Coke vs. Pepsi ~ that sort of thing.
How the World Sounds
Margaret Explosion has always been a loose conglomerate and it has altered its shape many times over the years. The line up will look a little different on Thursday and we will try to get to some new places with the sound. I hope you can stop out.
Someday all nineteen songs on Margaret Explosion’s 1998 cd, “Invisible Idiot” will be illustrated. I did this one this afternoon clips from restaurants in Spain and the famous chef, David Bouley, in action here at Wegman’s Next Door restaurant. Our nephew will one day be famous. He is shown here chopping garlic. We grew the Pimientos de Padón shown above. Peggi Fournier plays soprano sax, Pete LaBonne plays electric bass and piano, Jack Schaefer plays xylophone, Paul Dodd plays drums and Shelley Valachovic plays shakers.
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We changed course on Saturday night, Peggi’s birthday, and stopped in Essex to catch Debby Kendrick, our favorite band in town. It was a benefit for Metro Justice and I can’t think of a better cause at the moment. They were performing Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Goin’ On” when we walked in. The song never sounded better or more relevant.
Leave a commentFour of the nineteen Margaret Explosion/Invisible Idiot songs now have visuals. This one for Sparky’s Shed was a snap. I collected photos of Sparky, our neighbor for twenty six years, and threw the choice ones into iMovie. I organized them thematically and faded to black under the credits. Sparky tells his own story.
It is funny how we went from being aghast at everything he said – the junk all over his yard, the way he didn’t keep up his property – to being friends. Sparky never changed. We did. He was one of the most colorful people we have ever met.
Leave a commentI don’t know what took me so long to put this “Beach Fires” video together. The clip is one take, there is no editing, and it is as old as the song that I shot the footage for. We were at a Fourth of July party at Mark and Cheryl’s house on Edgemere Drive along Lake Ontario. Mark is in the video and there is kid buried in the sand with only his above above ground, something I didn’t notice until today. After twenty-seven years this is the third video from Margaret Explosion’s “Invisible Idiot” release. The other two are attached below. I’m thinking Sparky’s Shed” has to be the next video from the cd.
At last week’s Skylark gig we gave away copies of our Invisible Idiot cd, released some twenty-seven years ago. Pete Monacelli took the cd home and wrote this verse in response.
What’s In the shadows
What melody
Love
The shadows
Be
Comforted by shadow
Sounds
Shadows silence
Faint sounds
Shadows
Dark is light
Escape
To freedom
Without officially joining Spotify I made this playlist for Madison a few weeks back. I choose fifty 45s from the two stacks that were next to our turntable (in current rotation) and I was able find clean copies of all of them on Spotify. I put a custom cover on the playlist and figured out how to order it although I kind of like random. I was surprised how easy and fun it is to assemble. Algorithms providing plenty of distraction with a minimal amount of advertising.
Today I reassembled my Apple Music playlist, “Stop The World,” on Spotify. I shared the link with Madison again because I learned her parents were married in a Moose Lodge. The band I was in Indiana played all the social clubs (Elks, Eagles, Eagles, Moose, American Legion, VFW) as well as coon hunts. I knew nothing about country back then but I grew to love the classic cryin’ in yer beer stuff. That band, the On Fours, played most of these songs.
Pete Monacelli, reporting live from the Skylark Lounge, wrote these verses while listening to the band last night.
Last is first
Less is gain
Out is in
Life in abundance
Beginning to end
All are one
Tomorrow is today
Loss is gain
All awake internal dance
Light of life
Wake up
Today is tomorrow
Alive
Conversation
Inspiration
Wake up
To reality
Light is silent
Light is sound
Intense
Hope
Always comes
Back in time
Grooving Primitive
Alive
Inimitablealive
The bottom almost fell out of the middle of our opening song but we managed to rescue it.
Margaret Explosion could very well be a shoegaze band. Far from an early nineties thing, our nephew, Eli, says the genre is bigger than ever. Apparently it all started with Jesus and Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine. Eli is writing a book about shoegaze. We fed him band names trying to get a handle on who qualifies. Were The Feelies shoe gaze?
“Not quite, not enough distortion and reverb. But a band like Galaxie 500, who I guess are similar to the Feelies in some ways, are proto-shoegaze for the dreamy etherality of their vocals/guitar parts.” Damon, Galaxie 500’s drummer, told him that “they were always confused about their association with shoegaze, since shoegaze didn’t really start to take shape until 1990, by which point Galaxie 500 were about to break up.” Eli said you can definitely hear Dean’s ethereal vocals in many shoegaze bands, and the sunset-like atmosphere in their music has a kinship with shoegaze titans like Slowdive.
We mentioned “In One,” a Rochester band that called themselves “shoegaze.” Peggi and I did the 45 cover for them back in the day (1993.) I couldn’t find anything about them online even though the guitar player, John DePuy, is still active with Hinkley so I ripped the seven minute, yellow vinyl, small hole 45 and put it online here.
