Graffiti on construction site in downtown Rochester, NY
With about ten inches of fresh snow we followed a snowshoe trail through the woods and out to the park where we expected to find the Mayor and his buddies drinking beer at the top of the bobsled run. But it seemed we were the only ones in the park. There were no tracks from other skiers. Were we the only ones waiting for more snow?
We took a break at the top of the big hill and spotted a small American flag taped to a tree branch with the words “One World Under God” written in magic marker over the stripes. When we got back to the house there was a message from Rochester Contemporary reminding me to pick up the painting I had in the Members Show so I headed downtown and found this graffiti on the building next door to RoCo.
My newest camera weighs a ton. David Pogue described this model as feeling like “a brick in your pocket.” I carry at least three pens, a Swiss Army knife, a small flashlight and a drum key attached on my key chain and a pocket full of change on the other side so I’m sort of balanced. In the rear my wallet is bloated with notes and membership and credit cards and an iPod on the other side. I don’t have room for a phone if I had one.
I did lighten my load a bit by weeding out my keys. I couldn’t find any match for half of them. I had keys to Sparky’s shed and I gave them back to him. I’m quite sure one of these keys goes to our old house. I ran into Elizabeth a while back and she told me she reads this blog so Elizabeth, if you need an extra key I might have one. I’m putting them all in a jar out in the garage for future archeologists to sort out.
I come up for air from time to time and revisit my subject matter but I always find a compelling reason to dig deeper with these crime faces. It seems even the county is loosing interest in this subject matter. The Crimestoppers page that appears in our paper every three months or so recently cut back to a half page. This thing used to be it’s own four page supplement. I know because I save them all and have painted most of their faces.
Peggi’s mom used to say, “Why don’t you paint your beautiful wife instead of these people?” Good question! I have been obsessed with these guys since my first art job, graphic artist for the Rochester Police Department in 1977 but they are not the only thing I paint. And what I paint is not as important as how I paint.
Because the latest Crimestoppers was only a half page and the photos were tiny I followed the link to their pathetic site and downloaded the pdf. I was printing out blow ups of the photos to paint from as I often do and “Content Aware Scale” feature in the new Photoshop caught my eye. It’s intended to help you scale horizontal pictures to vertical or visa versa while “protecting” or not distorting the subject elements. Pretty amazing when used that way. When I select these little thumbnail portraits and let that feature fly the results are out of this world painterly. Click the photo above to see what it did to Angel Correa.
Bottle Can Drive Sign on Culver Road in Rochester, New York
I love the chocolate color of this sign and the white type against the snow. The confident, rough and tumble lettering sits in the space perfectly. The way they tucked the two “t”s together in the word bottle and the mixed usage of upper and lower case is masterful. More like this on on Funky Signs.
Instead of walking in the woods today we walked up to Wegmans and trudged home with some heavy items. Flour, a half gallon of milk, grapefruit, yogurt, corn meal and an extra quart of milk to replace what we borrowed from Rick and Monica this morning in order to make make blueberry pancakes. I stopped to take this dumb picture of a hand made sign and a guy came out waving his arms and shouting “Can I help you?”. I said no and he raised his voice a few notches. “Can I help you?”. I yelled, “No”. I was already thinking this sign isn’t good enough for my sign collection but I took the shot anyway just to to piss the guy off.
Big willow tree near golf course in Durand Eastman Park
Golf courses are prettier in the winter. This big old willow tree straddles the property line of Durand Eastman Park and a private home. Willow trees are soft wood and they’re messy but I love them. The guy who lives in this house has three “No Trespassing signs stuck up there to keep golfers off his lawn. I stepped on his lawn last summer to retrieve a couple of balls that were sitting out there and he came out on his porch and yelled, “Get off the lawn.” It was like something out of a movie. If I see him again I’m prepared to yell, “You’re lawns is an eyesore.”
Speaking of golf. My friend Angel posted a print I did a long time ago in a printmaking class. And she has a cool photo up there of the Chinaboise. Peggi and I were in this band for a few months before we moved here and long before they recorded this beautiful song.
