White popcorn tree in bloom on March 16 in Durand Eastman Park
I’m not sure what this tree is but it is in an area of the park where they have all sorts of fruit trees. The nearby pink flowering tress are identified as apricot trees so maybe it is in that family. It looks like a Popcorn Tree. Everything is coming on so fast in this summer like weather. We received some mail from the daughter of the former owner of our house. I dreaded opening the envelope thinking it must be a death notice but it was an invitation to his 100th birthday. Imagine how fast time is going for him.
Margaret Explosion at Abilene performing a soundtrack to circus movies
Margaret Explosion plays an early show at Abilene tonight in the swanky upstairs lounge at 7:30. We’ll be performing a soundtrack to a collection of silent circus movies. Admission is free. Peggi has been warming up for the gig by playing sax along with Nino Rota’s soundtrack to Fellini’s Amacord. We have the lp but the digital files at Amazon were only $6.99 ($9.99 at Apple) so we downloaded a fresh copy. Don’t expect as many key changes tonight.
A foot of snow changes everything. We cut the trail through the woods, skied along the ridge up to the lake and even took a loop around the luge hill. We were so tired we decided to sit on the couch and watch the Grammys.
Our “over the air” connection kept breaking up so we may have misread some of the intent but this is what we got. Bruce kicked it off with a pumped up, selfish sounding, ‘god is on our side’, pep rally anthem, setting the tone for the evening where it became clear that all of the successful songs repeat one line for the length of the tune. “We take care of our own.”
MC LL Cool J said a prayer to the heavenly father! Bruno Marks, a combination of Little Richard, Prince and a gay James Brown, had the best line of the night when told the crowd to “get off their rich asses.” An athletic Chris Brown auto tuned “Put your hands in the air.” Reba McEntire has had some serious work done on her face. Rihanna sang “We found love in a hopeless place” 64 times.
Lady Gaga was in the front row and caught in some sort of netting. The Beach Boys looked like they were curiosities in a songwriting museum. Unlike the guy in a cowboy hat who won an award, Taylor Swift was cute and actually sounded country. An alien looking Katy Perry sang “This is the part of me that you’re never gonna ever take away from me” over and over. The Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl lectured us about music. “Long live rock and roll.” Please. They couldn’t get this guy off the stage and even cut to him dancing to the big mouse dj.
Adele can really belt out a tune. Bon Iver managed to look disheveled in a suit as he thanked his parents. Jennifer Hudson sounded great singing Dolly Parton’s song in tribute to Whitney Houston. They should have just shown that clip, read a list of the award winners and edited out the rest. Instead we went three hours and then turned the thing off at eleven before Sir Paul did his Beatle thing.
Artists talks are not for the faint of heart. We bravely attended one at the new I-Square gallery last night where four artists talked about their work and so much more. It was exhilarating. Richard Harvey talked mostly of process but his is multifaceted and interesting. Wendy Menzie started making art after primal therapy in the 70’s. She quoted Philip Larken, “Your mom and dad fuck you up. They don’t mean to but they do” and spoke of her journey back to the child inside. Ed Buscemi stressed the importance of improvisation and relayed a dream he had thirty years ago where people were moving by him on a conveyor belt and he jumped on and tried to shake the people but he couldn’t bring them out of their trance. It seems to be his modus operandi. He is fond of asking “Are you kidding me?” in an animated fashion and he admitted to being hooked on conspiracy therories. Todd Beers discussed his breakthrough painting which is on view until tomorrow and told a beautiful story of his encounter with a dove on the fire escape he was sleeping on. He dimmed the lights and wowed us with his poetry. Harvey, Menzie and Buscemi all studied with Robert Marx who has his own opening tonight at Rochester Contemporary. He is featured in their Makers Mentors show.
We scurried downtown for the Ossia show at Kilbourn Hall but missed the opening toy piano number. We caught “I Can’t Concentrate” by the Brooklyn band, Zs, a mathematically challenging, post jazz, brutal-chamber piece. And then were blown away (again) by Ossia’s performance of Frederic Rzewski’s “Coming Together.” From the liner notes – “The work consists of a bass line accompanied by a series of instructions which can be realized by any group of instruments. With each performer acting as composer, the work allows for a variety of performance outcomes and is essentially an experiment in compositional anarchy.” A vocalist read a letter from Sam Melville-in prison in 1970 for series of radical bombings in Manhattan where no one was hurt-to his brother on top of the music. The twenty minute piece was trance-like and hallucinatory like a deep dream.
