Ducks on pond in Durand Eastman Park in Rochester, NY
A local farmer was pictured on the front page of the paper this morning expressing his frustration at the amount of rain that we’ve had. He did recognize that “Mother Nature is the boss” even as he speculated that he would lose more than a $1000,000 this year.
I did a little gardening today while Peggi was cranking out a rush ad. I dug into mother nature with bare hands to separate daffodil bulbs that were growing in clusters on the hillside. I transplanted them along the ridge in the back of our house. I did the same thing last year and I was so surprised to see them come up in the Spring. You are supposed to do it when the green from this year’s plants dies. I almost waited too long. The old plants were all dried up and I only found pay-dirt about half of the time.
Mother Nature is taking a toll on the ninety year olds in our lives. Our next door neighbor had a same day procedure to remove a tumor on his bladder. We stopped over to see him when he got back. I asked if the incision was painful and he said, “There was no incision. They went right up my pencil.” I winced but Peggi delights in repeating that line. Peggi’s mom is finding it hard to swallow liquids and this week she has forgotten how to move her legs a couple of times. We plan to celebrate her 92nd birthday this weekend.
We have had so much rain around here this summer that people are comparing our weather to Oregon or Washington State. The ponds in Durand look like pea soup and we keep spotting green on the walls of the street pool even though the chlorine level reads right. I’m not complaining. I could care less about the weather. Our tomatoes are doing great.
I looked at the pictures in “Wolf Kahn’s America” for about four weeks and then continued reading the book. He is as fluid and colorful a writer as he is a painter. In fact John Updike wrote the Introduction and I kept stumbling over that. This quote struck me. “A subject is worth painting only when it transcends the everyday and gets to represent an over-arching insight. This insight only reveals itself in the course of work.” I kept wrestling with it because I am so drawn to the everyday.
Brian Williams, John Mooney and Joe Beard performing live in a backyard in Brighton
John Mooney (center, above) used to be pretty big around here. He left home at 15 and began playing with Joe Beard (right, above). Joe introduced John to Son House, who lived in Rochester for many years, and John still shows that influence. He moved to New Orleans in 1976 and played regularly with Earl King, The Meters and Professor Longhair.
The John Mooney Trio from the Rochester days reunited over the weekend for a City gig and a warmup backyard barbecue gig at a home in Brighton. Brian Williams (on the left, above) played bass in that trio along with Bob Cooper on keyboards. Peggi bought her red Farfisa organ from Bob Cooper back in the late seventies. Brian invited us to the party. The Blues book was written a long time ago but it always sounds great when in good hands.
We took a walk up to the lake today and watched the sail surfers darting back and forth. We cut back through the park and visually eavesdropped on the various subcultures of picnickers. We watched a City cop tell an ice cream vendor he couldn’t sell in the park. We came across a park patrol woman and told her we had seen a guy on one of the trails digging up plants and putting them in a five gallon bucket. She told us, “There’s a lot of people doin’ what they shouldn’t be doin’ today”.
Chinchillas performing at Abilene in Rochester, NY last night
We played two sets at RoCo last night and spent most of the first set trying figure out what worked best in that lively gallery space. I Sparse worked best and provided at least some definition so we went with that. Director, Bleu Cease, invited us back to play the Members Show Opening so we must have found the sweet spot.
We packed the equipment and headed over to Abilene to catch the last of The Chinchillas set. They sounded great and the place was packed. Club owner, Danny, told us Toots from the Maytals was in there playing pool a few nights ago. The Chinchillas gig was a cd release party but they ran out of cds. You can see the empty plastic bag at their feet in the blowup of this photo. You’ll also notice the lighting rig in the foreground that gave the band that special glow. One of the two outdoor spots was working. Pete, on the left, churns out some great songs and they make this whole thing look effortless. They played some songs from the early eighties (some of these guys were in the Presstones) and finished with a song I’m still singing. “We’re Goin’ To The Liquor Store”.
