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.
Leave a commentShe’s An Artist. She Don’t Look Back.
Our friends and neighbors, Rick and Monica, lent their vintage VW bus to Jeff Spevak this weekend. Jeff didn’t go anywhere in the bus. He just used it as a prop behind their designated area in the fenced off section of Charlotte beach where the Roc City Barbeque Event took place. Jeff smokes meat like a pro and won a contest in Memphis last year. His crew is called the “Smokin’ Dopes”.
We road our bikes over there on Saturday and were pretty confused by the whole thing. We paid five bucks to get in. Contestants travelled from all over the country and pay 250 to compete. But we can’t try what they grill because of Heath Department rules? Some vendors were allowed to sell but they weren’t competing. We had a delicious slice of grilled pineapple and Dundee beer from the VW van and rode back home.
We ran into Jeff later that night at the annual Bob Dylan Birthday Bash and we heard he won a 300 dollar award and trophy for his poblano pepper hamburger. Peggi, backed by her band, sang a beautiful version of “She Belongs To Me.”
1 CommentBusker Battle
We saw about half of the buskers on East Avenue before we found the tent where the folks from City Newspaper were handing out the guitar picks that you were supposed to vote for your favorite buskers with. This was a pretty cool cool event and we had no trouble at all handing out the five picks we were given. This guy switched between accordion and washboard. He had taps on the front of his shoes and an assortment of funky percussion attached to his washboard.
2 CommentsThe Future Is Not Here Yet
I met Robert Meyerowitz, former City Newspaper music critic, at Cobbs Hill for tennis. I hadn’t played in ten years or so. I think the last time was with Pat Lowery from SLT. I held my own but really fell apart when Robert tried to show me how to serve. And I managed to knock a few balls over the fence. Robert drove here from Alaska and he may be headed to Washington to take some sort of government job.
We had a company ask us to look at their website because they weren’t happy with its performance. The site was designed by company in China and I spent about an hour there marveling at their graphic sense.
Peggi read a book review in Sunday’s paper for “Last Call, The Rise and Fall of Prohibition.” My grandfather ran a speakeasy in the city and the book sounded interesting so we tried ordering it on the iPad. We couldn’t find it at Apple so we went right to Simon & Schuster’s site and bought the epub version as a download but the only thing that was downloaded was an html document that launched in our browser and took us to a page with three lines of code.
We received an email confirmation from Simon & Schuster so the credit card part cleared fine but we didn’t have the book. We sent an email to them and they said we would hear from them in 48 hours. That never happened so I called and talked to a woman who took my name and number and told me someone would call. I said, “Really? Someone from Simon & Schuster is going to call me?” And she said, “Well, I certainly hope so.”
I let a few days go by and no one called so I called S&S again this afternoon and talked to Julius. He wanted to credit our account be couldn’t find our order number in their system. In fact he said,”I see no orders all for the epub version of this book.” I spent about a half hour on the phone with him while he tried to contact the guy in charge of downloads. He was unable to reach him on his Blackberry so I told Julius I had to get back to work. He promised he would get back to me. We went down to the pool for a dip and when we returned I found this email.
Thanks for contacting us. Unfortunately, eBooks purchased from SimonandSchuster.com require Adobe Digital Editions in order to be downloaded and properly viewed. At this time, Adobe Digital Editions is not compatible with the iPad. Because of the difficulty, I have issued a full refund for your purchase. Please allow up to 30 days for this to be fully visible on all of your credit card and/or banking statements.
I’m very sorry for any inconvenience this has caused.
Sincerely,
Stephen
SimonandSchuster.com
I know our friend, Martin, is deeply interested in this topic so I took notes.
5 CommentsOut For Bid
I usually start a post here by looking at my photos but I just stuck my Ultra II SanDisk card in the card reader and it was empty. There is always the iPhoto library or Flickr.
We took our first swim in the street pool this afternoon. I think this the first time we’ve been in in May. The temps are in the high eighties and the water is 73 degrees already. Group dynamics are a funny thing but that’s what makes the world go ’round. A tree needed to be taken down and some people in the pool group wanted the job to “go out for bid” and others wanted just drop the thing. What could be more fun than taking down a tree? Especially when there’s an engineer in the group.
I had three spices on our grocery list to pick up at Wegmans today. It takes some time to sort through the competition. Unlike other products they don’t sit on the shelf next to one another. They are arranged by brands. McCormicks is like the Microsoft of spices and it’s tough to find generic spices. Comparing unit pricing is impossible without a pocket calculator as some are priced per ounce and others by the pound. And the little plastic bottles keep getting smaller. When I settle on one I usually buy two so I don’t have to sort it all out again.
1 Comment33 + 45 = 78
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.
1 CommentAir Is Now A Dollar
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.