Nobody stacks wood like Pete and Shelley but we try. Firewood needs to sit and we’ll have enough for a couple of years but we’re about due for something to drop out of the sky. As long as it doesn’t drop on our house. We covered this new stack with the original “Wood Hood.”
I had six cans in my arms already when I spotted these. The Budweiser man has struck again. I say “man” but who knows. We speculate endlessly about whether this is the work of a kid. It can’t be. No kid would continue doing this for three years! It must be an adult and it must be a man. A lady wouldn’t buy a 24 ounce can of Bud, would she? And are these cans thrown here from a moving car? Tossed across a lane from the driver’s side. I doubt it. They are always in the same spot. He would have to be too good a shot. Who would walk this far down a nearly deserted dead end street? We usually come to the same conclusive guess. It must be one of the neighbors. “Honey I’m going out to walk the dog.” Someone who is already in the doghouse for their drinking!
“All Shook Up” Eastman House in Rochester New York
We finally got over to see the Graham Nash curated rock and roll photography show at the George Eastman House. The shot of Hendrix during the soundcheck at Monterrey Pop was worth the price of admission and there were plenty of classic shots and outtakes from famous sessions. Gene Vincent looked liked he invented rock ‘n roll in a 1959 shot. Anton Corbjn’s photos transcended the music aspect. His shot of Joe Cocker was my favorite in the show. Mick Jagger looks silly stretching before a show next to a shot of Iggy doing a back bend in performance. I could only wonder if that was an intentional dig. Graham Nash included a few of his own shots of Neil Young and his girlfriend Joni and he’s going to be here to talk about the show in a few weeks.
An accompanying show in the small gallery as you walk in had five projections of snippets of rock and roll performances from tv shows like Hullabaloo, Ed Sullivan, Dick Cavett, MTV and Hollywood movies. With five screens going at once we darted back and forth to catch the Ramones, the Sex Pistols, Tina Turner, Freddie Mercury, the Stones and Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs.
I was thinking how this thing we grew up with is really our culture now but it’s spread is not complete. It still has not registered for my parents and it never will for them. My father and I were driving back from the Van Gogh drawing show in NYC a few years ago when “Like A Rolling Stone” came on the radio. I said something like, “This song changed everything when it came out” and I remember the blank stare. I hope they had their own touchstones that got under their skin in a similar way.
This tree on Culver Road in front of the Church of the Transfiguration is older than the United States. It has it’s own plaque. And it reminds me that a lot of what I like about this place was here before the Revolutionary War.
We had dinner across the street last night and I started a dissing Christmas. We’ve only been celebrating this holiday for a hundred years or so. Why can’t we stop? Christ wasn’t born on Christmas. (Rick looked it up. He was born in September or July according to two different sources.) Jesus was Jew. He wasn’t a Christian! The Catholics gloomed on to the Solstice and picked the date for Christ’s birth just like they lifted lifted all their mysteries and miracles from pagan myths. Etc. I was just trying to liven up the conversation. I do like the holiday lights.
I only have one tom in my set and I haven’t liked the way this floor tom has sounded for a long time. I tuned it higher the other night and it sounded better but too loud. This afternoon I took the dampening ring that has been on my snare and tossed it on the tom. It sounds just amazing, almost melodic. And the snare sounds better without the ring. The tom is about to become a big part of my sound.
Snow with blue sky. View from valley in the commons.
We haven’t seen the sun in days, maybe weeks. When it comes out, it’s dramatic. You appreciate things like that if you live around here. The days are noticeably longer. Twenty eleven is beckoning. Margaret Explosion plays our last gig at the Little Theater until March tonight. We plan to cover the Stooges’ 1969.
The paying kind of work has slowed down and I thought I might be able to take care of a few things around here in the downtime but it seems the more time you have the less you get done. I’m afraid to find out what happens when I retire. I probably won’t get anything done at all. I remember my soccer coach at Indiana University telling the team that even though it is hard to believe you will be a better student by devoting so much time to the team. I only lasted one year and I was a terrible student but it didn’t have anything to do with all those hours spent with the team. I was the first freshman ever in the starting line up and I loved every minute of it but the sixties got in the way
Which brings me back to my desk. I was going to clean it off today. I’ve run out of room for my mouse pad and there’s stuff piled all around my keyboard. My neighbor down the street asked if I could help split some wood. He rented an hydraulic splitter from Home Depot but it was a piece of shit. It squirted oil and the foot was bent so the wood kept wanting to squirt out. We save some money burning wood but even when a tree falls in your yard you work your ass off preparing it for the wood stove.