Dr. Carl Atkins playing Bye-Ya at the Baobab Cultural Center in Rochester, New York
I had the best tofu I have ever had at Edibles on University Ave. It was marinated in a ginger sauce and grilled in some fashion that left it moist and soft on the inside but slightly charred on the outside with a caramelized sauce. We had dinner with our neighbors before heading down the street to the Baobab Cultural Center where noted Jazz authority, saxophonist, and RIT Professor, Dr. Carl Atkins and his group, “Culture Clash” gave a lecture lecture-performance. He was Co-Director, along with bassist Ron Carter, of the Thelonious Monk Institute. He led a very cool group of bass, drums and vibes and w would up with, “Epistrophy” and “Ruby, My Dear” and “Well, You Needn’t” swimming around in our heads. That led us to YouTube this morning where watched and listened to main ingredient. And then we dug up dvd copy of “Straight, No Chaser” that Jeff Munson gave us. That’s now number one in our queue.
Amy Rigby and Wreckless Eric at the Lovin’ Cup in Rochester, New York
Wreckless Eric and Amy Rigby have taken a liking to Rochester. They’ve been here four times in the last few years and came up tonight to play a benefit for Tom Kohn and the Bop Shop. Amy told the crowd that when they decided to move from France they considered considered moving to Rochester but Eric interjected “it would have been a good choice if it wasn’t for the weather and it’s proximity to Canada and the the fact that it is so far away from everything else.” “It’s better than France” Amy insisted.
They played a fantastic set. They are perfect as a duo, with piano, guitars, bass and harmonies. Thoroughly seasoned performers they somehow manage to sound like the first band your friends put together. If only they would fire that drummer, the drum machine on Eric’s laptop that flattens the songs they use it on. They finished with a beautiful version of Johnny Cash’s “I Still Miss Someone.
Chandler Travis opened the show before driving to Trumansburg outside of Ithaca for another gig tonight. He brought the house down with a version of Pete LaBonne‘s “Turning The Page.” Amy told the the crowd she felt like she was tripping when Chandler and his bandmates came out into the crowd to perform this gem a cappella.
Here’s a live version of Pete LaBonne’s “Turning The Page”
My punishment for going away is that I have to wade through and catalog all of the photos I took. We watched this guy for a while, waiting for the light to turn red and then darting out in front of the stopped cars to juggle for a minute and then hit the drivers up for money. Better than someone spitting on your windshield and then using a dirty rag to wipe it before accosting you for spare change.
Listen to Margaret Explosion “Juggler” with Jack Schaefer on bass clarinet
Margaret Explosion 45 RPM “Juggler/Purple Heart” (EAR 16) on Earring Records, released 2011 on black vinyl.
Back just in time for winter and last night’s art opening at I-Square at the future four corners of Irondequoit. I have a few pieces in a show with Wendie Menzie, Ed Buscemi, Todd Beers and Richard Harvey. That’s Richard Harvey’s work shown to the left of mine in the photo above. It was a cool little gathering with coffee and homemade sweets. Peggi made ginger snaps with cayenne pepper following Shelley’s recipe.
We met I-Square developer, Mike Nolan, and our friend Charlie’s little sister. It gave me the opportunity to tell her the story Charlie told me of their other sister taking the ring off a famous dead man’s finger. I told the story to Chuck Cuminale and he wrote a song about it for Colorblind James. Charlie and Chuck are both dead now and Charlie’s sister had no idea there was song about all this.
Poet and artist, Todd Beers, said he gets all fired up at openings and can’t wait to get back and start work on something. I told him openings have exactly the opposite effect on me. Todd said he saw Peggi and me in my two portraits and he a sang a line from an old song of ours.
Butter is back in our diet for the holidays, mostly in the form of cookies. Cheese and dips, chocolate covered figs from Spain and even hamburgers are back too. Duane breaks his macrobiotic diet down at Vic & Irvs each year and we joined him for that debauchery last night. And Rick and Monica are bringing a picture of egg nog over later tonight.
Every time I see my former neighbor, Sparky, we talk about cooking some sausage, something we did about five years ago. He called the other day to say he had some sausage and he was coming by for lunch. He told me to have the grill hot but he got here about a half hour early so I wasn’t ready. How can you be ready for Sparky?
I put a collection of country music on and went out back to start a fire while Peggi and Sparky chatted about the old neighborhood. Sparky picked up the album cover and got on a roll. Turns out he knew most of the big stars and even played with a few. He told Peggi he was the one who gave George the “No Show” nickname. Sparky was raised in Kentucky. He knows Country. Peggi made a video of him a few years back and we put it up on YouTube this morning.
Bob Henrie and Goners equipment still life – after Christmas gig at Abilene in Rochester, New York
The best part of Christmas is the Bobbie Henrie and the Goners‘ Christmas show and it’s already over. The place should have been mobbed, it usually is, but I’m glad it wasn’t. We could stand right in front of the band and soak it up. This band rocks and swings like no other. They effortlessly mix rock and roll with country and jazz. They transcend rockabilly. Their songbook is enormous. They tore up the Christmas chapter at Abilene on Saturday night with choice George Jones, Elvis Presley and Brenda Lee covers.
