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A Lot More Work To Do

Cherry tree in bloom out front
Cherry tree in bloom out front

The Bop Shop’s Tom Kohn comes from a family of hunters and he told me he liked my post on the deer. He said he reads my blog every day now and this kind of threw me off so I didn’t post anything yesterday to throw him off.

I’ve been working on some six by sixes for the upcoming RoCo show. I spotted my stuff from last year in the bottom row of this photo. I submitted prints of paintings last year and never imagined they would sell. I really felt bad when they did, like I had ripped someone off. So this year I’m doing real, miniature paintings and it has been a lot of fun. Pete LaBonne was in town last week and he told us, “I have a lot more work to do before I record again. You know, to come up with something I can listen to when it’s done.” I know exactly what he means. That’s why I am happy to contribute art work to this RoCo show even tough they take 100% and even keep the ones that don’t sell. Like the Clothesline Show for the MAG, this is their largest fundraiser.

Our cherry tree blossoms came out today so I grabbed this shot while still in my pjs. Peggi and I spent about an hour this morning swinging a sledge hammer at an old stump in front of our house. It has been rotting since we moved in here it’s time to remove it. We borrowed a pointed sledge hammer from Rick and Monica. Monica had a name for the the tool that I have forgotten. It’s killer. I’m sore all over.

We took a walk and followed what sounded like the world’s biggest woodpecker. We used our ears as tracking devices while he worked away on tall hollow tree. When we got close but spooked him and watched as he flew to another tree. It was a beautiful Pileated, like Woody Woodpecker.

It’s Brad Fox‘s birthday today. We are the same age for two days. I plan on giving him a call as soon as I finish this entry.

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Outside The Box

Magnolias in bloom in Durand Eastman Park
Magnolias in bloom in Durand Eastman Park

With temperatures predicted to head into the eighties this weekend everybody is talking about the weather. Or at least everyone I saw today including the dental hygienist and my wife and Pete and Shelley. This will kick Spring into high gear and probably kill off the crocuses and the other early Spring flowers. Things move so fast this time of year that is mandatory that you get out there to watch. We walked up to Durand Eastman and checked out the magnolias. Shelley gathered some Pondarosa pine needles for the tiny little baskets she makes.

Pete LaBonne sat in with Margaret Explosion last night on the grand piano and Jaffe was there to watch. Tom Kohn from the Bop Shop was there and Scott Regan from WRUR. The band was on their best behavior and we made the bonus.

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I Like Lucinda

Timothy Horn's "Nerites" currently on view at the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, NY
“Nerites” currently on view at the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, NY

It figures we would run into Lucinda Storms at the opening of the glass show at the MAG. She was ogling Timothy Horn’s big jewelry piece entitled “Nerites” after the Greek god of shellfish and it was my favorite piece in the show. Lucinda was wearing her own creation – beautiful, organically shaped glass beads.

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Losing Ground


Click photo above for a movie of Ab Baars Trio with Kern Vandermark at the Bop Shop Attrium in Rochester NY

The Ab Baars Trio with Ken Vandermark was a treat for the ears last night. They are about twenty dates into a US tour. They played New York last night and are clearly on a roll. There was physical space around their instruments, I swear. You could hear each instrument clearly and the dialog was fascinating. I turned the movie function of my camera on about halfway into this Ken Vandermark piece called “Losing Ground”. The band is taking the train to Buffalo for a gig tonight and then they play Ken’s hometown, Chicago, for a few nights and that’s it.

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Modern Art

Jem Vinxi painting currently on view at the Little Theater Cafe
Jem Vinxi painting currently on view at the Little Theater Cafe

Remember when modern art looked and was contemporary? It doesn’t matter, it still looks good and JEM Vinxi who is currently showing at the Little Theater Cafe almost makes it look fresh. Not quite landscapes or representational but structural and decorative. They’re old fashioned modern art paintings and I like them.

Margaret Explosion got stuck in a few ruts last night and it wasn’t the paintings fault. Somehow we managed to shoot ourselves in the foot. There is still a fine line between modern art and junk or spontaneous composition and jamming.