Peggi found these old bubble lights in her mom’s storage locker and of course she inherited them. They take a while to warm up but then “poof”, mini lava lamps.
You can tell you’re old when you get excited about books. The new Keith Richards book, “Life,” will have to wait in line, though, I’m diving into “Philip Guston – Collected Writings, Lectures and Conversations” and Peggi will have to finish her “War of The Worlds” ebook before she takes it on. Our neighbors gave us a copy of the updated “On The Road with the Ramones” and that will sit in the prime spot on our coffee table for a while.
“Let’s Spend The Night Together” came up in our iTunes the other day and we started talking about how great the Stones were on Ed Sullivan doing a different version of that song. And that led to the only time either one of us ever saw the Stone’s. We didn’t know each other but we were both in Chicago in 1969 when they played with Terry Reid and Chuck Berry in a giant auditorium.
In 1969 Philip Guston was preparing for his earthshaking but poorly received show at Marlborough Gallery in New York. It was a magical year.
Joan Rivers is a workaholic and like most she doesn’t want to stop. We watched her documentary the other night and I couldn’t help but hope that something happens to her so she can cool it. John Gilmore rode with us to last night’s Margaret Explosion gig and he had another documentary for us to watch after the gig, this one called “Who Is Harry Nilsson (And Why Is Everybody Talkin’ About Him)?”
I wasn’t a fan when he was around but I liked the song he did in Midnight Cowboy and it turns out he didn’t write that one. And I didn’t care for the Altman “Popeye” soundtrack. A friend of ours loved him back in the day and he lived downstairs from us so we couldn’t help but hear quite a bit of Nilsson, that and Genesis and Early Elton John and Phoebe Snow. I lumped it all together and decided I didn’t like any of it. I was way wrong on Nilsson. He had a magical voice and he created gorgeous melodies out of thin air. He was very musical and his his music has aged very well. It’s an “Instant Play” at Netflix.
Carol Acquilano landscape at Little Theater Café in Rochester, New York
We plan to celebrate the Solstice tonight at the Little Theatre Café with a healthy dose of pagan holiday cheer. Carol Aquilano has a exceptional show of Sumi ink drawings of local landscapes on full sheets of watercolor paper. Best art show I’ve seen in there in a while! Hope you can stop out and join us for a toast to the late Don Van Vliet (Captain Beefheart) as we play one of his songs.
Here’s a track from a few weeks ago. James Nichols joins Margaret Explosion on piano.
We worked late last night wrapping up the crap that just had to be done before the dreaded holidays and we were getting pretty psyched to watch our new Netflix disc of “Breaking Bad”, 2nd Season, Disc Two. We stuck the dvd in and it wouldn’t play because it had a small crack in it. A series about crack with a crack in it! It wouldn’t play in my computer either. In fact I had a hard time getting it out. I had to reboot for the holidays.
Frozen wetlands off Hoffman Road in Rochester, New York
The Eastman House put up a mint copy of the 1974 political thriller “The Parallax View” with Warren Beatty last night. And it was free for members. Peggi and I both thought we had seen it back in the day but we hadn’t. We would have remembered the spectacular shots. Same cinematographer as the Godfather movies and it really looked good on the big screen, so good I was laughing at inappropriate times. The plot was delicious too. Just like the Warren Commission got to the bottom of the JFK assassination and George W.’s plan to hire Henry Kissinger to get to the bottom of the World Trade Center bombings we never really know who’s calling the shots but there is probably a multinational corporation behind it.
Graham Nash curated the Rock n’ Roll photography exhibit at the Eastman House and we’ve been trying to get there for a month or so. I’m hoping Anton Corbijn’s Beefheart portrait is in the show.
