Coke vs. Pepsi ~ that sort of thing.
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.
Leave a comment
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.
Leave a comment
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.
Listen to Margaret Explosion – 1969
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.
Leave a comment
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.
Leave a comment
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.”
1 Comment
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
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.
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.”
Local film director, Robin Lehman has two Oscars under his belt or above his fireplace or stashed away somewhere in his Rochester home. The Eastman House honored Lehman last night by showing three of his documentaries and then grilling him in a post movie Q and A session. I liked the first short the best. Beautiful, liquid shots from inside an African volcano that were orchestrated to a Bach organ fugue. The second short, close-ups of underwater creatures, was unbelievably beautiful but the soundtrack was cornball and the third, main feature, “Forever Young”, about aging well, was just what you would expect. Get into something and get into it good, advice that could just as easily be offered to people of any age. My neighbor, Leo, in his nineties, is a perfect case. Whenever I say “Take it easy,” as a parting salutation he shoots back, “I don’t want to take it easy.”
And then (we were following Rick and Monica around tonight) off to L&M Lanes on Merchants Road in the old hood for a few games of bowling and some pints of Victory Hop Devil. The juke box hits the spot as well with Neil Young, Parliament and Zeppelin. This place feels like ground zero Rochester.
1 CommentThe third dvd of “Breaking Bad” arrived in mail today with only one episode. Guess there was a writer’s strike going on back then. We toyed with watching it right away and getting it back the same day’s mail but work got in the way.
Work seems to be getting in the way of NYC trip too. We were planning to take the train down, visit our nephew who’s going to Columbia Law School and then stay with our friend, Duane, in Brooklyn. I called Duane today to tell him it was looking like weren’t going to be able to get away for a few weeks because of work. Ugg.
I had already planned a few art stops. Lynette Yiadom-Boakye has show up in Harlem at the Studio Museum near where our nephew lives. She does portraits of fiction characters and I love the way she paints. Another great paint handler, Luc Tuymans, who just had a retrospective at SFMoMA, has a show of recent paintings at the David Zwirner Gallery in Chelsea and of course once you get down there there is no holding back with the art onslaught.
We’ve been following the “Steve Martin art lecture at the Y” story and read Steve’s letter to the editor in last Sunday’s paper and I was excited to hear Colbert had Steve Martin on his show last night. I might have to buy his book.
Leave a comment
John Gilmore insisted we put this cable tv show called “Breaking Bad” in our Netflix queue. In fact he asked for our password and he added the movie himself. We spotted it in there and bumped it down a few times (I didn’t like the name of it) but it eventually worked its way to the top when we weren’t looking and then showed up in our mailbox.
We really love it. It’s over the top and believable at the same time without getting into reality tv territory. We watched the first three episodes in a flash and while we were waiting for the next disc to arrive our neighbors brought over a movie called “Leaves of Grass” with Susan Sarandon and Richard Dreyfuss. It was a similar topic. We watched the movie together and I was obnoxious throughout because I couldn’t believe how pale this thing was stacked up to “Breaking Bad.”
We don’t have cable tv so we have a lot of catching up to do and there is nothing but “Breaking Bad” in our Netflix queue now.
1 Comment
I don’t remember this yellow cherry tree from last year. It’s the first thing we saw today as we entered the woods. The skiing was excellent as long as we didn’t stand still. The ground is not quite frozen yet so the snow is sticky down there.
People were talking about sixteen inches but that doesn’t seen possible. We have about five out there now and I just checked the weather – “Occasional lake effect snow showers. Additional accumulation 3 to 5 inches in the most persistent snows…greatest near Lake Ontario and in the eastern suburbs. Lows in the lower 20s. Northwest winds 15 to 25 mph becoming west. Gusts up to 30 mph. Chance of snow near 100 percent.” Didn’t keep Peggi from going to her yoga class.
Did anybody see that article about the State of Kentucky using economic development funds to build a replica of Noah’s ark. It’s kinda down there near the Creation Museum. Separation of church and state issues make it sort of controversial. They’re talking about rebuilding the Tower of Babel down there. I’d like to be there when they speak in tongues. Or how about that article about the neo nazi’s lawyer who has hired a make up artist at $125 a day to cover up his defendant’s tattoos during his capitol punishment trial. “Could be distracting or prejudicial to the jurors.” Is there such a thing as a fair trial? My friend Rich sorts a lot of these issues out for me.
Leave a comment
What a beautiful painting this is (the painting not my snapshot)! Like the E string on a double bass playing a particularly, seductive note or the air that is being misplaced by it. It’s my favorite piece in the new Rochester Contemporary Members Show.
Leave a comment
I’m quite sure I saw Akeer Matthews many times as we travelled up and down Culver Road. He was hit by a car a few months back right across the street from Case’s Garden Store where we buy our plants in the Spring. I know I would have been a skateboarder if that subculture was around when I was young so I always take note of them in a crowd.
Margaret Explosion played at the annual dinner/auction/benefit for Rochester Roots last night. Certainly a worthwhile effort, to get city youth to eat right, green and local when possible, it was none the less a rather sad affair. We played up on a small stage in an old auditorium in the Downtown Presbyterian Church and the sound was great. We tried our best to stay in the background (so much so that a woman started an announcement as we were starting a song) while mostly older, progressive types bid on bath soaps and local wine. Bob and Ken left after we finished playing but Peggi and I stayed around for the dinner. It was delicious and entirely locally grown. I guess what makes it sad is that a program as obviously right on as this one must depend on volunteers to support it. That and the PowerPoint presentation after dinner.
Leave a comment
Painting class ended for the year, just in time to do some more painting. During the last class (i.e. “therapy session”) I overheard Fred explaining another one of painting’s conundrums to a fellow student. Tony was working on a big abstract, one with what he calls “pours” of pigment and medium, and he had a nice section at the bottom of his painting that I had complimented him on earlier in the evening. I was only listening as I worked on my own set of problems but I know Fred was covering up that section on Tony’s painting when he launched into a familiar rap.
“The minute something becomes precious, it is a liability. You’re going to dance around it, trying to protect it at the expense of your painting.”
These universal guides, always address the worst first, if the question comes up the answer is yes, get to the point and then shut up, work for the other abstract painters in the class. They work for the women who paints animals, the guy who does Maine landscapes, my father’s whimsical watercolors and my crime face paintings. The guides, of course, are bigger than painting and that’s why they are universal.
Leave a comment“Far Out Charlie” shot this video of Margaret Explosion last Wednesday. It’s a view from his table and it has even more crowd noise than our recordings. Pete LaBonne plays piano in this video and Jack Schaefer is on guitar. Bob Martin will be back in the guitar chair tonight and James Nichols joins us on piano. Stop out and make some noise. It is an essential part of our sound.
Leave a comment
