Dan Eaton had a sweet gig with RNews for many years. In a few minutes he talked you through a gourmet recipe and convinced you that a regular guy could do this. He delivered the goods at Rooney’s and Good Luck and Rochester’s finest. He holds court in Hammondsport now, at the bottom of Kueka Lake and will soon be offering a “Chef’s Menu.”
We had dinner there on Saturday and ordered from the menu. We were just digging in to our roasted Brussels sprouts appetizer when the waitress told us Chef Dan would like to cook for you if you agree. We agreed and were blown away. We were were celebrating Jeff’s birthday so booked a room upstairs and shared a bottle of Mescal that he had brought back from Mexico.
I know girlie magazines is the first thing anyone thinks of when you say World Wide News but they used to be the only place in town where you could buy the English weeklies, Melody Maker, Sounds and NME, the Spanish daily newspapers and any obscure art magazine you could think of. Last time I was in there it was more like a corner store.
It was a beautiful day for a walk around the city. We had lunch at Fifth Frame and a late afternoon beer at Swiftwater. I’m thinking about painting the horseshoes for the new season.
Armand Schaubroeck For State Senate poster at House of Guitars in Rochester, New York
I stopped in to see Jack at the Twelve Corners bagel shop. The cashier told me to go on back. Jack was listening to to some Arabic music and franticly tending a steady stream of dough as it spilled out of a vat and onto the moving track that shapes the bagels.
Upstairs at the House of Guitars in the far back corner of the building there used to be a mound of drum hardware. The peak was ten feet high and the pile spilled toward you like an art installation. Most of it was used, stands that were taken in on trade, but if you were lucky you might find just the part you were looking for. We walked over this afternoon and found Ethan Porter in Dick’s old space, working on guitars. And that pile is growing again but its over to the left.
I was looking for the shortest snare stand I could find because I wanted to put a rack tom on it and have the tops of my snare and tom be level. I found a used top and a bottom and put them together but it still wasn’t short enough. I took it down to Jared’s and we shortened it with a grinder, drilled a new hole with his drill press and put it all together.
Spring Break is over. The UT college kids are coming back. We spotted Tim Berne waiting for a ride out of town and then a little further down Gay Street was Ken Burns in a bus wrapped with an ad for his upcoming PBS Country Music documentary. Knoxville is returning to normal.
I’m going to miss the Big Ears app. This festival unfolded so well and our schedule was continually in flux we that depended on the app for everything. To listen to sound samples from the artist’s sites, to get from one venue to the next, and most of all to get continuous stream of updates about surprise appearances and clubs reaching capacity. But most of all I’m going to miss Big Ears, the festival, an astounding collection of great music.
Art Ensemble of Chicago at Big Ears Festival in Knoxville Tennessee 2019
People were walking toward us this morning with pillows under their arms. We were headed to The Standard where a twelve hour drone was just finishing up. It took a while for our eyes to adjust to the darkness. Bodies were scattered about, some cross legged with their eyes closed, others completely sprawled out or asleep. A different musician or set of musicians took over the drone every half hour. We listened with our full body for fifteen minutes or so and headed over to the Knoxville Art Museum to check out Tim Story’s Roedelius Cells, fragments from old Cluster recordings played through sixteen speakers, eight times stereo. We stopped in a panel discussion with Nate Wooley. He talked about listening, the importance of silence and playing with but not mimicking external sounds.
A century after the WW1 armistice, Richard Thompson performed KIA with a string ensemble. His songs are based on letters, diaries and verbatim extracts from people directly involved. Peggi counted 10 violins, 4 violas, 4 cellos and two basses.
Ever the optimist, Roscoe Mitchell, in the center of a panel surrounded by three current members of the Art Ensemble, said, “It seems like the sixties all over again.” He talked about composing in the moment and how he was trying to do the past members, those who have passed on, proud. “You either have a ticket to ride or you don’t go.” We we’re thrilled to see that Tomeka Reid, the cellist we liked so much in Artifacts, is now a member of the Art Ensemble.
Bill Frisell’s Harmony with Petra Haden singing as he plays guitar along with cellist, Hank Roberts and Luke Bergman on baritone guitar sounded right at home in Tennessee. The old timeyness in a lot of Frisell’s playing in hi many settings is fully fleshed out here.
