“City of Angels” by Margaret Explosion. Song recorded live at Little Theatre Café on September 3, 2025
I had the window seat on the way in to Los Angeles. I put my iPad camera in record and pressed it flat against the window to steady the cam. It worked until we touched down but I won’t spoil that. The song is from last week. Jack was unable to make the gig so no bass clarinet. It was the night before the first day of school for Melissa’s kids so no cello either. We called Bernie Heveron that afternoon and he sat in on guitar.
It was a good night, crowded but oddly quiet, plenty of attentive new faces. It affected the way we played and, of course, it was all new with Bernie. We had played with Bernie back in the early eighties but he played bass back then.
Joe Beard and Frank DeBlase checking out each others attire at Brian Williams 80th Bday party at Abilene
I remember celebrating Brian’s 70th birthday at the Little. Maybe it was his 60th. We’ve know Brian a long time. Everybody knows Brian. He and his big bass have played with or sat in with most bands in the city. His 80th bash was hosted by Danny at Abilene. The Goners, Brian’s longest running band and the best in the city, had their gear on the stage out back and since most people there were musicians the music never stopped. The party was billed as 3-7 and the Goners never got up there until after seven.
We dropped Steve off at the airport yesterday and slept for more than ten hours last night. It was the tail end of a string of visitors and we enjoyed every bit of it. Duane was up for a wedding and we spent a few days with him without ever getting down to the pool. The weather changed when my brother and his wife drove up from NJ so we did get to spend some quality time at the pool. They let their dog out at night and then fell back asleep so we woke up early to search the neighborhood. Our niece drove up from NYC and got here hours after Steve. She slept on the couch and Steve slept in the basement. We all went out to my brother, Fran’s, house for his annual corn roast. The star of this show is his ribs but the corn, soaked in the husks in a large barrel and then roasted over a wood fire, was the best corn I have ever had in my life.
Steve was my college roommate and the best man at our wedding. Bluffed my way through high school. Could have graduated after my junior year but was having way to much fun and I was determined to apply myself as a college freshman. Steve was already a junior. He put a big homemade stereo speaker on my desk. He had a car, a white Barracuda with and 8-track player. He wrote an English paper for me (sci-fi themed of course) and I got my highest grade. My agenda went out the window. I needed a fresher course in Hoy.
This blog format suggests I assign posts to a category. I get to make up the categories. The ones I use most are “Life is a Spell,” “We Live Like Kings,” and “Field Recordings of the Future” although they are assigned arbitrarily. One category I hardly use but have for this post is “Irondequoit Melon.” Our sandy soil and temperate conditions near Lake Ontario made our area ideal for melon farming. The Irondequoit melon developed a reputation for being exceptionally sweet and fragrant. They became a regional delicacy—sold in Rochester’s public market and were shipped to nearby cities. In the late 30s the soil became infested with a fungus, fusarium wilt, and the melon seeds were retired.
Aman’s Farm Market has been selling “Irondequoit Type Melons” this season and we are working on our third one. They incredible juicy and sweet.
Before repairing a few pot holes the park maintenance people had fun with the orange spray paint. I took a series of photos there this morning. This one was my favorites.
I wish we didn’t have to come home to such terrible news. One of the first things I read was J. D,. Vance’s statement “We’re at the WH monitoring the situation in Minneapolis. Join all of us in praying for the victims!” And Kristi Noem, “I am praying for the victims of this heinous attack and their families.” I immediately hear my mom’s voice, “I wish they would stop praying and do something.” Fat chance. The guns were “perfectly legal.”
The mayor of Minneapolis issued a statement, “Don’t just say this is about thoughts and prayers right now. These kids were literally praying.” Right on, but while I respect the sentiment I can tell you those kids at Mass in the middle the day were probably not praying. Most likely they were spacing out. I went through the tenth grade in Catholic Schools. The nuns were always dropping the lesson plans and taking us over to church where someone would inevitably get sick, barf in the isles and they would sprinkle that disgusting orange stuff on the puke. We may have been looking at the statues or the Stations of the Cross or goofing around with our friends but we weren’t praying. It was just June in that state when Vance Boelter, after preaching the gospel in Africa, assassinated congresswoman Melissa Hortman.
The Annunciation Catholic church shooter apparently went to the school. The police say the shooter is transgender. The mayor said, “Anybody that is using this as an opportunity to villainize our trans community — or any other community out there — has lost their sense of common humanity.” On that I agree with the mayor.
