look at these eye sockets! The structure of the face is built to accommodate the features. We need to talk about this.

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Look Out Below

The cold snap changed the color of our giant pumpkin from rusty yellow to a deep orange. I figured we better get it out of our doorway before it thaws so we rolled it into our wheelbarrow and took it across the street to ask our neighbors if we could roll it down the hill behind their house so the deer could have it. Other years we’ve rolled our pumpkins down the hill behind our house but we have a road down there and if they manage to get through the trees they zoom across the road and wind up in the creek. This year’s pumpkin was big enough to take out a car so we rang Rick’s bell. The crazy thing is that when we let it fly it scared the hell out of the three deer that were down there and they hightailed it out of sight.

Rick and Monica asked us if we’d like to come over for dinner and we took them up on that. Eric and Amy were staying with them. Both Eric and Amy are art school veterans so we started the evening looking at my paintings and talking art. I’m thinking of buying one of Eric’s Kodak paintings.

Dinner conversation switched to music as we discussed matters such as whether The Stooges or The Ramones made a bigger impact on music. Eric has a piece in the new Mojo about his upcoming reunion of the Len Bright Combo but he is defiantly moving forward. The Mojo interview contains this killer quote. “It might even sound modern now but in the ‘80s it probably sounded horrible to people because in those days every snare drum hit was an event in itself.” And Amy is at the top of her game. She is a brilliant songwriter. I am a huge fan and am looking forward to her book.

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The Course Of Gravity

Birch tree with fallen limbs in November
Birch tree with fallen limbs in November

The sculptural qualities of the woods are in full display in the winter months. No foliage to camouflage the interplay of trunk and limb and most dramatically, the fallen trees and limbs, the tangled piles of branches and the wounded trees innocently caught in the path of a dying elder.

Peggi did a series of watercolors of portions of this birch tree. It has giant mushrooms growing on it now and white limbs scattered about. Where other trees lose their bark and dry out before falling, the bark on these trees, the same stuff Native Americans used to waterproof their canoes, seals moisture inside and the trees remain externally graceful even as they decompose inside.

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Dreamin’

Marquee at Skylark Lounge in Rochester, New York
Marquee at Skylark Lounge in Rochester, New York

Nod stole the night at the Lou Reed tribute with their cover of “Run, Run, Run.” The trio, with Hugh Edwards on bass replacing Tim Poland for the night, tore it up.

Margaret Explosion rehearsed, via email, the last minute addition of “The Day John Kennedy Died,” the ACC version not Lou’s. We banged out a three song set, “Dreamin’,” “JFK” and “What Goes On,” and then backed D&C music critic, Jeff Spevak, on his version of “The Gift.” Hoping to get some good press for that.

We saw today as our last chance to get the leaves out of our backyard before the snow flew. Our neighbor has a leaf mulcher and plenty of space to pile up a mound of mulch so we raked the piles onto a tarp and hauled the tarp up to the road so he could do his thing with them. The payback comes once the leaves have decomposed when we bring our wheelbarrow down to his place for a load of rich black top soil.

Wreckless Eric and Amy Rigby are back in town but this gig is a private one, tonight at Artisan Works. It’s a wedding reception of sorts for someone we don’t know so we’ll miss it.

I’m looking forward to the dark winter months. Time to get get caught up with all my silly projects.

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Three Things

Color in trees across the marsh
Color in trees across the marsh

This glorious color in this photo, heightened by the grey skies, was taken only a week ago. The high winds and cold snap have cleared the trees. Our palette has changed again. We have been dealt a new hand.

I’m bummed that Joan Jett got the boot from the South Dakota float in the Macy’s parade when the Cattleman’s Association raised a stink over her vegetarian
diet.

Lou Reed Tribute at Skylark Lounge tonight at 8.

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Crazy About Elvis

Tom Petty is a rock ‘n roll romantic. Free Fallin’ is my favorite of his songs and I’m knocked out by this brilliant new version by Angel Corpus Christi. Angel’s big label record was produced by Craig Leon and featured Herb Albert and the Wrecking Crew’s Hal Blaine. This record sounds even better.

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Internal Clock

Margaret Explosion performing in RCTV Studios for series entitled "Pythod Remix"
Margaret Explosion performing in RCTV Studios for series entitled “Pythod Remix”

A few weeks back Margaret Explosion recorded a session at Rochester’s Community Access TV station for an upcoming series entitled “Pythod Remix.” The Pythod was Rochester’s premier jazz club in the late fifties and early sixties and the MC for this RCTV series is Jose DeCosta from “Exodus To Jazz.”

Pete LaBonne was in town for the gig and Jack Schaefer is back in the band on bass clarinet so we couldn’t all fit on the sound stage. Pete volunteered to set his piano up off stage. The director asked how long the songs were that we were going to perform and we told him we don’t do songs, we improvise. This caused some confusion so we asked him, “How long do you want us to play?” He said he was trying to put together fifteen minute segments so we offered to do two seven minute songs in that period and damn if we didn’t do that four times in a row.

They set mics up all over the stage and took a number of the instruments live and who knows what their mix will be like. We set our little Zoom up in front of the band and grabbed this live stereo mix. Here’s the song we opened with:

Listen to Margaret Explosion – “Passage” from upcoming RCTV Pythod Remix Series.

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Don’t Even Look At It

Sign on piano in lobby of Monroe County Office building
Sign on piano in lobby of Monroe County Office building

I awake from a vivid dream last night about an infestation at my parent’s house. My dad had called an expert to analyze the large bugs that were slithering from the mortar joints of his field stone foundation. (My parents actually have a modern concrete block foundation.) The expert had dug down along a portion of the foundation near the front door and we watched as bugs as big as six inches long worked their way out of the motor joints and they then either crawled away or took flight. One was iridescent blue and my dad, a bird and nature enthusiast, identified it as “rare such and such.” He was delighted to have spotted one of these and the blue bug flew toward him and hovered like a hummingbird right in front of his face.

There was a stern woman with the expert, possibly from the health board, and she was taking notes on a clipboard. She used a three word name, derived from Latin, in her confirmation of the infestation. The expert told my dad there was no option other than digging up the entire house and treating the foundation. My dad was trying to digest this when I woke up.

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Small Potatoes

View from the shore of Lake Ontario
View from the shore of Lake Ontario

Any day is a good for a walk on the beach. Not just a walk but taking the time to look out to sea. What do you see? Hardly anything but that is so nice. It is art, therapy, massage and religion all rolled into one. This sounds like one of my nephew‘s motivational tweets.

I wish my camera didn’t distort the horizon so much but that is small potatoes.

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