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Sparky Doll Discovery

Sparky Doll purchased at Small Word Books on North Street in Rochester, NY
Sparky Doll purchased at Small Word Books on North Street in Rochester, NY

Sparky Doll purchased at Small Word Books on North Street in Rochester, NY

It wasn’t even a close call to pick our favorite Sparky doll from the fourteen on display at Small World Books on North Street. Peggi picked this one up for two bucks. The owner, Rocco, let me photograph all fourteen while we hung around talking. He told me these things are pretty common in New England.

Sparky Dolls found at Small World Books in Rochester, New York

I had to call Sparky this morning to check in on him. We were neighbors for twenty some years and I kept track of him when we lived in the city. We even developed a mythological site devoted to him and I’m sorry to report I don’t have any new episodes for it.

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Pasta Fazool

Marc Chagall self portrait on the cover of Time in 1965
Marc Chagall self portrait on the cover of Time in 1965

Rob Storms from Sound Source called us on Saturday afternoon to invite us to Small World Books for some homemade pasta fazool. This invitation came right out of the blue and we accepted it. Small World Books is in a beautiful old building near downtown on North Street and it specializes in used, rare, and out of print books.

Rocco runs the place and he made the soup. They do most of their business online so it is no surprise we had never been there. We wandered around the building for for an hour or so and I came across this magazine from another era. There is a beautiful light filled gallery upstairs and a small performance space. We’re thinking, we’re thinking. I bought a Matisse book for five dollars and Peggi bought a Sparky doll. I might post a picture of that tomorrow.

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“Don’t Compromise Honey. That’s All You Got.”

Janis Joplin with Big Brother & the Holding Company at the Syracuse War Memorial in 1968. Photo by Kevin Patrick
Janis Joplin with Big Brother & the Holding Company at the Syracuse War Memorial in 1968. Photo by Kevin Patrick
Janis Joplin Syracuse War Memorial in 1968. Photo by Kevin Patrick
Janis Joplin at the Syracuse War Memorial in 1968. Photo by Kevin Patrick

Janis Joplin with Big Brother & The Holding Company at the Syracuse War Memorial in1968. Photo by Kevin Patrick. Click photo for another shot.

That quote is from the opening scene of  “Love Janis” at the Downstairs Cabaret. All the lines in the play are from Janis Joplin’s own words, her letters and interviews, and it takes two actresses to deliver them, sometimes at the same time. This works well because just as you’re not buying one, the other takes over. The band members tour as Big Brother now so the show rocked. First play I’ve been to where they pass out ear plugs.

Coincidentally Kevin Patrick primed the pump for us with his recent entry with these sensational photos of Janis.

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But What About?

Art Music blackboard message at the Ctreative Workshop
Art Music blackboard message at the Ctreative Workshop

When I showed up for class at the Creative Workshop I found this message on the board. I have an interest in the two disciplines. I know Fred Lipp has a day class on Tuesdays and I wondered if he might have posted these notes. The only time I remember him addressing the class with chalk in hand was when he drew a diagram of his winter accident. He is not the demonstration kind of teacher.

When he showed up last for class (he is that kind of teacher) I asked him if he wrote the note. He said no and and asked if there was something I wanted to add. I said, “Improvisation”, and he wrote that on the board.

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That’s My Dad

Orchard in front of the Stone Tolan House in Rochester, NY painted by Leo Dodd
Orchard in front of the Stone Tolan House in Rochester, NY painted by Leo Dodd

My father likes to say he “can’t talk without a pencil” and it is pretty much true. Armed with a pencil he talks better than anyone I know. He knocked this painting off in our last class and it knocks me out. It’s a sketch of the orchard in front of the Stone Tolan House on East Avenue and it was done from a sketch in one of his many sketch books.

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Anne Havens Open Source

Ann Havens’ art

These are not Anne Havens’ colors but they could be. Peggi and I bought this piece years ago at a Pyramid Art Center show and I photographed it tonight in very low light. It hangs over our washing machine in the basement in the laundry slash band room. I love this piece and I was immediately attracted to it. Still am and don’t know why but that is the fun of it. I still don’t know who won the game of tic tac toe. It’s almost like I don’t want to know. It is too nicely drawn to look at what it depicts. And I love the beaker!