3 CommentsLike A Hurricane
I’m sure there will plenty of seats left at the Dryden Theater tonight where they are screening Shakey Productions newest release, the Jonathan Demme concert film, “Trunk Show” with Neil Young and Crazy Horse. Last night was the official Rochester premier and we got there about an hour early. Heather and Gretchen were just ahead of us at the ticket booth and we watched the projectionist lug the film canister up the stairs to the booth. The theater never never did fill up but it hardly mattered. It felt like we in Philadelphia where the show was being filmed.
The Dryden has a state of the art sound system and they aren’t afraid to crank it. Neil’s guitar sounded amazing. What is in that giant red stomp box? He pushed Crazy Horse to the limit and made Ben Keith (Grandpa in “Greendale”) look lost most of the time. He was so distracting I kept closing my eyes. He redeemed himself with his beautiful keyboard playing on “Like A Hurricane”. The title of this song alone pretty much sums up the energy Neil brings to a performance.
1 CommentTranscendental Landscapes
There are only two days left to see the Charles Burchfield Watercolor Show in Buffalo. The show was put together by the Hammer Museum at UCLA and it travels to New York next but seeing it in in Buffalo, where Burchfield worked as a wallpaper designer (his “hack” job), is a special treat. Burchfield paints “the healthy glamour of everyday life.” Passages from his journals accompany each of the paintings. He was a marvelous painter and writer. The show includes his compulsive doodles, a notebook of drawings called “Conventions for Abstract Thoughts” and rooms full of his transcendental landscapes. My favorite painting was of an oak leaf in his neighbors snow coverd front lawn, “The Constant Leaf.”
The Burchfield Penny Museum here, across the street from the Albright Knox, is brand new building. Their state of art men’s room use Sloan Technology on their “zero-water consumption urinals”. Thank god the water fountains were not similarly equipped.
A trip to Buffalo would not be complete without a visit with Mark from PosterArt. We started talking about the old days and he went in the back room and returned with a stack of “Closet Punk Productions” posters that he designed when he was booking bands at the Continental. A lot of them had dates one day earlier or later than the posters on the Scorgies website.
Mark recommended Coles, down the street on Elmwood for something to eat. This place has been around since the thirties and the outdoor tables were the perfect perch for taking in the Buffalo vibe. “Anarchy in the UK” was playing on the sound system as we sat down. Back on the thruway, pointed at Rochester, the trees looked Burchfield trees.
2 CommentsRun On Sentences
We don’t set the alarm. We wake up when we wake up. Of course we work pretty late on occasion. Sometimes that’s before Rick and Monica and sometimes they are already at work when we crawl out. Rick brings our paper up to the door if he’s up first and I bring theirs to the door if I’m out there first. I have developed a sneaky approach to their doorstep that doesn’t set their dog alarm off but sometimes the dogs sense me and let loose. This morning I was headed up their driveway in my pjs and slippers, multitasking (brushing my teeth and reading the headlines as I walked), when the garage door popped open. Monica backed out and rolled down her window. I think she asked me how I was or something but I all I could manage was “Ugh Um.”
At last night’s Margaret Explosion (a five piece last night) gig I was still thinking about the post I made here before leaving the house. Although that post was filed under the “Notes on Painting” category it applies perfectly to what I feel we are trying to do with our musical collective. Start with an idea, only add things that improve on, develop or add to the expression. And if it’s not adding value, like my painting teacher says, “shut up.” I believe it to be a useful template but I am only the drummer. We have one more Wednesday at the Little and we will be off for the summer. James Nichols will be joining us on piano.
“And that’s the way I play. I play for the benefit of the band.” — Baby Dodds, New Orleans drummer
Here is Margaret Explosion – Dance Trance from the gig pictured above
More Words Does Not A Better Sentence Make
“You’re having fun with this” Fred said when he worked his way around the class to get to my spot. “I am?,” I said. I actually felt like I was pulling my hair out all week, full of doubt that I was able to put the head on the paper. I want to physically place the severed head in this artificial construct of a space but I’m left with the realization that I cannot.
I expressed these concerns to Fred in less graphic terms and a rather long discussion took place. Of course Picasso, Matisse and Guston were all in there as examples of artists who made it their life’s work to describe form.
“What is the point of these paintings,” he asked. “To convey the expression,” I offered. He looked down at my recent watercolors (click on photo above for example). “Well, you’ve got it.” he countered. He argued that my frustration comes from my compulsion to get form down when it is not the point. “If the intent is to convey form, you should work on that.” True to form I said, “But I would like more form.” And true to his teacher form he said, “You could do it with less!” “If something doesn’t add to the expression you’re after, don’t paint it. You gotta know when to shut up.”