MArgaret Explosion Skyhigh playing on Bill and Geri’s patio
Margaret Explosion plays at seven tonight for the Rochester Contemporary closing party of the 6×6 Show. I put some of my Local Crime Faces (from the Crimestopper page) in there and last I checked only one of them had a red dot next to it. Just why would anyone want a crime face on their walls anyway?
We met with our financial guy yesterday and he had some new software that allowed us to put numbers for what age we would like to retire and how much we would need to live on. After a little crunching the results indicated that we would have to work a little longer that we had hoped. So we started looking looking for variables that we could fudge. The life expectancy figures show Peggi would live to 93 and I would live to 92. This sounded ridiculous. I told him I did not want to see ninety so he moved my number down. Pegii said, “Yeah, at ninety I could live like a bag lady and not even know the difference.”
Our financial guru laughed and told us about his brother’s plan. “Put on a nice suit. Go to church. Stop at the doughnut shop on the way home. Have some Irish coffee. Pull in the garage, shut the door and leave the engine running.”
Anne Havens is one of our favorite artists. We recently helped her with a few computer issues so she invited us over for dinner last night. She said we would know which apartment was hers by just by looking and we did. Everywhere you look you are surrounded by art and most of it is Anne’s.
We sat out on their deck while Stuart cooked trout on the grill. Peggi and I marveled at his nonchalant barbecue style and we knew the trout would be done to perfection. Anne made a real Ceasar’s Salad and roasted potatoes. We listened to Ornette Coleman and Duke Ellington and had a marvelous time. Anne proposed a toast to Ornette, our cat, and we got to talk about how special he was. The Ornette synchronicity has been non-stop around here. When David Greenbergger was here he had a Wire Magazine with Ornette on the cover and this morning Marc Weinstein emailed us a link to an Ornette Coleman clip from 1974 with James Ulmer Blood on guitar.
We offered to help Anne with an audio file that she plans to put in her concrete box sculpture, “Box of Sighs” which will be featured in the upcoming Rochester Finger Lakes show. Anne’s studio mate commented on how Anne sighs while she works so Anne recorded her sighs and put them in this box. She showed the piece at Studio 354 in 2008 but she wasn’t happy with the sound quality so we rerecorded the track today in our bathroom. The sighs were barely audible behind the closed doors and were so quiet that I had to really boost the input levels. As a result we wound up with a hum on the track. We traced that to the refrigerator on the other side of the bathroom wall so we unplugged it and got a perfect track. Anne was really in the zone. We were telling her that what we needed was a “whisper room” like they have out at Sutro Sound in San Francisco and she liked the sound of that.
Back when we were moving out this way we stopped in Vic & Irv’s for dinner and ran into the then town supervisor, David Schantz. Not that we would have recognized him or anything. He just came up to us, introduced himself and started talking like a politician. He looked out over Irondequoit Bay and described his dream of turning this funky little area called Point Pleasant or Sea Breeze into Niagara on the Lake complete with hotels and a boardwalk. It sounded like a nightmare to us.
Well, a small part of that plan is taking shape this summer as construction crews are turning the 590 North expressway (that used to dead end at Marge’s) into a one lane in each direction street with bike/walking paths and wooden fences lining both sides. To slow the traffic down they are putting four traffic circles in between Titus and the lake. And when the road gets near the lake it will go straight right through the old drive-in on the west side of Bill Greys. When they fill in the old road there will be a small park overlooking the bay right where David Schantz was looking.
We decided to ride our bike over there yesterday to get a closer look. We were cutting through the park when it started raining so we ducked into the woods and waited it out. When we came out the sun was shining and the park road was steaming.
We haven’t quite figured out this holiday. We worked Friday but the library and the stock market were closed. Lowel gave Duane Sherwood both Friday and Monday off. We worked Saturday too but that was mostly rewiring our house to get our new two line phone working. We never did find our cordless phone. Best guess is that we put it on the car while we were working in the yard and then Peggi drove out to her mom’s apartment with the phone on the hood of the car. This new one has an answering machine for both lines and one cordless phone in addition to the wired one. Anyway, we’re thinking about taking Monday off.