Joe Tunis performing at Visual Studies Workshop August 23, 2025
In yesterday’s post I mentioned we had had to drop out of Matt Green’s Rochester walk in order to catch at least part of Joe Tunis’s twenty-sixth annual Day-Tour. This one consisted of 8 shows in and around Rochester where Joe performs with different musicians in each location. Peggi and caught one of his very first tours and try to catch at least one performance each year. Peggi made this video.
By chance we crossed paths with one of Joe’s earlier performances while we were on the walk withMatt Green. Joe was just finishing up at East End Green (across from Ugly Duck Coffee) when we left the Little Theatre. And then over near Grove Place we ran into James Tabbi power washing his porch.
If there was ever a movie that was right up our alley “The World Before Your Feet” is it. A documentary about Matt Green walking every street in New York City, over 8000 miles, it is just as fresh today as it must have been when it was released in 2018. Matt just completed his journey in September and he was on stage for a Q &A following an afternoon screening of the movie. He is just as warm and cheerful in person as he was in the movie. No wonder he never mugged.
Schiller Monument Downtown Rochester with tents for the unhoused along the fence
In the movie we get to experience the Brighton Beach bungalows, the gridded streets of torn down houses at the end of Queens, Emma Lazarus’s grave in Greenpoint cemetery. She wrote the poem on the Statue of Liberty. “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” How quaint those words sound today. We see the oldest living thing in NY, the 400 year old Queens Giant tree and Seagate, vast expanses of former industrial site in Staten Island and the Coney Island gated community.
Finishing the 8,000 miles was really never really the objective. Each day’s adventure was the point. Along the way he collected funky images of former synagogues that have been converted to churches, barber shops and hair salons with z’s in their name like Cutz or Kutz and 9/11 murals. His ability to stay in the moment was remarkable.
Art Deco Rochester Fire Department
After the Q & A in Rochester Matt plotted a google route for a group walk. We left from the theater and headed over to Grove Place, down Saint Paul, through the Projects to High Falls and then across the river and down an alley behind State Street across Main to the old subway bed on Court Street and then through Washington Square Park. At Clinton Matt turned to us and said “I guess will do one more bridge.” We had been walking for two hours and we planned to catch Joe Tunis performing at Visual Studies Workshop at 4 so we reluctantly left the group. It was as good as the movie.
“Train” from 2003 Margaret Explosion release “Happy Hour”
We performed a version of “Train” at the Little a few weeks ago. I still have the wooden whistle I got from the Railroad Museum. It prompted me listen to the original, from our 2003 cd “Happy Hour.” I threw that file and a few train videos I had into iMovie and came up with this.
Tom Kohn was spinning forty-fives at Skylark last night so headed over there after dinner. We hung out behind the two turntables and I helped Tom put records back win their sleeves. He had all sorts of music mashed up together and some crazy segues. Black Sabbath “Paranoid” into Wreckless Eric’s “Take the Cash.” He had some crazy 45s like Lou Reed and John Cale before the Velvets and Jon Hendricks with the Grateful Dead. But I just couldn’t believe my eyes and ears when he pulled out a Verve Records VU and Nico promo copy of “Sunday Morning” and “Femme Fatale.”
Minimalism always works. It maximizes the impact of the elements. I photographed Pete Monacelli’s drum set during Debbie Kendrick’s break when they played the Little Theatre Café. Yes, this is his whole set now. Pete was a master of the hi-hat. Coming up in the swing era he kept time with it. I use my hi-hat more like a noise-maker. Pete is short one leg these days so he has stripped down his uncle’s 1930’s set to just the snare and this cymbal mounted to the snare. He has great feel and still sounds like he’s playing a full set, especially when playing his beat up brushes, right hand sweeping while playing the butt end of the left hand brush on the rim. It is a wonder.
And another wonder is kids. I need reminding of how much fun they are. Their boundless energy, their openness, their wackiness are all gifts. Melissa, who plays cello with Margaret Explosion, brought her two over again for a swim and we picked up right where we left off. Our niece was here earlier in the summer with her kids and my sister brought three of her grandkids over after that. And with each visit I realize how much responsibility they are. How they need elders to draw boundaries and establish limits. That too is a gift. Having grown up as the oldest of seven these revelations all come back with ease.