We were very fortunate to have Anne try out her “I’m moving to Florida routine” with us at the recent RoCo opening. It was delightful. She explained that she just gets so depressed in the dark winter months that she doesn’t want to do it anymore. She told us she only wears black here but wears white in Florida and she said it like she wasn’t ashamed to admit it. She told us she  “is thinking of changing her name to Annie.”

We are very happy for her.

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Exactitude Is Not Truth

Four drawings-portraits perhaps - by Matisse in 1947
Four drawings-portraits perhaps – by Matisse in 1947

I only have a few days left with the “Matisse Portraits” book that I checked out of the downtown library. I’m going to have to remove all the bookmarks and give it up. It is so jam packed with sensational drawings that it took me a few weeks before I could even read the copy. Peggi has been page turning Ann Rule’s “Every Breadth You Take” while I stare at drawings until I fall asleep.

Now that I have been able to get to some of the text I’m finding that Matisse is as articulate with words as he is with the brush. In an essay for the catalog for a collection of his work entitled “Exactitude Is Not Truth” (a Delacroix saying)he wrote,

“Among these drawings, which I have chosen with the greatest of care for this exhibition, are four drawings-portraits perhaps—done from my face as seen in a mirror. I should particularly like to call them to the visitors’ attention.

These drawings sum up, in my opinion, observations that I have made for many years about the charactcr of drawing, a character that does not depcnd on forms being copied exactly as they are in nature or on the patient assembling of exact details, but on the profound feeling of the artist before the objects that he has chosen, on which his attention is focussed, and whose spirit he has penetrated.”

It kills me how much volume Matisse gets in these line drawings. He devoted his life to careful observation of nature and dilligent hard work in order to make drawings look this easy.

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Tap Tap Tap

Tree foaming in the woods
Tree foaming in the woods

This probably happens every year but if you’re not in the woods when it happens – you know what they say about hearing trees fall out there. At first glance we thought it might be sap pouring out of the trees, maybe even maple syrup, but these weren’t maple trees and the foam wasn’t sticky. Our friends, Pete and Shelley, spend a good bit of March “syrupping down” so it can’t just bubble out of the trees.

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For One Oh Nine

We put together a few cdrs of old Personal Effects records for Steve Lipincott and he sent us a short stack of things to listen to. It was a really tough call as to what to pop in first. We went with Miles Davis Nonet Boston ’72. Amazing three dimensional sound with Mtume Forman playing percussion in one channel, Badal Roy in the other and Pete Cosey’s wah wah guitar out there.

I’m looking at Miles Davis Quintet, Stockholm, playing “Bitches Brew” material or Captain Beefheart “Spotlight Kid Sessions” next.

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Busy Beaver

Beaver dam on Eastman Lake in Durand Eastman Park
Beaver dam on Eastman Lake in Durand Eastman Park

We often take a path through the woods that dumps us out on the golf course. We cross one of the fairways and head back in to the woods on one of the trails in the park. The last few days we noticed a bunch of birders gathered around the south end of Durand Lake. We wouldn’t know a rare bird from a local one so we didn’t think much of it. Yesterday we walked down that way and saw a lot of bare wood glistening in the distance. When we got closer we realized that these people were watching a beaver build a dam. These guys can really chew some wood. It looks like a micro-burst has come through here with all the debris strew about. His dam tough is water tight. There is about a foot difference in water levels on the two sides.

We didn’t see the beaver though so we made a point of going back today to look for him but no sign of him. You would think he would right there gorging on the trapped fish. I’m wondering if maybe the park people arrested the guy and took him somewhere.

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Tree Stuff & Lightning

Mist on one of the ponds in Durand Eastman Park
Mist on one of the ponds in Durand Eastman Park

Steve Lippincott who runs the EarCandy Archive in Portland is doing a profile of Rochester bands in the eighties so I spent some time this weekend putting together cd versions of a few of Personal Effect’s old albums for him. We did a compilation in November for the Scorgies reunion but that was just a smattering of songs from the various vinyl releases.

Bob Martin carved out the perfect bass boast eq curve for the songs from “90 Days in the Planetarium” lp and I wanted to use it on the whole cd but I couldn’t fine the settings in CuBase. I called Bob and he had me set up an AIM account so he could take control of my computer from his house. While we were on the phone I watched as he searched my computer for the old files and set me up through iChat.