Don Van Vilet was a rock n’ roller and real painter. He told The Associated Press in 1991. “I don’t like getting out when I could be painting. And when I’m painting, I don’t want anybody else around.”
Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band performing live at Ludlow’s Garage in Cincinnati in 1969. Photo by Kim Torgerson.
We haven’t seen the man-child mayor of Durand all winter. We have seen his buddies a few times on the long twisted path that they sled down and the next time we see them I plan ask about the mayor. The banks of that hill are all packed down with fresh snow making it look like a bobsled run. We skied down it today but snow plowed most of the way down to break our speed.
Our neighbor spotted a coyote yesterday and the neighbors down the street heard them howling last night. They said the coyotes had killed a deer out back so Peggi and I skied around the creek bed to see if we could spot the carcass but no luck. We got back to the house around dusk and there was a message from our friend, Duane, giving us the news that Don van Vliet (Captain Beefheart) had passed away. Duane owns one of Van Vliet’s prints and Peggi, Duane and I had seen a few of Van Vliet’s painting shows together in New York. I love his paintings but I absolutely love his music and poetry.
One of my favorite psychedelic experiences was having the sensation that the little house that Dave Mahoney and I lived in in Bloomington was flying like that scene in the Wizard of Oz. The soundtrack was 1969’s “Trout Mask Replica” which had just been released. We rode to Cincinnati with Jeff Amour from MX-80 Sound to see the Captain at Ludlow’s Garage on that tour. We sat in giant chairs. Screaming Gypsy Bandits and The Hampton Grease Band opened. Kim Torgerson took the photo above at that show. Steve Hoy drove us to Columbus the following year to hear the Magic Band on the “Lick My Decals Off Baby” tour. And back in Rochester I heard him at the Red Creek Inn where I recorded the live track below. That’s Brad Fox you hear sitting next to me. Greg Prevost from the Chesterfield Kings interviewed the Captain between sets.
Captain Beefheart Live at Red Creek in Rochester, NY
Margaret Explosion “Ritual” Recorded live at the Little Theatre Café in Rochester, NY
You need a mind massage. Stop in the the Little Theatre Café tonight for a short warm drink or a tall cool one. Take your hat off and put your feet up. Relax your mind and float down stream. The Explosion will be so gentle you won’t know what hit you.
Empty stage at Tala Vera restaurant on State Street in Rochester, New York
The surge of rush hour traffic is still outbound when the work day ends in Rochester. Empty lofts are being converted and empty nesters are coming back but most of downtown is still pretty much a ghost town at night. Less a ghost town than it was in the Scorgie’s days but still pretty hostile. State Street near the old four corners is particularly forlorn so the new Tala Vera California style Mexican restaurant/bar/nightclub is almost like a mirage.
We were there kind of late on Saturday night and there was only one other couple in the dining room. The place looks beautiful and the empty stage looked inviting. There is a sound system in place, a piano and oriental rug on the stage and a drum set in the corner. The new restaurant lets you bring in your own wine with no corkage fee until January one so we brought a bottle of Spanish red and our jalapeño appetizer was so hot we drank it fast. Their tortilla soup was delicious as were the dishes we split.
A laptop on the other side of the room was playing the kind of guitar driven, tight snare jazz that drives us crazy so when the other couple left we asked the the owner if we could plug our ipod in. We had just been listening to a Margaret Explosion gig from a few weeks ago and we picked up right where we left off in the car. It was just like being at home in a five star restaurant. We had two Christmas shows to go to and I wished the owner good luck on the way out. I do hope he can bring people downtown to his cool spot.
Watkins & the Rapiers were in full Xmas drag when we showed up at the Tango Café and the place was packed. The band took a break while Scott, accompanied by Steve Piper on guitar, did a beautiful song of his called “Stars at Christmas”. His lyric, “Walk down each street as if it’s yours,” is one hell of an image.
The Christmas season wouldn’t be right without Bob Henrie and Goners take on the season. So we packed up and squeezed in to Abilene for their rockin’ last set. Bob Cooper was sitting in with the band on piano. Peggi bought her red Farfisa from him about thirty years ago.
Peggi plays Farfisa organ on this Hi-Techs chestnut, “Screamin’ You Head.”