Just a few weeks back Peggi and I were taking turns reading aloud The New Yorker article about Spotify. This morning we listened to Eli’s recent Endless Scroll podcast and found him interviewing Liz Pelly who wrote the book about Spotify that The New Yorker kept referencing.
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Margaret Explosion plays Skylark Lounge on Thursday, somewhere other than the Little Theatre Café, and it will be Phil Marshall’s last show with the band – until he fills in as substitute that is. We will miss him and we plan to do our best to make this performance a fitting send-off. With the five dollar cover, we also plan to offer free copies of the band’s first cd, recorded with the first lineup under the name “Invisible Idiot” because Margaret Explosion was performing with a different lineup by the time we got into the studio (our living room.)
We’ve been assembling copies of the Invisible Idiot cd all week so despite being twenty-seven years old we’re calling it a re-release. We had the cds printed at DiscMakers and we had the covers printed locally by an engraver, Paul Klem. You should be able to spot the blind-embossed “Invisible Idiot” title at the top of the front panel but it takes some work and is probably easier for a blind person to read. We fold along the score lines, glue the two flaps and weigh the covers down under a stack of books while the adhesive dries.
Back When City was a newspaper they reviewed the cd as follows.
by Chuck Cuminale — City Newspaper
Invisible Idiot — Outta Sight, Outta Mind
Invisible idiot is a first cousin of the Margaret Explosion, an otherworldly lounge band that, from October 1996 through June 1998, played an esoteric weekly Friday night happy hour at the Bug Jar. The ethereal soundtrack they provided cast an often eerie, slow motion effect on the just-out-of-work crowd’s revelries. The group’s improvised minor key melodies bathed the room in a melancholy glow, suggesting old 8-millimeter home movies, and blurring the lines between experience and reminiscence.
The music on Outta Sight, Outta Mind was made by many of the same musicians. Mostly recorded in six sessions during March and April 1997 in Paul Dodd and Peggi Fournier’s living room, the pieces collected on Outta Sight capture much of the same mood as their Margaret counterparts. A feeling of calm detachment pervades the disc along with a dreaminess that brings to mind Personal Effects’ (Fournier and Dodd were the forces behind that beloved Rochester band) gorgeous classic Don’t Wake Me.” Not every dream is a good dream, though, and I am pretty sure I heard a stifled cry or two coming from that soprano sax, and maybe an exhortation from old Father Time to keep things moving. Outta Sight, Outta Mind is a brilliant soundtrack, for whatever movie happens to come along.
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I’d like to bring our cd poster to every gig but that would be rude to the rotating artists. The band barely fits in the photo above and the photographer would need an even wider lens to get us all in tonight when Jack brings his bass clarinet. Then again Melissa may not be able to find a sitter.
We and people in a dozen cities across the country watched the same version of the Eno movie last night. The one hundred year old theatre with the brand new sound system was packed. I’m pretty certain I saw yesterday’s date in the code that scrolled across the screen in one of the montage segues. Our version of the film opened with Eno previewing a loop on a monitor. He apparently was in his home studio, a brightly lit room with Albers like art on the white wall behind him. His work area, monitors and white Apple keyboard were impossibly clean and orderly but Eno was warm and immediately engaging. He had us laughing with his first story.
The film is compiled from a pot of over five hundred hours of potential material, some shot for the film, of course, and clips from performances and sessions with all the bands he worked with. Material is still being added to the database today. The pieces of the film are arranged by an algorithm created with guidance from the director, Gary Hustwit. We learned that this very Enoesque concept was the director’s idea and it was born out of desperation as Eno had made it clear he was not interested in one person presenting a profile of someone (him.)
The film is energizing. It feels so fresh you don’t want it to end. The clips cut across time and space and yet hold together perfectly. Eno is full of so many ideas and this presentation makes them all sound like fun. The movie is something like a joyride and I can’t wait to see a different version.
Leave a commentPeggi and I came across a cicada coming out of its shell while walking in the woods years ago. I took some photos and a short movie and I was waiting for the perfect song to attach the visuals to. I found it in Margaret Explosion’s “Sleepwalk,” one of 17 songs on our new cd “Field Recordings.”
I put the video online yesterday and texted a link to Bob Martin because Chicago had an invasion of cicadas last summer. Bob replied” “In the first couple days they were fascinating to look at. I’d actually move them out of the way when mowing. 4 weeks later, they were deafening, at one time registering nearly 100dB on my Apple Watch dB meter, and a brief trip outside would have you brushing them off your clothes and hair before coming back in. After six weeks, as they were dying off, we were raking them into piles as big as leaf piles in the fall. And just when we thought we were done, itch-mites began multiplying, feeding on the eggs that the cicadas had laced into the tree branches (thus killing the branches) and then said itch-mites began feeding on us, leaving scars we still see. And then there was the smell of rotting carcasses. We didn’t have any concept of how crazy it was going to get despite the warnings. Ours had red eyes and grey wings, though there was the occasional blue-eyed ones, which we referred to as “Sinatras.”
