Category: Field Recordings of the Future

In all of New York state there is only one pair of plates with “ART” on them and it is fitting that they would be on a Caddy. Art and money are entwined like never before. Warhol brilliantly blew the lid off this thing a long time ago. Which brings us to Lady Gaga’s new release, “Artpop,” with cover art by Jeff Koons.

There is a direct line from Warhol’s banana art on the Velvet Underground’s first lp to this. This a natural progression but did you ever imagine Lady Gaga covering Sun Ra (or at least getting close enough to the song to split writing credits with him)? Sun Ra will make more money with this song than he made his entire career.

Pete LaBonne coined the name, Margaret Explosion, back when we had a weekly Friday evening Bug Jar gig. That’s him on bass in the 1998 photo above. Jack Schaefer is seen on guitar with Peggi and me, the ME in Margaret Explosion. Just kidding! Pete has lifetime privileges and joins us and tonight on the Little’s grand piano. Jack has rejoined the band although both Jack and Pete are now playing different instruments.

Each gig is as different as we can make them. No set lists etc. Last week’s was more different than most. Ken, our bass player could not make it and Rick McCrea joined the band on trombone so we had three horn players. Oh yeah, and Ken Columbo sat in on piano.

Margaret Explosion tonight – Little Theater Café. Listen to “Hippie Dance” from “Live at the Village Gate”

People talk all the time during Margaret Explosion gigs. There are no lyrics. We are hardly performers, most of us have our eyes closed. But the crowd does shut up when the music gets engaging and that is all as it should be.

We were standing in the back of the Tango Café last night while Scott Regan played songs from his new cd. His folk country songs sit comfortably in the Americana tradition and his backing band, The Grownups, push him in a JJ Cale direction. Most of the crowd was seated up front around tables and most were smiling. As jam-packed as the the place was the sound was great.

The Grownups, Phil Marshall, Ken Frank and Jimmy Mac, were the foundation of the great Colorblind James Experience. Janet, Chuck’s (Colorblind James) wife and Phil Marshall’s sister, was down front catching up with Ken Frank’s (also bass player with Margaret Explosion) wife when someone turned to Janet and told her her voice was too loud. This really got Janet going. She left her spot and stood next to us at the bar in the back while she unloaded.

I was struck by the similarity between this incident and a story her husband, Chuck, told us a few years before he passed. He was listening to Bat McGrath when Bat stopped a song and turned to some un-rapt audience members to chew them out for talking. Chuck was blown away by this pompous lecture and threw the blame squarely back in the performer’s court for not being engaging enough.

Cheryl Laurro was the queen of Monroe Avenue back in the day. She ran Godiva’s and The Mission by day and at night she blew the doors off the house when she fronted her band, Lilly’s Buffet, sort of a precursor to Anonymous Willpower. She left town years ago but she will always be a dear friend. After dinner with her last night we watched every Pete LaBonne video we could find online and then she called up a this video of her father’s 1956 song “Jive Train.”

The 45 was recorded at at Fine Recording Studios in Rochester when Jim Laurro was still in high school. In fact he was only sixteen and the sax player, Pee Wee Ellis, who went on to write “Cold Sweat” for James Brown, was living with Jim in Cheryl’s grandmother’s house. He lived with them for two years before joining James Browns’s band. Cheryl’s cousin put the A-side up. We’re waiting for the B-side, “I Woke Up This Morning.”

JIM LAURRO AND HIS ORCHESTRA – Jive Train / Woke Up This Morning – Fine F8-2157 A-side instrumental, b-side vocals
“Pee Wee” Ellis – tenor sax, Joe Personte – trumpet, Willie Bryant – trombone, Jim Laurro – piano, Dick Sampson – bass, Val Colombo – drums, sung by King George
500 copies ordered, 21st August 1957. Masters sold to the Adora Recording Co., May 1958

Peggi and I were in a band in the very early eighties. I think it was actually 1979 when we put the band together with Martin Edic, a friend we had met behind the counter at Record Theater in Midtown Plaza. We were asked to record a track for an album that Tom Kohn and Marty Duda were putting out called “From the City That Brought You Absolutely Nothing.” Needless to say I never cared for that title.