We already celebrated the fourth and the third with fireworks. Hard to say whether the folks along Conesus Lake or those on Edgemere Drive on Lake Ontario do a better job of blowing up the lake. Peggi’s mom was kind of bummed that we didn’t celebrate the fourth with her. Ironically, we are always waiting for things to slow down while she wishes there was more going on. Guess we didn’t have to go to two fireworks parties.
We are already gearing up for World Cup 2010 around here so we made a point of stopping by Maureen Outlaw’s place to watch the Confederations Cup on her bad ass tv. It seemed like a miracle when the US beat the European champion, Spain. And here they were facing Brazil in the final. The US was ahead 2-0 at the half and then fell apart. They didn’t really fall apart so much as Brazil just turned on their beautiful game, scored three times and defeated the United States 3-2.
There was a two for one coupon offer in yesterday’s paper for admission to the Rochester Rhino’s game downtown. At around five o’clock the sky cleared and it looked like a perfect night for a soccer game so we bought tickets in the upper deck at the midfield line. By the time we got to the stadium it was raining and they delayed the game when lightning struck. We hung around and had 2 dollar Utica Clubs in cans. Didn’t even know that brewery was still in business. The game started about an hour late.
The Rhinos played really well, the best performance I had ever seen from them, and they tied Major League Soccer’s Columbus Crew 1-1 in regulation time. Because this too was a tournament they wen to a penalty kick phase. This really cheapens the whole experience because it is such a crap shoot after such a long slog but the Rhinos won and we cheered.
We took a break from our web design work, put old clothes on and went out to work in the yard for an hour or so yesterday. We were expecting a few calls so we took our phone with us and set it down next to the brick walkway that we were relaying. Our 92 year old neighbor, Leo, stopped by to see what we were up to and and said, “If I set my phone down like that I would never see it again. I loose everything”. We laughed. We got a few calls and then came in to work. The phone rang again and we couldn’t find it. Still can’t.
Michael Greenberger came back into town to pick up his car. Remember, it broke down on the NYS Thruway near Henrietta as they were passing Rochester? He stayed at our place and we stayed up too late gabbing. He gave us a short stack of Duplex Planet magazines, a box of Ernest Brookings matches (in return for the Margo Explo matches we gave him) and a bunch of NRBQ releases. David did their artwork when they were a band and he does Terry Adam’s art now. We made plans to make plans to do a project together.
We took Anne Havens‘ computer apart to install more ram and now we’re updating her OS. Keep your fingers crossed that it reboots ok.
Leo Dodd, past president of the Historic Brighton, bought us tickets to their group’s tour of Monroe Community Hospital in West Brighton. We had helped the group out with their website and this was a thank you. We took Peggi’s mom along. They provided a box lunch and a slide show/lecture on the many homes in the area that helped with the Underground Railroad effort in the early 1800s. And then we toured the hospital.
Originally built in 1826 as the Monroe County Almshouse, they had 75 residents and a staff of two. The beautiful new building, constructed in 1930, has 566 residents and a staff of 700! The residents used to grow their own food and provide for the upkeep of the facility. There must be other reasons for the narrowing resident-to-staff ratio but I can only guess. Thomas Boyd, Rochester’s first black architect, designed the place and it is so beautiful that critics started calling it “the million dollar poor house”.
“I’m so sick of Michael Jackson”, Peggi’s mother announced when we stopped in to see her this morning. CNN was running a “In His Own Words” segment with some surreal footage of Michael. They cut to a commercial for some group called “Citizens United to Isolate Iran” and we turned the tube off. That tactic worked so well with Cuba.
Stop our see Margaret Explosion live and pick up your free Margaret Explosion matches. They are available in five colors.