4 CommentsWith Good Reason
I remember going to the zoo at the top of Zoo Road in Durand Eastman and looking out over the hillside full of deer. That zoo is long gone but the deer are still here. Rochester didn’t need two zoos anyway. This set up with them wandering freely around the whole town seems much more civilized.
Peggi and I seem to have been buried in an endless amount of tweaks to sites we thought were done. A lot of this is mission creep and a good bit of it extras. That line however is pretty fuzzy.
When we do get caught up the first recreational project on our to do list is creating a shopping cart for Pete LaBonne’s “Gigunda” digital box set. Pete has been remastering the tracks in his Adirondack studio and the last of the reworked tracks arrived in today’s mail. Pete has added the original cover art for the full blown download experience and he selected tracks from each album to giveaway as teasers. The full albums will be available as downloads for chump change. I noticed that “Antique Revolt”, a project I played on along with Bruce Eaton, was not included in this set. With good reason.
Title song from Godiva Records cassette, “Antique Revolt” Recorded by Arpad Sekeres in 1992
Pact With The Devil
I designed the menu for this place when it was Tuzz’s and Ted Williams held court here when it was Granna’s. He called it the “Literary Bar.” And then it was the Rose & Crown where Watkins & the Rapiers got their start. Today Monty’s Crown makes a pretty good rock n’ roll club. Tattooed women bartenders, cheap beer, dart board, pool table, very few tables and chairs in way of the stage and guys in Ramones t-shirts and Psychobilly leather jackets hanging around. And then there was this wacky slide show on the tv at the end of the bar.
It was the perfect setting for Terese Taylor and her band. Margaret Explosion’s bass player, Ken Frank, produced some tracks a few years back for Terese. Jeff Spevak calls her a “San Francisco country-punk, lo-fi guitar muse” and that’s seems to work although I didn’t really hear any country from her last night. You couldn’t hear the words either when it got loud but that only made it artier. James Whiton played some beautiful bowed bass and we told him so after the show.
SLT with Ken on bass channeled eighties Iggy. Marathon Mark was there. Did he used to be in SLT or am I confusing him with Luke Warm. Ted Williams was at the bar looking younger than he did in the eighties. The conversation turned to the “War in Heaven”, a poetry performance piece of Ted’s that Peggi and I played on. Robert Meyerowitz, who has been in Alaska for the last two decades or so responded to my fb post last week that he would be “attending” the Margaret Explosion gig at the Little. I just assumed he was kidding but there he was in the first table. He drove all the way from Anchorage! And when we were leaving the bar last night he was just walking in, true to form.
Peggi woke up this morning singing the theme from Ted William’s “The War In Heaven.”.
Leave a commentRandom Trajectory
We read on the couch and listened to the rain last night and made what might be our last fire in the fireplace until Fall. Tomorrow morning we open the street pool. The temperatures are are headed up for the next five days. Rick kicked my ass in horseshoes after work today. We plan to see Ken Frank’s other band play tonight. Gotta bring earplugs for that. I’ve switched to kids opaque watercolors and plan to paint for a bit before heading out. I’ll report back on these earth-shattering events.
Leave a commentBaby Dodds
“And that’s the way I play. I play for the benefit of the band.” — Baby Dodds, New Orleans drummer
This quote is printed in the front of a book of Lee Friedlander photos that I have on loan from the Rochester Public Library. And I love it. Not just because of the guy’s name but because I think Baby Dodds is addressing the nature of the creative act.
Take a simple example. You start a painting with an idea. You make a few marks and already you are committed to constructing an image that is worth looking at. The more interesting the better. Exciting would be nice. It is your duty to follow that up by only adding strokes that strengthen the picture. The original idea was the springboard but that is history. Your focus is now on how you can make this picture communicate more clearly. Step back for second and look at what you have. Fix the clunkers. It may go in a surprising direction. Wouldn’t that be nice? You are playing for the benefit of the band (painting).
Leave a commentWall Power
I guess I sort of have a crush on Roberta Smith. I loved watching her interview and charm Philip Guston in the 1980 dvd that we have. She was one of the few art critics who responded favorably to Philip Guston’s 1970 Marlborough Show. She had an especially enjoyable article in Sunday’s paper on the anonymous buyer of the Picasso painting. “Nude, Green Leaves and Bust” sold for a record 106.5 million. The article dove tailed perfectly with a discussion Peggi and I were having with Fred Lipp after painting class. Fred was expressing his disgust the art market, the people who have enough money to buy art and the way art in general is influenced by the market.
We watched “It Might Get Loud” on our iPod with the NetFlix app. Took the sound out to the stereo and it did get loud especially when Jimmy Page blew the other two away with a classic Led Zep riff. Jack White made a point to say how he needed a struggle to get a good performance. He used the example of the cheap guitars he favors that that don’t quite stay in tune and it made for a stark contrast with the shots of Jimmy Page’s mansion. Jim Mott said pretty much the same thing when he said he surrounds himself with struggles. His camera won’t focus, for example.