We recorded in Robert Marsala’s house. He was the bass player in my previous band, “New Math.” Duane Sherwood played synthesizer swooshes. Martin was an active bass player. Peggi played sax. We all liked dance music and pop. Ned Hoskin joined on guitar, not lead, rhythm. We were Hi-Techs, an already dated concept, no “The”  in the moniker and we insisted on the dash. We played fast. We had our own sound, kinda like a toy band.

We played around town and quite a bit in Buffalo where we met Paper Faces and Tony Biloni. Tony played sax too and did this poster. Archive Records released two of our singles. One of them, “Screamin’ You Head by Hi-Techs” got pretty popular at Danceteria, a New York club. We played a gig in a TV studio with Ozzie Osbourne that was broadcast on the old Channel 31.

I rounded up the digital bits and pieces from that era and created a one page website dedicated to Hi-Techs. There’s seven songs on the site and “Subscription” is my favorite.

Listen to Hi-Techs – Subscriptions Are My Prescription

Margaret Explosion returns to the Little Theater tonight for four straight months of performances on Wednesday nights. We have not played together since our last gig during Jazz Fest. This particular detail guarantees an interesting night. If anything, the gig is a great excuse to use a great Philip Guston painting as a graphic.

I ran a light that turned red while I was in the intersection on Webster Avenue. I know there was camera above but it was more than a week ago and I have not received a summons.

Bob Henrie and the Goners played Marge’s Lakeside Inn last night. They performed outside on the deck while the sun set over Lake Ontario. This was a picture perfect, unofficial sendoff to summer and sure enough a drone was flying above the crowd snapping shots for Marge’s fb page while the band cranked out a killer version of Elvis’s “Burnin’ Love.”

Because it is now or never there is a wealth of fabulous music documentaries out there, “The Girls In The Band,” “Six Feet From Stardom” and “The Agony & Ecstasy of Phil Spector,” all of which we saw on the big screen at the Little Theater. Last night’s screening of “The Wrecking Crew” may be the best of them all. 99 minutes long with 100 hit songs, all played by the amazing Wrecking Crew.

Denny Tedesco is making the movie and talked about his film after the screening. Denny is Tommy Tedesco’s son and he started the movie while his father, the guitar player on thousands of songs from the sixties, was dying of lung cancer. He told us he had recently interviewed Leon Russell and would have him in the next cut. He reunited his father, a Buffalo native, with the great Carol Kaye and Hal Blaine and they talked about creating parts for the soundtrack of our lives. Great interviews with Cher and Glen Campbell. Brian Wilson deservedly gets more movie space than anyone else and local resident, Gary Lewis joined the discussion in person.

Rochester became a boom town with the the success of the flour mills that capitalized on the river’s force. That same force cut a pretty impressive north/south gorge through the state creating the “Grand Canyon of the East” in Letchworth before it cut through the center of the city on its way to Lake Ontario. And all that flour was shipped via the Erie Canal to points east and west.

The canal still crosses the river in Genesee Valley Park. They fill the canal in the Spring by opening that connection. But years ago the canal crossed the city on Broad Street, a waterway bridge that was built over the river. This marvel is still there and if it was up to me the city would reopen the intersection. Rochester would again be a boom town just because this thing would be so cool.

Boom Boom Town / Violince 05:39 Written, performed and produced by Peggi Fournier, Paul Dodd, Bob Martin and Martin Edic with Kevin Vicalvi. ©1988 Earring Records. From Personal Effects’ Cassette “90 Days In The Planetarium.”

My favorite part of a baseball game is when they play a refrain from the Ramones or the White Stripes. And my favorite part of a bullfight is the ragtag band that sits in the stands near where they let the bulls out. These two guys, a father and son team sitting in the top row of Sahlen Stadium, are giving Abby Wambach and the Flash and a run for their money.