Am I the only one who thinks this trailer looks really cool? It’s a little beat up. It obviously has a leak in the roof because they have the blue tarp up there. They have recently spray painted the whole thing. Black. I didn’t get close enough when I took this photo (I was on their property) so I can’t be sure but it looks like they spray painted it with the propane tank in place. I love how the blue painters tape on the windows matches the tarp on top. I can only image what it looks like inside.
Resist graffiti on on sidewalk at Durand Eastman Beach
We walked early yesterday to beat the heat and came across this graffiti near the beach. We couldn’t figure out what the first word was but we got the “Resist” message.
Swimmer pulling a “No Kings” protest sign at Durand Eastman Beach
As we walked along the beach we passed this guy swimming while towing a plastic dolphin. I tried to read the sign but couldn’t. I assumed it was a Bills thing. The guy saw me taking a photo and stopped long enough to shout “No Kings.”
I set the alarm on my watch for 2:50 so we wouldn’t forget to tune into Kyle Brown‘s three o’clock show “Up on the Roof” on WAYO. We love it so much. Kyle opened this week’s show with Jimmy Smith’s “Walk on the Wild Side,” too long to have been on a 45 and too clean. He plays mostly 45s and playfully skips around from soul to jazz and doo-wop. It’s like a dreamy Sunday afternoon drive in the country and provides items for my want list of used 45s.
New paint job on the garage at the end of the street
Our neighbor’s son and his Russian bride have been painting their garage this summer. They live in the Adirondacks but they have spent the last three weeks or so here with his parents. They are taking their time with the paint job but doing it right.
I seems like a week since I last posted here. The summer heat has slowed things to a crawl, things like my brain, but it is all good. We don’t have air conditioning and that contributes to the lazy pace. We’ve spent a good amount of time in the garden keeping a steady stream of greens coming in with successive plantings. And we walk down to and along the beach most days. We spend most nights reading by candlelight on our screened in porch listening to the crickets, the owls, an occasional coyote and our neighbor’s air conditioning.
We stopped in Stephen Merritt’s backyard gallery for a show with Maureen Church and Sari Gaby. Of course there was plenty of Merritt’s work there as well. Maureen paints mostly en plein air these days, lots of beautiful river scenes. And Sari had some gorgeous charcoal drawings based on Edward Curtis’s photos of Native Americans. Mostly we talked.
We stopped at Herrema’s on the way home to pick up a few things and decided to leave the car in the lot and take a walk. We were trying decide whether to walk across the street and down to Shumway’s Marina or to walk in the other direction up the river toward the city. We opted for the later. I know the City has been talking forever about developing the trails along the river but I think they are fine just the way they are. Sort of Huckleberry Finn country with the river to your right and glimpses of people’s funky backyards to your left. We even came across an old tire attached to a rope and tied to an oak limb above us.
We’re sitting on our porch in the dark as I finish this entry and we can hear Joan Jett playing in a tent down at the lake. En plein air.
Poster for MargaretExplosion gig at Little Theatre Cafe on August 7, 2025. r. to l. Peggi Fournier – soprano sax, Melissa Davies – cello, Ken Frank – double bass, Paul Dodd – drums. Photo by Jason Wilder
Jason Wilder banged off a series of band photos before one of our gigs a few months back (in sweater weather). I did a half-assed silhouette of this one and I cropped out Jack because he can’t make this gig on Thursday.
Our next door neighbor, Rick, called us from the Bop Shop yesterday. We were down in the garden picking pimientos de Padron and he was picking up something for his WITR radio show. He reminded me that the Bop Shop Sidewalk sale started today and he said Tom was going to be in at 10 if I wanted to stop by before the store opened at noon. I took him up on the invitation.
Nothing is out on the sidewalk but the aisles of the store are clogged with boxes of lps, stuff that won’t fit on the shelves of the huge store. The forty-fives are on tables near the back of the store, every one of them a dollar. They will get progressively cheaper as the sale goes on. Of course all the good stuff, the collectable 45s, are still in the the racks at their standard price. The sale is all about clearing out the junk. One man’s junk is the others’ fortune and there are plenty of treasures.
It was great to have the store to myself for almost an hour but I spent about half that time talking to Tom who was by his own admission “over-caffeinated.” When the store opened it was packed and there were seven or eight people pawing through the 45s. The Modern Lovers first lp was playing on the sound system. I was struck by how fucking good “Pablo Picasso” still sounds. 1976 was almost fifty years ago. John Cale hammering out that repetitive piano part. Jonathan’s brilliant lyrics.