Jim left yesterday for Francis Ford Copola Winery where he’s doing a week long artist in residency. He plans to come back here to finish his Itinerant Artist stop. Hid paintings are small, oils on panel. I watched him stand with the board and pallet in his hand while painting a view from our bedroom window. He sat in the yard in one of our blue chairs while painting the other three (above-click picture for enlargement).
Last night Peggi and I played a beautiful art-like board game that Jim invented. He took notes on our performance. He has a few copyright questions to resolve before going to market. I recommended he contact Rich Stim.
Margaret Explosion plays tonight at the Little Theater. This is “Frank DeB” dedicated to you know who.
Mott
We took a walk with Jim Mott who is staying at our house as part of his “Itinerant Artist in Metropolitan Rochester Series”. Jim’s attention was focused on the Warblers who pass through this area when the trees start to fill out. That explosion of green brings the bugs that the Warblers feed on. When Peggi spotted this baby deer near a tree, trying to stand for what looked like the first time, Jim had his field glasses trained on a distant bird. He told us he was more distracted than ever while painting in our front yard this morning because of all the bird activity. He saw or heard ten different kinds of Warblers along with an Oriole and an Indigo Bunting.
Jim painted a beautiful picture of the chairs in the front of our house. It is gorgeous and I think he knows it. It has been a pleasure to meet Jim and hang out with him. I heard a lecture he gave at the MAG a few years ago and Peggi and I went out to his show at MCC last year but we really didn’t know him. Funny how that changes when someone moves in for a few days. He told us he was a fan the Refrigerator when it was a print publication and he had heard Peggi and I backing Pete LaBonne at the old Jazzberries many years ago. And he reminded me that I wrote something he liked about his lecture. I had forgotten how charming it was to see and hear him talk about one subject while showing ppt slides that had no relation to what he was talking about.
The deal that we took Jim up on is this. We put him up for a few days. He paints, hangs out. We pick two paintings that we like from the batch that he does while here and from those two Jim will select the one for us. This whole experience would be worth it without the painting.Jim has traveled the country doing this and was featured on the Today Show a few years back.
2 CommentsNorth Coast
While driving out to Peggi’s mom’s apartment we are never within reach of an open network long enough to email or surf but I like watching the names of the available networks come and go. “HappyCheetah,” “Dadswifi,” “JudithHookHome,” ” Netgear,” “Matinellis,” “Magnet.” Imagining the people who set up these networks makes me think of of the MX80 song, “Follow That Car”.
We had a tall, spindly lilac bush that was growing out from under a few other trees, reaching for some sun at a forty five degree angle. It was hanging over our neighbor’s driveway so I figured we had to do something about it or he would just lop it off. I tied a rope around the trunk and looped the other end around the trailer hitch on our car and then drove til it stood straight. Itt blossomed beautifully in the last few weeks with dark purple lilacs but yesterday’s winds blew the bush/tree over in the other direction. We cut the top half off and stood it back up again. We’ll see what happens. We don’t really have what it takes when it comes to pruning and shaping. We’re more the “Let The Weeds Take Over” type.
We walked up to the lake this afternoon. It looks different every day but it is especially nice when it looks mysterious.
Dumber Every Day
I tried to help our neighbor, Leo, get his tractor started but his battery wouldn’t hold a charge. Leo himself has a similar problem. He told me, this getting old stuff is for the birds.” He managed to get his tires inflated but we couldn’t start the tractor. He says, “I used to be able to fix things” and I know this to be true. He used to have projects lined up on his workbench and most of them were for other people. He shook his head and said, “I’m getting dumber every day”.
Leave a commentI Like Clown Paintings
I rode by a garage sale last summer and this painting was propped up against a table. It caught my eye from the street. It and another one were selling for twenty bucks. I said I only wanted the one and asked what the price was for that that. The woman said it would be twenty bucks so I stopped haggling and took out my wallet out. She told me she taught art at Irondequoit High School and she said she really liked the painting too. She had looked online for information on the artist, Horace Furminger, but couldn’t find anything. I rode home with the painting under my arm and showed it to Peggi.
It occurred to us that it would be a perfect gift for our friend and neighbor, Rick. He is a clown, went to school for it even, and already has a small collection of clown paintings. I had not seen clown paintings in a home since the paint by number ones Brad Fox’s father did when we were kids. Monica saw the painting in our living room and I told her I was thinking of giving it to Rick for his birthday. She didn’t seem to like it much.
Well today’s Rick’s 60th birthday and I plan to bring it over there tonight. People have been bugging me to paint something other than crime faces and I’m thinking if a clown series. I’d be lucky to do one as nice as this.
8 Comments