At the Spanish/Moorish Tennessee Theater the amazing Art Ensemble of Chicago, celebrating fifty years of great black music, closed out the festival like a rocket ship leaving earth with the very best elements of our culture. With only two of the formible five left they had added twelve members and a conductor. Their set and encore were so musically rich our ears indeed got bigger.
Stone wall in Chivo restaurant, Knoxville Tennessee.
We weren’t sure what to expect, which is always a good thing. We gathered in an art room at the downtown galley and were told to turn our devices off. They warned us that we could not leave the room for forty five minutes. Bill Frisell was to play a tone and we were told there would be ten minutes of silence after that. Then Bill played his guitar for fifteen (without any boxes) and then there was another ten minutes of silence before Bill struck the final tone. A morning meditation and a perfect start to the day.
We had seen Mary Halvorson on the street but hadn’t heard any of the configurations she was playing in until Columbia Icefield. They were loud and rambunctious. Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir went for emotion, Icelandic style, accompanying herself on piano. What a contrast, walking into Wadada Leo Smith’s solo trumpet performance. Not just a warm tone but a deep, soulful, bluesy tribute to Monk.
Over to the Knoxville Art Museum for Nate Wooley, someone who is supposed to make us question our fundamental understanding of what a trumpet sounds like. His opening piece was so quiet I had a hard time chewing my peanut noodle and pickled cabbage dish without making too much noise. Long, meditative notes that got so long they required circular breathing.
Carla Bley played a very pretty set at the Tennessee Theater with her partner, Steve Sallow and a saxophonist. Amirtha Kidambi‘s Elder Ones at the church sounded like a middle eastern Art Bears or maybe Screaming Gypsy Bandits. Jack DeJohnette with Ravi Coltrane and Jimmy Garrison’s son was surprising. Garrison, on six string electric bass, comes across as the lead instrument in this all star trio. And did ourselves in with Abstract Black in the Old City, a solo sax with effects.
Absînt with David Torn, Tim Berne, Aurora Nealand and Bill Frisell performing at Big Ears in Knoxville, Tennessee 2019
We started our day with a few minutes worth of Dead Souls, the eight hour movie by Wang Bing, at the UT Gallery and then headed down to the Bijou Theater for Joan La Barbara again, this time with Alvin Lucier and the Ever Present Orchestra. It was transcendent.
Larry Grenadier’s recent ECM release is a solo bass recording called “The Gleaners.” He performed songs from it and mixed Coltrane, Gershwin and Hindemith in with his own songs. He makes the bass sound extraordinarily rich.
Harold Budd opened with a gong piece a Methodist church. The church bells chimed in the middle of his loosely conducted set. Shai Meistro’s trio was amazing. They finished with a cinematic song worthy of an Oscar winning movie.
Absînt with accordionist, Aurora Nealand, Tim Berne, Bill Frisell, and David Torn, performed for the first time together at the Standard, a standing room only venue. It was kind of messy so we ducked out to see Spiritualized. And we finished the night with a brilliant performance by Meredith Monk of her “Cellular Songs,” something she premiered last year at BAM.
The upholstery in the Ford Focus was all cracked. That’s the first thing I noticed and once our Uber pickup was confirmed the driver played “Only the Good Die Young” through the tiny speaker in his phone. I hate that song. He must have called up Pandora’s Billy Joel station because before we arrived downtown “Still Rock n Roll To Me” was playing “through a cheap pair of speakers.” We were in Knoxville for the Big Ears Festival.
We started with a few short films by Beatrice Gibson. We sat on the floor in the UT Art Gallery and marveled at the sound system. It might be time to upgrade our home system before we loose our hearing. We had a salad in a bistro near the gallery and spotted Bill Frisell and Thomas Morgan walking by. Frisell is playing all four nights in a different configuration each night. In Saint John’s Cathedral we heard the cellist, Peter Gregson, play lush reinterpretations of Bach concertos. We stuck our heads in the Mill & Mine to hear someone who has apparently played on every Animal Collective album. Mercury Rev is playing here tonight and Spiritualized tomorrow. This is a very walkable city.
Joan La Barbara started with something she called “a real time composition.” She made a sound with her voice and followed it. She did a composition of hers that was used in the movie, Arrival, and told us she is working on an opera based on the life of Virginia Woolf and Joseph Cornell. She reimagined what Woolf’s voice would be like in setting based on Cornell’s journals.