Joe Sorriero emailed us and asked if we wanted to do gig with Nod at the Bug Jar. It sounded like fun so I replied without much thought and then mentioned the gig to Peggi. She read the email and pointed out that Joe was asking “Personal Effects” to play. I didn’t catch that. I thought he was asking “Margaret Explosion” to play with them since we had recently played together together at Abilene. I guess we could handle it.

I digitized all our cds and and I rely on the mp3 tags for liner notes but this song that Peggi and I have fallen in love with was only marked “nod4”. So I dug out all the cds and spot checked the songs trying to identify this thing. I finally determined it is from their most recent cd entitled, “Tree Stuff & Lightning”. I think Chris Schepp gave me a copy of it before it was released so never got the right tags. Peggi wants the lyrics to this so I thought I would post it here and see what happens.

“World Still Wants You” by Nod from “Tree Stuff & Lightning”.

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Live Rules

Ossia performing at Kilbourn Hall in March 2009
Ossia performing at Kilbourn Hall in March 2009

Ossia, the Eastman School of Music’s student run, new music ensemble had their last event of the season on Friday night at Kilbourn Hall. You can’t beat this free admission ticket to wide open, experimental soundscapes. The pieces by five different composers on last night’s bill were as varied as you can imagine and hold out boundless promise for new music performed by classically trained musicians.

The second half of the program was devoted to the third, second and first place winners of Ossia’s International Composition Prize. I liked the third place, “die nacht war kalt” by Daniel Tacke the best. The piece with soprano voice, clarinet, cello and piano reached new heights of sparse and used the air in the arrangement to sculpt an environment where our heartbeats slowed and our minds opened wide.

One of the earlier pieces on the program by Luigi Nono called for a piano player to accompany a prerecorded piano track which was played on a laptop through speakers set up behind the piano. I found it tedious but it demonstrated the wide gulf between live sound in a good hall, and the acoustics Kilbourn are as good as it gets, and a state of the art recording.

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Peaceable Kingdom

Turkey crosses our path in the woods
Turkey crosses our path in the woods

Deer are perfectly camouflaged in this gray brown landscape but something got a hold of one in the woods last night. We came across clumps of deer hair still attached to hunks of skin. And further up the path we saw some shit that didn’t look like it came from a dog or a deer shit because that looks like chocolate covered coffee beans and it wasn’t from a turkey because that looks like little blobs of dark pudding. We watched a coyote slink across an opening the other day and we were wondering if they might bother the deer. Our cat is not camouflaged (unless it’s snowing) and I hope they stay away from her.

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Doris Day On Acid

Dave Liebman Trio at the Bop Shop in Rochester, NY
Dave Liebman Trio at the Bop Shop in Rochester, NY

Dave Liebman played sax on Miles Davis’s “On the Corner”, “Big Fun”, “Dark Magus”, and “Get Up With It”, my favorite Miles stuff. The guy is amazing. He’s been here twice at the Jazz Fest. We saw both shows at Montage last year and we bought his DVD. Last night he played at the Bop Shop in what was billed as a “classic organ trio setting”. Paul Smoker, Bill Dobbins and all the local jazz celebrities were out.

Phil Haynes, who we have heard a few times with Paul Smoker, played drums and Steve Adams played a Hammond B3. They played all standards and opened with “The Night Has A Thousand Eyes”. Dave was playing a wooden flute, The organ player held on extremely long fuzzy note and the drums sounded beautiful. Phil Haynes plays with his bare hands, he scratches the top surface of his cymbals with the butt end of his sticks and looks like he is conducting the music with his facial expressions and whole body. He plays “Ayotte” drums with wooden rims and they are the best sounding drums I have ever heard. They sounded especially nice in this bass player less setting.

Dave played one song that Doris Day had popularized and when someone snickered as he introduced it Dave said, “Don’t undercut Doris. She was right there with Sly back in the day.” we weren’t sure if we heard him right so after the show Peggi and I asked him after the show if said’ “Sly”. He said, Oh yeah. She was right there, hanging with Sly, doing LSD, the whole trip.

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