Some people try to pick up girls and get called assholes This never happened to Pablo Picasso He could walk down your street and girls could not resist to stare, and so Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole
Well, the girls would turn the color of an Avocado when he would drive down their street in his El Dorado He could walk down your street and girls could not resist to stare Pablo Picasso never got called an asshole Not like you
Alright Well, he was only 5’3″, but girls could not resist the stare Pablo Picasso never got called an asshole Not in New York
I listen to everything before I buy so I was only able to get through about a quarter of the dollar 45s but I came up with perfectly clean copies of Freddy Fender’s “Before the Next Teardrop Falls” (most of it sung in Spanish, the loving tongue), Mary Wells “You Beat Me To The Punch,” the Carpenters “This Masquerade,” George and Tammy doing “Near You,” George’s “Things Have Gone To Pieces” and “If Drinking Don’t Kill Me.” And I found a much cleaner copy of “Scotch and Soda” than the one we’ve been listening to.
In order to retain Elon Musk as chief executive Tesla just granted him shares in the company worth $30 billion. The richest man in the world now has $150 billion worth and his overall wealth is estimated to be $350 billion. Just the kind of guy you want to put in charge of slashing federal aid programs.
Forbes has Donald Trump’s worth at $5.1 B, half of that coming from his $TRUMP Meme coin. I could be wrong but his inauguration gave us a glimpse of the end of the world, that scene where he was surrounded by tech giants and billionaires.
Meta posted a 36 percent quarterly increase in profit and a 22 percent jump in revenue. Not sure what happened to the Metaverse but they are now working on “super intelligence.” The A.I. will help Meta’s advertising business by improving its social media feed to keep users on its apps longer. Meta’s family of apps, which includes Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, has 3.48 billion daily users and they are going to use super intelligence to trap them in their ecosystem and increase the advertising revenue.
Peggi read “Careless People,” some of it out loud. NYT called it “genuinely shocking.” I guess that is still possible. Emotional targeting, algorithms that detect when a teenage girl starts deleting her selfies or uses the word “depression.” “It could identify when they were feeling worthless or helpless or like a failure, and would take that information and share it with advertisers.”Not to mention spreading hate speech or finding the “persuadables ” in a presidential election.
Gary Lewis has been living here for the past twenty years or so and he is playing on the beach behind Marge’s at seven tonight. We toyed with going down to the lake to listen, not go in or anything. I had the “This Diamond Ring” and “She’s Just My Style” 45s some fifty years ago and it would kind of be interesting to hear him bang them out on his eightieth birthday but we already walked to the beach this morning.
Marge’s was just named one of best bars of 2025. I would have nominated it back in the day as they would sell six packs over the bar when we were sixteen. Marge’s was funkier and less crowded in the 70s and early 80’s when Ron Beth was stocking the juke box.
Peggi made a batch of pesto with basil (above) and garlic scapes from our garden.
We had to have our car at B&B Automotive by eight this morning. We were past due on inspection and way past due for an oil change. Peggi mentioned the brakes making noise and and sure enough they found our front brakes needed replacing. They told us it would take a couple of hours.
We usually walk to and around Seneca Park while they work on the car. Sometimes we’ll cross the river on the walking bridge and sometimes we just walk around the lake in the middle of the Frederick Law Olmsted designed park. Today we walked along the trail on the eastern edge of the zoo. There is a huge wooden fence that keeps the animals in and people out but occasionally there is a knot hole in the boards. I took this photo through one of them. Peggi made a video through another. The animals could hear us but not see us. We had a conversation.
We continued on the trail past the zoo. There was someone in the woods to our left either preaching or having a very loud conversation with himself. It didn’t sound like English. Beyond the park we hugged a trail along the edge of the river. The gorge is so wild, such steep drop offs at the edge of the trail and no guard rails. I imagine it looks just like it did when this land belonged to the Native Americans. We circled back on the other side of the park and zoo and picked up our car. A second cutoff coffee was waiting for us.
When he was eight or nine our nephew asked his parents for a Roomba. He was fascinated with robotics. I’ll have to ask him if he has had the chance to ride in a Waymo yet. He works in Manhattan and that city is not quite ready. We are still getting over our Waymo experience in SF.
It felt like the Waymo car saw the four of us standing there. No need to flag it down. There was no one behind the wheel when we unlocked the doors with our app. It was exhilarating watching it stop at red lights, turn ever so carefully, even slow appropriately for the speed bumps. And when the thrill wears off you are free to play with your iPad, stare out the window, even space out if you like. I am so ready for self driving cars.