Artifacts Trio, cello, flute and drums, have steeped themselves in the AACM, ancient to the future, tradition. This trio played so well together and covered so much rich musical terrain, they are going to be hard to top.
Masonic building on Main Street in Aurora, New York
We peeked in the windows of this old Masonic Lodge building when we were down in Aurora. They were apparently still using the place for meetings. The space was sort of an open plan like a small church. It’s one of the few buildings in The town that hasn’t been restored by the Inn owners. Standing outside the front door you could see right through the building to the lake.
In these dreamy small towns, that are at least a century past their prime, I always find myself entertaining an old fantasy, really just momentarily picturing what it might be like living in a rehabbed building in the center of town. But before it even comes into focus I dismiss it. I know it’s impossible.
At Pete Monacelli’s opening, where a series of works were titled “Searching For Home.” he told me why he left his hometown of Albion. The scenario where he opened a space where teens could hang out only to find the principal of the school and the local cops did everything they could to shut him down pretty well sums it up.
Oscar’s drawing of Ken Frank as an octopus playing bass.
Amidst an extraordinary confluence of natural phenomena Margaret Explosion will perform two sets of original music at the Little Theater Café this evening. The atmosphere will be conducive to creativity. Join Steve Piper and Scott Regan (and the band) who are regularly seen sketching while we play. Oscar was there, on a school night, and drew this picture of Ken as an octopus playing bass.
“World’s Fair” by Margaret Explosion. Recorded live at the Little Theatre Café on 05.30.18. Peggi Fournier – sax, Ken Frank – bass, Phil Marshall – guitar, Paul Dodd – drums.
Winter Aconite in full bloom for the past week, 2019
My father first identified this flower for us. We were stunned to see it bursting through the snow. I started keeping track of the date each year when we first see it and last year it was February 22nd. I posted a picture of the Winter Aconite then and in that post I see I mentioned “the amount of plastic that scientists found in tiny fish at the bottom of the ocean.” This morning I read about a big fish, a whale in the Philippines, with eighty-eight pounds of plastic in its stomach.
We could all have a much lighter footprint.
I have neglected the website, theRefrigerator.net, long enough and am in the process of taking it down, reducing my digital footprint. I’m keeping a few things and this morning I finished moving my favorite piece, Shelley Valachovic’s artist journal entitled “A Year In The Woods,” to a safe location.
A Year In The Woods – Illustrated and written by Shelley Valchovic.
This is a blueprint for a lighter footprint and so much more. Shelley’s watercolor illustrations of the local plants, fruit, leaves and mushrooms that surround them in their Adirondack home are gorgeous. We bought the original of the image below at a show of Shelley’s work in Troy. Shelley’s text, the beautiful journal entries, charts the Adirondack seasonal offerings. Here is a passage from mid March.
Ball Galls on Goldenrod
(Solidago spp.)
“The chipmunks came out today all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, two of them running like madmen between the shed, the lodge, the fireplace, and back to the shed again. They must have calendars in their underground winter hideouts, for they are right on schedule. Or perhaps they can sense the thaw, feel the softening of the ground, or maybe their ceilings have started to leak.”
I’m guessing that Shelley and her partner, Pete, are syruping down today. In her March entry, she notes that water freezes at a higher temperature than sugar, separating the goods before you boil it down. See “A Year In The Woods.“
View of Irondequoit Bay from the back of the Bay Side Pub
In another two weeks the outlet bridge will swing open and you won’t be able to walk into Webster again until November. We walked over the bridge and on to the spit of land separating Lake Ontario and Irondequoit Bay. Summer homes used to line both sides of this peninsula but most of the ones on the north side have washed away. There is a nice foot path that parallels the road where the former Hojack tracks were. It comes to an end by a historical marker on the spot where Denonville’s French army landed in 1687 when they invaded Seneca country.
One year ago we circumnavigated the Bay on foot. We were preparing for the big walk across Spain. Excitement was in the air. Anything was possible. And nothing has changed.