Peggi bought some beautiful handmade glass earrings from Lucinda Storms last night. Lucinda was having a trunk sale in the gift shop at the Memorial Art Gallery. I have a hard time appreciating jewelry because I don’t wear it so I spent most of my time looking at two of her fascinating sketchbooks. She will be there on Saturday from 10AM til 4.
We have some of our garden on our neighbor’s property down the hill. We try to visit it once a day to water and combat weeds. Yesterday we sprinkled a little organic fertilizer around the pepper plants because the leaves were a little yellow instead of dark green indicating a lack of nitrogen. And we have surrounded each tomato plant with fencing in an effort to keep the ground hogs out. They already picked a row of lettuce clean.
Our neighbor tried a few smoke bombs in their holes but they survived. He spotted one sticking his head out of a hole so he backed his tractor up to the hole and ran parked his tractor up to the hole and connected a piece of hose to the tailpipe and shoved the hose down in the hole. But the next day the ground hog was back.
He set a Haveaheart trap for the guy but the bait wilted and was not much of a temptation. So the next time he spotted the groundhog go in one of the holes he placed a live, potted lettuce plant in the trap and positioned the trap next to the hole. It worked. The town came to pick up the trap and they said they would free the ground hog over by the bay and bring the empty trap back.
David Greenberger from Duplex Planet stops in to the Little Theater to hear Margaret Explosion
Transmissions are expensive and they seem to go in the worst situations. David Greenberger and his wife were driving back to Saratoga Springs when theirs went near the Henrietta exit. They holed up at a MicroTel Inn, rented a car at RentAwreck and found their way to Craig Autometric on East Avenue where their car had been towed. They had some dinner at 2 Vine and spotted a poster for Margaret Explosion at the Little Theater. They were there when we showed up. Jenna Weintraub from the Horse Lovers played some beautiful saw on few tunes.
Ten or fifteen years ago Chuck Cuminale, aka Colorblind James, gave a us a small stack of David’s magazine, The Duplex Planet. We loved it. Chuck was contributing to the Refrigerator at the time and David sent us one of his cds. He has worked with Terry Adams, Robyn Hitchcock, Dave Alvin, Drew Friedman and David Hidalgo and Louie Perez of Los Lobos. Coincidentally, our friends Pete and Shelley had crossed paths with David and we sent David a Margaret Explosion cd with Pete on it. David liked it and contacted us about the possibility of doing a recording project some day.
David was a regular contributor to National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” so you may have already heard him. He has a new cd called “Cherry Ping Apple Blossom Time”. Milwaukee musician, Paul Cebar, supplies the music and David reads dialog from elderly Milwaukeeans with memory loss. There are 38 delightful tracks on the cd and you can download them all from Thrill Jockey for $10.
Jeff and Margaret had a post jazz fest party last night. Jeff played cds from the bands that performed here and we actually stood around talking about the acts we had seen at the festival. “What was your favorite act?” was a good conversation starter as the crowd mingled on the back deck. Jeff took a poll and reported the results while standing on a chair. Monty Alexander and Jonas Kullhammar were tied for first place. Dick Storms and Scott Regan picked bands that we didn’t even see so there was plenty to go around.
As good as it was, the conversation eventually turned to how it could be better. These were just a few of the conversation points. More US/NYC bands and less from across the pond. Does the government subsidy of those bands make them cheaper than US bands? How about multiple stages up and down East Avenue with local jazz acts instead of the two big stages with big name biker acts? Why isn’t the Little Cafe a venue for the night? The big, white Jazz Fest mass of a logo is almost impossible to shoot around for photographers. The web site is sort of sad. No imbedded YouTube videos, sometimes no links to sound files and no blog feature to give your feedback. And if you gave the organizers your email address you got a useless email everyday trying to sell you stuff. But these are all minor quibbles. It is amazing that these guys pulled this thing off again. A successful jazz fest! Who can complain?