The song was recorded live at the Little Theatre Café (naturally.) Peggi Fournier plays soprano sax, Jack Schaefer plays bass clarinet, Phil Marshall plays guitar, Melissa Davies plays cello, Ken Frank plays the double bass and I play the drums. Arpad Sekeres mastered the audio.
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My last post got 5 stars so I’m doing a second part. I’m happy to find Max Roach is featured in the book that Bennie recommended. He is rightfully everybody’s favorite drummer. The first jazz record I ever owned was Charlie Mingus’s “Town Hall Concert” from 1974. I was still in high school and didn’t know what to make of it at first but I eventually fell in love with it and Danny Richmond’s playing. Brad Fox could sing that whole lp.
My favorite drummer though is Ed Blackwell. Trained in New Orleans, he is what they call a melodic drummer. He plays on Ornette’s “Science Fiction,” an album that turned my head around. I got to see him playing with Don Cherry at a club in New York. I shook his hand even. I was talking to Hamid Drake when he played here and he told me he studied with Ed Blackwell. Don Cherry and Ed Blackwell recorded “Mu” first part and second part, released on a separate lp, in just one session! Just listen to a few minutes of the second track on “Mu First Part.”
And don’t you love the Actual label. The lower case, sans serif typography, the sparse placement of the image on a white sleeve and the logo! In a box with the stylized “A” next to it. The number, flush right at the bottom, indicating a whole series of recordings. Actuel albums looked like anthropoligists’ collections, carefully notated field recordings.
After Bennie showed me a few jazz licks Peggi joined us on sax. Bennie played her panadero, and I played drums. Any time you have two drummers you are jamming. It has to be the easiest path to “jamming.” I never liked bands with two drummers. It is so messy. The most valuable tool in a drummer’s kit is space.
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When my brother was in town for Christmas we stopped out to see Brad. We were sitting in his living room and I remembered when we used to set up our drum sets in the living room, that very same living room. We were in high school and Brad’s mom was at work. Brad had studied at the Eastman and he showed me all that I know – very little. His first lesson was I, 2, 3, 4, on the hi-hat, drop the kick in on one and then add snare on two.” I was sitting with Marc Weinstein a few months ago when he told me how little he knew of the fundamentals. Marc plays with Pat Thomas in Mushroom, he played with MX-80 after Dave Mahoney and he’s currently playing in a blues band in Buffalo. We were laughing and trying to outdo one another with what we can’t do, rolls etc.
Our friend, Bennie, has been studying Brazilian percussion. She was leading the drum section in the stadium at Flash matches when we met her and we’ve seen her play in various settings. She occasionally brings a Brazilian instrument to Margaret Explosion gigs and sits in for a few songs. The last time I saw her I asked if she would stop by sometime and show me a few simple jazz beats. She came over on New Years Day with a paper bag of IPAs and a soft pink case with her panadero inside (a tamborine-like instrument that in the right hands can sound like a whole drum set.) Bennie has the right hands.
Specifically, I wanted to learn how Al Foster does what he does with his left hand in the last couple minutes of of Miles’ “He Loved Him Madly.” That’s all! Bennie had me start with a brush in my right hand while she sang chic, chic, ch-chic, chic, ch-chic, chic, ch-chic, chic over and over and over and over. And she wanted me to keep my right hand over the ride, not pull back and drop beats like I do. I did this for a half hour or so while she scat sang. I had the other brush in my left hand and couldn’t wait to start using it but Bennie would snap, “no backbeats” when it touched the snare. No backbeat? I live for the back beat. When the cymbal pattern was relatively smooth she had me doing it with four on the floor. I tried a snare beat again and got scolded. Bennie suggested I place a quick snare beat just before one of the kick beats. She sang the beat and I tried it. It was exhilarating. I know there is a whole world in there, in and around that simple cymbal pattern.
Bennie had a book with her and I told her I didn’t know how to read the notated drum patterns. She said don’t worry about that just read what the drummers have to say.
3 CommentsMelissa and Phil were both out of town last Friday so Margaret Explosion played with Bernie Heveron on guitar. Bernie is shown here playing keyboards, some twenty years ago, sitting in with Margaret Explosion at one of the holiday shows at the old Bop Shop. Phil Marshall, who joined the band about six years ago, is playing guitar on this minor key holiday song.
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When I first met Rich I couldn’t get over how he could ever have gotten through high school without a grounding in rock n roll. All my other friendships were formed over passionate responses to rock music. How exotic could Wantaugh, Long Island be that you could grow up without Mitch Ryder and the Stones? I found out when I visited him at his parent’s home. Later it was Rich who turned me on to Bitches Brew.