We drove past Saint Patrick’s Cemetery on the way in into town and parked right in front of the Aurora Inn. We were here for a special Portuguese dinner pairing of Portuguese food with wine from that country but first we took a walk around town. The wind was blowing hard, off the lake, so at Saint Patrick’s Church we headed up Dublin Hill Road. There is a historical marker at the corner marking the 1793 Patrick Tavern, the towns original courthouse. We checked out an art show on Wells College’s campus and headed back for dinner.
We were seated with three other couples at a round table overlooking Cayuga Lake, a mother and her grown son who drove over from Syracuse, a couple from Philly, who come up here regularly, and a couple from Brighton who were celebrating a birthday. The Brighton guy, a bond trader, and the Merck salesman from Philly monopolized the conversation. Not that we wanted to jump in on their conversations about money, taxes, vacations, cooking steak and money, just that we could hardly have our own with all that. A wine salesman and Chef Patrick, dressed in black and wearing a pair of black Crocs, saved the day by talking to the crowd between each serving.
East Avenue home with white columns in Rochester, New York
We buy Canaltown’s Rochester Choice blend and were getting low so I called Pete and had him put together a couple of big bags. We parked in the empty parking lot of the old Tops, our store of choice when we lived in the now hot North Winton neighborhood. We decided to take a walk before picking up the bags so we headed downtown on the north side of East Avenue. I had something to drop off at RoCo and we took a last look at the local landscape show while we were there. I was struck by how good looking this show is. Nine widely different artists and yet it hangs together.
We found a flyer there for a used book show at the library so we kept walking. Peggi found a small Rouault book from 1959, just one year after Rouault’s death, from a time when art books customarily had color plates glued to the pulp pages and these are knockouts. Clowns, prostitutes and religious paintings. The book was a dollar. Two of the four Rouault prints my father had on our living room wall can be seen in this family photo. I am a fan.
We walked out of downtown on the south side of Eastman, picked up our coffee and took it across the street to Wegman’s Italian restaurant where we split calamari, roasted beet salad with pistachio vinaigrette and octopus. With all the great Italian restaurants in this town Wegmans gave it a good shot.
I used to stop in at the Fairport pizzeria where my nephew worked, just to say hi and see how he was doing, and I was always struck by his tats, the gothic letter “D” and especially the Roc logo on his index finger. The logo, appropriated all over town these days in proud gesture, is a really healthy sign. I’ve always hated it when people bad mouth the city or the weather and I always think, “If you don’t like , why don’t you just leave,” The older I get, the more I just vocalize that thought.
Not too long ago, maybe 2000, I had a page on the Refrigerator website called “Rochester Beat” and I used a tiny version of the City logo between the words Rochester and Beat. To my surprise, the city had employees reading the Refrigerator on company time and I got an email asking to give them a call.
Dear Refrigerator, Subject: Use of City Logo on your website Hi, that’s our city logo on your website. Please give me a call so we can talk about it. Thanks. Ted Capuano, Assistant to the Director, Bureau of Communications, City of Rochester, New York
I blew it off and then got another email.
Dear Refrigerator, Subject: Re: Registered Rochester City mark on website. Hi, This is the second time I’ve emailed you about the use of the City’s mark on refrigerator.net. Please take down the City mark from your website. If you’d like to discuss this, please feel free to contact me. Thanks. Ted
City of Rochester logo on our green trash can.
I did not want to discuss it. I took it down and put up a close-up photo of the City logo on our green trash container.
Carlie Fishgold from Rochester’s “Post” magazine had an interesting piece about the two competing designers who both claim to have come up with the logo. She finished with this line, “That the people commandeer the symbol speaks to the authenticity of Rochester’s persona . . . as the nation’s first boom town, reinvention is the spirit of our people.”
Three orange signs along Sea Breeze Drive at dusk.
I asked our smart speaker to play some Peggy Lee and the first one out was “Is That All There Is?” probably her most popular song. Personal Effects used to do a version of that. But this setlist went deep and reminded me how much I love her. I was especially struck by how good “Where or When” sounded so I went to my library to mark it as a favorite. I only have so much time left to listen to music, as we all do. It already had five stars on it.
We tried to track down Peggi Lee when we were out visiting Peggi’s sister in Belair. We even bought one of those star maps that had her house marked on it. We were on foot, a dangerous way to get around the Hollywood Hills and her house was just too much of hike.
I thought the song below was the most interesting from last week. Nothing like Where or When. That’s my nephew’s drone on the cover.