I mentioned seeing Gary Brandt at the Petter Molvaer show in an earlier post and he emailed us this followup.
“I got to the church at 6, and discovered that not only was I first on line, I was the line for 20 minutes. A guy comes around the corner and asks if this is where Nils is playing and is this the door. After chatting, I asked him where he was from. His reply, ”I flew in an hour ago for this from NYC.” The next two people to the line were from Toronto, and the next three were from northern jersey. We were all there for Nils and Arve. And yes, I spent 80 dollars and was quite happy.”
Every year I write Ornette Coleman’s name in that line on the Harris Jazz Fest survey where they ask you who you would like to see at next year’s fest. Nobody pays any attention. Or how about Joe McPhee, Ken Vandermark, Hamid Drake or Pharoah Sanders and Yusef Latef and Archie Shepp before they die.
Ornette the cat will take his last trip to the vet tomorrow morning. We would have taken him out there this morning but Barry Brown was off. Ornette stopped eating today so we get the message. He is outside as I write this, sitting in the garden. He is one cool cat and we are going to miss him a lot.
Joe Lovano and Us Five at the Rochester Jazz Festival
Joe Lovano opened the last night of Day 9 with a different Us Five than his YouTube video. This one featured only one drummer and his wife, Judi Silvano, in that order. Joe moves about the stage with a wireless mic and tosses off melodies like he is in the middle of a lively conversation and most of the animation was between the amazing drummer, Francisco Mela, and Joe. Judi’s skat, Cameron Brown’s bass, (he’s recorded with Archie Shepp and Mal Waldron) James Weidman’s piano made this a rich musical experience. Joe Lovano is big league.
Delirium at first seemed like a toy band. But that is only in comparison to Joe Lovano. This Finish quartet has been together for ten years and they sound it. Their arrangements are crisp and cleanly delivered with lots of unison horn. They are all great players but the tenor sax player was exceptional. They have their own European (more pageantry and less blues based) jazz sound and it’s a lot of fun. Their last tune was entitled, “Let’s Have Some Pie”.
Aaron Parks has one of the goofiest haircuts I’ve seen in a while. We were excited to see the Respect Sextet’s Ted Poor in the drum chair and gave these guys about a half hour but never warmed up to them. Aaron’s flowing, lyrical piano style seemed to butt heads with Ted’s rambunctious rough edges and the bass player was not holding this all together. Can’t we have Respect Sextet here every year?
We finished the Fest at Montage with the Antonio Ciacca Group. We had see Antonio at Kilbourn a few years back and really loved his playing. He came out limping (literally) tonight and seemed kind of tired. We were sitting right next to his piano but he was not loud enough. The tenor sax player was great. Everybody is great. This festival just keeps getting better and better. We said hi to and thanked co-promoter Marc Iacona on the way out (he was a former student of Peggi’s) but we can’t thank him enough.
We spent some time following links to sound files for Friday’s line-up. We watched a video of Pat Martino and couldn’t even count the number of strings on the bass player’s instrument but we guessed there were seven so we nixed that show. Turns out he played with an organist and no bass player. We heard he was great. We chose to start with Arve Henriksen, a trumpet player from Norway, who was performing with a dj at the Lutheran Church. We thought there would be a bigger line for this event but it was pretty laid back. We chatted with friends while they mowed the lawn at the church. Hal told us there was a review of Arve and Nils Petter Molvaer (we saw Nils here the night before) in today’s New York Times.
Thank god churches are are hurting for patrons (except for the Evangelicals) these days because all these beautiful urban buildings are now available as performance spaces. The Cowboy Junkies recorded the Trinity Sessions in a Toronto Church letting the ambiance of the hall define their whole sound. Ani DiFranco bought an old church in Buffalo and converted it to a performance space and Doug Rice has recently converted an old Baptist church on Atlantic Avenue into MUCC. Arve Hendriksen let the room breathe and he made the most of it with his beautiful sparse but melodically rich trumpet playing. And looked completely relaxed sitting on the piano bench while the dj sampled the horn live and processed the horn parts adding them to the mix. I closed my eyes and heard an Arabic falsetto voice chanting and assumed the dj had added a vocal loop. When I looked up it was Arve singing into the mic. If only church going was this meditative and restorative. We stopped over at Abilene and then came back for the second set.