Because our neighbors were in Italy it was surprising to see their lawn being mowed mysteriously when we walked by last week. Funny thing, it had been pretty dry and the lawn did not really need mowing
We went down to our neighbors for the second half of the Women’s EURO Cup finals. They have air conditioning and get Fox Sports through their YouTube subscription. Spain was up one zero at the half but England scored and threw the match into overtime. No-one scored then so it went to a shootout and England won by a nose. Peggi put a bowl of ice cubes in front of fan tonight as she was boiling water for for our garlic scape pesto dinner. I can’t say it made much of a difference.
We brought the fan down to the basement and played some music. We recorded a few things on Peggi’s phone. We have done that quite a bit but we never go back to listen to them.
The good thing about most of the saints is their legends were created when people weren’t so fussy about the facts and science and all that. They let their imaginations run wild and over time the myths become accepted as articles of faith.
Today is the feast day of Saint James, one of Jesus’s twelve apostles. He is credited with bringing Christianity to the Iberian peninsula so today is a national holiday in Spain. James left town after Christ’s ascension (a whopper) and traveled to Hispania (modern day Spain and Portugal) to preach the Gospel. He had limited success and eventually returned to Jerusalem, where he was beheaded by King Herod Agrippa in 44 AD (Acts 12:1–2). Nothing gets you sainthood quicker than a beheading. After his martyrdom his disciples placed his body in a stone boat and set it adrift (a stone boat!). Guided by divine forces it floated to the Galician coast in northwestern Spain, where he was buried. In the 9th century, as Christians tried to drive the Moors out of the country, Saint James was said to have appeared on a white horse, wielding a sword. He led the Christians to victory and became known as “Santiago Matamoros,” the patron saint of driving a sect out of the country.
For centuries now admirers and non believers alike walk the Camino de Santiago leading to Santiago de Compostela. Peggi and I walked from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port in the French Pyrénées to Santiago de Compostela and then on to Muxía on the western coast. Vieiras, scallop shells, were the symbol of the camino as the grooves in the shell meet at a focal point (representing the many different paths to Santiago de Compostela). Scallop shells were used by pilgrims as eating and drinking utensils.
Peggi found a Saint James scallops recipe online. We planned to have our first batch of pimientos de Padron this year but we left them in the refrigerator. We had some Spanish wine, Campo Viejo, and green salad from our garden. We celebrated the feast day of Santiago with a feast.
Saint James is credited with bringing Christianity to the Iberian peninsula. One of Jesus’s twelve apostles, he left town after Christ’s ascension. He traveled to Hispania to preach the Gospel. He had limited success and eventually returned to Jerusalem, where he was beheaded by King Herod Agrippa in 44 AD (Acts 12:1–2).
Today is his feast day. around the time of the Christian Reconquest, St. James also appeared alongside the Christian army to fight with them against the Moors.
Here is Chat GPT’s visual depiction of this myth.”
Trump at the Club World Cup Final at MetLife Stadium
You can’t stay away from politics. Not that that should be an objective. I’m just thinking how it keeps intruding, like when the president of FIFA couldn’t get Trump off the field while Chelsea celebrated their amazing victory over PSG.
Mary Jean Eisenhower, the president’s granddaughter, said in an interview. “I think it was a beautiful program, andI just found it very disturbing when it got caught into the political …” Conceived by a Kansas farmer and created by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Food for Peace” has sent sacks of grain, agricultural surplus, stamped “From the American People” to more than four billion people in 150 countries around the world. Now it is effectively dead. The program was administered by the U.S. Agency for International Development, which Elon Musk fed “into the wood chipper”
PEPFAR, the campaign to end H.I.V. globally, was crippled by Elon Musk’s Government Efficiency inititive. Created during the George W. Bush administration the HIV treatment and prevention program is credited with saving over 26 million lives in low income countries. It was widely considered the single most effective public health campaign ever.
And this from Reuters: “U.S.-funded contraceptives worth nearly $10 million are being sent to France from Belgium to be incinerated, after Washington rejected offers from the United Nations and family planning organizations to buy or ship the supplies to poor nations following President Donald Trump’s decision to freeze U.S. foreign aid. The U.S. government will spend $160,000 to incinerate the stocks at a facility in France that handles medical waste.”
As Elon Musk told Joe Rogan, “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.”