Rich was a guest dj on Howard Thompson’s WPKN “Pure” show yesterday. His theme-centered show looked at sisters, brothers and brothers & sisters who make music together. You know, Van Halen and the Ramones. I should have shared this link before the show but it will be archived here for the next two weeks. Rich has such a great radio voice. I told him so and he shared a few of his secrets. He used two vocal effects, plus a de-esser and he sped it up 5%. He sounded so smooth, like Adrienne Barbeau in John Carpenter’s Fog.
Madison, a young woman who has been coming to ME for the last six months or so asked me what I was listening to. I told her mostly 45s and she asked if I could share a playlist of them on Spotify. I have a short stack of 7 inchers, ones we’ve played recently, sitting next to the turntable so I limited myself to those. I found most on Spotify but I couldn’t find the single version of “Black & Tan Fantasy” so I had to skip that gem. And because I’m not a subscriber I can’t order the Spotify playlist so I’d recommend shuffling it.
Speaking of winter, Margaret Explosion will celebrate the solstice on Friday night at the Little theatre Café. The holidays can take care of themselves. The solstice deserves top billing. We played on this same date last year with a different lineup. It is probably a good thing that the whole Margaret Explosion band doesn’t seem to ever show up at once but this week we learned that cellist, Melissa, will be out of town with family, Phil, guitarist, will be in New Orleans with his son and Jack, bass clarinetist, has work duties.
2024
2023
We have played as a trio a few times and resigned ourselves to do that again. Bob Martin, in fact, had already requested we send him a copy of the trio date so he could play along with it in Chicago. But then we thought we could try something new so we invited Chris Zajkowski to play piano. Chris was ready to do it until he heard the weather forecast calling for snow. He has snow-removal customers that take precedence. Bernie Heveron was on our mind because we had just finished the reissue of Bob Martin’s remixed Personal Effects “This Is It” album. So we contacted him via Facebook and he will join us on guitar.
Leave a commentI like the idea of having all my stuff in the cloud, accessible from my iPad wherever I am. One of my favorite psychedelic trips was at IU in 1969. I think I might have been flying solo. I remember getting off in the student union and going out back where I laid down and looked up at the clouds. The ever shifting formations were so intricate and fascinating I felt like I was there at the creation. I thought of that trip when we watched Janet Planet the other night. The little girl liked to lay down and space out.
Bob Martin created two new videos for the Personal Effects “This Is It – Remix 2024” release. He masterfully synced old footage of the band performing live to his new mixes of the album tracks. When Peggi and I told him how much we loved them he told us how he overlapped footage on two tracks in iMovie. I didn’t realize you could do two video layers, I had always relied on long cross-dissolves, so I tried it for this video of the first song from the new Margaret Explosion cd, “Field Recordings.” I laid my iPad on the table out back and captured some time lapses of clouds. I grabbed some footage of the band performing a completely different song, stripped the audio and didn’t even try to sync it up to the song. I sent a link to Bob after I posted it. Bob used to be in the band before he moved to Chicago and I thought it was really big of him to be so generous with his compliments:
“That is wonderful at every level. Literally has my heart beating a little harder. Not only is the song great, not only is the image shifting and blending painted beautifully, but the band visual adds an imagined polyrhythmic layer that becomes part of the music. What you see isn’t what you physically hear, but I felt myself “hearing” the aural aspect of the video in perfect sympathy with the audio performance. Sorry, I am usually a little more succinct. Great stuff.”
1 CommentNot only did Bob Martin remix 1984’s Personal Effects album from the original eight track tapes. He synced his new mix of “Fascinating Game” to old footage of Personal Effects performing live. He did this without using AI. He’s saving that for the 80th anniversary reissue. “This Is It – Remix 2024” is available now on all the streaming platforms.
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The original dimension of the photo above was 1152 x 864 pixels. I enlarged it slightly (with Photoshop’s AI feature) to 1620 pixels wide, my current standard for the photos I post. The photo was taken in 1998 with my Kodak DC210 digital camera. The DC210 was released that year and is a significant model in the evolution of digital photography, one of the first cameras to feature a compact flash card for storage, a 2x optical zoom and a 1-megapixel sensor. My father worked at Kodak and he and I followed the birth of digital photography closely. Here is one of his early spreadsheets. He got me into the Kodak Camera Store on Lake Avenue and I bought this camera when it came out. I’m guessing Shelley took this photo in a moment when she wasn’t playing maracas.
This ad from City Newspaper helps date the band. Margaret Explosion started playing a regular Friday evening Happy Hour at the Bug Jar in late 1997. Twenty-seven years later on Wednesday, November 27 at the Little Theatre Café we celebrate the release of our newest CD, “Field Recordings.”
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