Monty Alexander Trio at Kilbourn Hall at the Rochester International Jazz Festival
We stuck our head in the tent a few years ago to check out Ryan Shaw and gave him another chance last night. We met Brian and Olga in line and Brian reached into his bag for his glasses to read the program. He put them on and they steamed up. The temperature in his bag was quite bit cooler that the air temperature because he had some sort of liquid refreshment in there. We do love the early Detroit r&b era that Ryan Shaw is mining but this muscular approach, not just his buff build but the five string bass and heavy hitting drummer, takes the sweetness out it. I couldn’t get past the ready cell phone on his belt.
We ran into Jeff and Mary Kaye on the street and followed them over to the Xerox Auditorium to check out Joe Baione on the vibes. He looked like Jeff Daniels and played in a loose limbed manner that was clearly at odds with the studied approach of his bandmates. I wanted to like the Milt Jackson tune they were doing but I couldn’t get past the disconnect.
We saw the Russians from Second approach on the street. They were wearing their “Artist” badges and enjoying themselves in our strange land. Peggi had them sign her program.
Gary Brandt and a number of fans were in line early for Nils Petter Molvaer at the Lutheran Church. These were people without Jazz passes who were ready to plunk down cash for this guy. We knew nothing about him other than the sound files that we had spot-checked before leaving the house. Nils plays trumpet through two mics, one with an arsenal of effects boxes and one with only reverb. Both the guitar player and Nils had an Apple laptop to augment and mix their sound with. Their spacious, austere sound worked perfectly in the church and it all would have been more relaxing if we didn’t have to watch the performers fussing with the equipment. But I know that is now part of the modern performers’ dialog. The drummer in Nils Petter Molvaer did not have his own laptop but he did have to lock into some loops. I thought their sound was more interesting without the programmed tracks and this guy sounded fantastic playing the drums with his bare hands like he did for the first part of the set. In a song called “Gong” he soloed with a cymbal in his hands while standing in front of a mic confirming that these guys would have sound better without all the non organic trappings.
Never mind that Monty Alexander looked about twenty years younger in the promo photo. He stole the show last night and may be our favorite act at the Jazz Fest. We almost didn’t go but there was line for Tony Kofi at Christ Church so we tried Kilbourn. We sat next to an older woman who greeted us with a smile. I said, “You already saw Monty didn’t you?” She said, “How did you know?” Peggi said, “You have that Monty glow.” She had a Wegman’s bag next to her on the floor, one of the new green ones with the limes on them. She showed us a photo that she had Monty sign after the first show. It was her and Monty outside of Birdland in NYC a few years ago but she was a regular at the Roundtowner in the seventies when Monty came through town on a regular basis. We had heard Monty at Art Park about ten years ago and we were bothered by hs hyperactive quoting of so many songs that you forget what song he is playing. He did a bit of that last night and his sidemen seemed to shake their heads at the cornball tactic but it was all in the name of a thoroughly entertaining show. And entertaining alone would sell him short. He did a song of his called “Hope” with a bowed bass solo that almost made me cry it was so beautiful.
Monty’s drummer could be the best drummer in the world. I was blown away by this guy’s incredible control. He had the perfect touch with every beat. No exaggeration! Both the drummer and bass player had genuine smiles on their faces the entire set. Monty had a blast finding his groove and hit his master showman stride singing Day O and Nat King Cole’s “Lorraine” with a Nat imitation. He reached into into a black bag to pull out a melodica to play amazing versions of Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song” and “Running Away” and then an instrumental that we recognized from Augustus Pablo.