“Drone” by Margaret Explosion. Recorded live at the Little Theatre Café on 03.06.19. Peggi Fournier – sax, Ken Frank – bass, Phil Marshall – guitar, Paul Dodd – drums.
“Sparky Goes To A Gig” – Sparky painting by Paul Dodd currently hanging on the wall at Murphy’s Law on Empire Boulevard in Rochester, NY. House Paint on Wood 43″w x 72″h 1992
In August of 2000 Steve Orr of the Democrat & Chronicle wrote a review that started with, “My favorite part of theRefrigerator might be the step-by-step pictorial on how to burn a pistachio. ‘These nuts, my favorite food in the world, flame like little flares when set afire.’ Or maybe it’s the painting entitled ‘Sparky Shows Me His Colostomy Gag.'”
Last year Maureen told us she spotted some Sparky paintings hanging in a bar on Empire Boulevard. I had wondered what happened to the series of paintings I did back in the early nineties. Cheryl Laurro displayed them in the widow of Godiva’s on Monroe Avenue and the owner of Oxford Pub, across the street, bought them. I hadn’t seen them since.
We were meeting friends at Proietti’s in Webster last night so we left a little early and stopped by Murphy’s Law at the bottom (or is it the top) of Irondequoit Bay. We found three paintings on the walls in the main room, “Sparky Shoots A Sewer Rat,” Sparky Cooks The Kielbasa In His Own Special Sauce,” and “Sparky Goes To A Gig” above. I was surprised how big they were.
Sparky had been on my mind lately. He passed away in November and I recently moved the mini website devoted to Sparky, to a new responsive html location.
It took me quite a while to warm up to Sparky, our next door neighbor for twenty seven years, but once we became friendly I amassed quite few photos and paintings of him along with a collection of “Sparky capsules,” a short sentence foundation for a painting. Sparky knew he was a character and he cultivated his persona with fantastic stories. See “Sparky Dot Com.”
Painting entitled “All My Plans” by Paul Brandwein at Geisel Gallery in Rochester, New York
I particularily like this acrylic painting by Paul Brandwein at the Geisel Gallery downtown. Entitled “All My Plans,” I read his riotously colorful structure as big enough to claim the plans but too porous to contain them. And a reminder to pick your battles, let some things go and keep a few to kick around some more.
Green door being Rochester Contemporary Art Center in winter.
All this sun, the blue skies and temperatures poking above 0 (Centigrade) signal the end of our cross country skiing season. There were a few grassy patches out there this morning and a lot of people with dogs. I stopped at a juncture between paths and a big brown dog ran toward me. I turned away from it and it jumped up on my back. Its front legs were on my shoulders as I pleaded with the owner to either call your dog or put it on a leash like the park sign says.
I know I sound like a cranky old man and I don’t particularly like this part of me. But I was up for an hour or so before Peggi, working on my computer, as the dog across the street, trapped in the front yard while surrounded by pink flags marking his electrified perimeter, the so-called invisible fence, barked at least once for every breath I took.
The dog is almost a year old now and the owners never walk it. I would be miserable too. They are inside with a big tv on in every room. Oblivious. The guy has a gun and most people on the street are afraid to talk to them. There must be a creative solution to this.
City Newspaper ad for the Bug Jar featuring Margaret Explosion Fedruary 1998
Looks like this will be our twenty-first year as a band. It still seems brand new but here’s the proof, this Bug Jar ad for the “Loosest Happy Hour on Earth.” That’s probably Bug Jar Bob’s copywriting. I can still see Steve Brown behind the bar in his white shirt, wanting to talk about investing during our break while Casey did all the work.
Twenty one years and we still haven’t had a practice. That would spoil the whole thing. That’s why I got such a kick out of Frank De Blase’s article in City, “Too Much Practice Is Bad For You.” “If you see a band on stage smiling all of a sudden, then you probably just witnessed a mistake that was handled quickly, with the intuition left intact and unsoiled by too much rehearsal.” I would add, If you see a band with their eyes closed they are probably all listening to one another wondering where the song is gonna go because they have never played it before.
Margaret Explosion plays the Little Theatre Café Wednesday 7-9. Here’s a song from twenty years ago.
Margaret Explosion CD “Happy Hour” (EAR 9) on Earring Records, released 2003