I stop at “So Many Records” every morning. First audio of the day and it often gets me time traveling, mostly in a backwards direction but not entirely linear, more like the opium fueled dreams of Robert DeNiro’s character in Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon A Time In America.” The older you get the bigger your memories play in your present. The only reggae we had when we first met Kevin in 1976 was Bob Marley and Jimmy Cliff. I am one of Kevin’s friends who was blown away by the “THIS IS REGGAE MUSIC (Volume 3)” collection that Kevin talks about in yesterday’s post.
Margaret Explosion releases 100 Songs for Christmas
Since we play about once a week and don’t usually do a song more than once we have a lot songs in the kitty. We had this idea to get one hundred downloads up on our site site by Christmas but that took some doing. We spent the last week listening to things like “Prom Night 2” from a few years ago and now retitled “Submarine Races.” And this afternoon at about four o’clock we uploaded the hundredth song.
I spotted this orange glove in the middle of Culver Road and had to turn around and grab a shot. It might make a good Margaret Explosion cover. Pete LaBonne played with us at the Memorial Art Gallery opening for “Extreme Materials” and maybe one of those tracks will get his graphic..
Colorful trees near Pat Lake in Durand Eastman Park, Rochester, New York
I helped my nephew manage his iTunes library before Thanksgiving dinner yesterday. He was getting duplicates of the stuff he downloaded and running out of hard disc space on his netbook. Seems everyone has a glut of music. He told me I should get “Spotify” so I installed that this morning.
There was a review of the Stones remastered “Some Girls” lp in the paper. It comes with an album’s worth of extra tracks. I don’t have a digital copy the original so I previewed the new tracks at the iTunes store and thought about buying the package but Mick redid his vocals on some tracks just like he did with the “Exile” outtakes and that pisses me off. That really should be illegal. Keith does a Waylon Jennings song but that just made me want to hear the original. I decided not to buy now.
I was reading Sasha Frere-Jones’s column in the New Yorker on the Russian dj, “Oneohtrix Point Never” and that sounded pretty interesting so I checked that out at the store but didn’t buy anything.
We watched the Gram Parsons documentary the other night. Kieth was in there too, scolding Gram for ODing. I never really caught on to Gram Parsons but I liked the Byrds. They shouldn’t have included the vintage clips of George Jones and Merle Haggard in this movie. That sort of put Gram in his place too.
Ron Stackman djing at Abilene with John Nugent on sax at Abilene in Rochester, New YorkAbilene2011
Ronny Stackman, “Your Selector”, has been spinning roots reggae forty-fives in the upstairs lounge at Abilene on Wednesday nights for a few months now. He knows how to work a room extending the format by playing both sides of a single and dubbing it up on top. Last night he was joined by Jon Nugent on sax and they sounded amazing. If you thought the sax line in Errol Dunkley’s “Black Cinderella” was cool you have to hear what Jon can add to a scratchy dub reggae tune. Prince Far I was in the house along with Toots & The Maytals. Margaret Explosion plays Wednesday nights so we have a bit of a conflict but this is the coolest spot in town.
Our iPod treated us right on the way home. I swear “shuffle” knows the situation and knocks your socks off with random surprises. “Miles Runs The Voodoo Down” took us from downtown to the crib.
People used to identify themselves when they called you but they don’t do that anymore because everyone has cell phones and they know who’s calling before they say hello. In fact people don’t even say hello any more they just start talking. Well we don’t have a cellphone and I’m often completely thrown as to who I’m talking to. Someone will prattle on about something while I’m running through my mental rolladex trying to figure out who the voice is. Is it work related or a friendly? No big deal. I’m just saying.
The phone rang during dinner the other night and our nephew was laughing at the quaintness of the answering machine on our land line and that led to a discussion of the old full size cassette answering machine that we had and how we’d record over and over the tapes until they were layered bits and pieces of voices from the past. I set a few of them aside and went downstairs to check to see if I could put my hands on them. I found a cassette deck and put on a white label advance copy of Colorblind James’ “Why Should I Stand Up?” from 1991 that had been put into service.
Brad Fox called and started with a joke. “Why did the Siamese twins go to England?” No punchline. A snippet of Colorblinds’ “That’s Entertainment”, Deb calling from Massachusetts asking for help with her computer which was suddenly in a foreign language. Peggi’s mom letting us know she didn’t like the answering machine. A snippet of “Ride Board.” A wrong number where someone left a message for someone we’ve never heard of. Our nephew calling for help getting a stuck floppy out of an Mac SE. He’s majoring in artificial intelligence today. Another snippet of “Ride Board.” And plenty of people complaining about the quality of our outgoing message which as I remember had either James Brown or Miles Davis blasting in the background.
Sometimes the machine would record our part of a conversation if we failed to pick up the phone in time. So we heard Steve Black from Singapore answering a call from Steve Hoy while we were out somewhere. Directions to Jeff and Mary Kaye’s house for the first time! And then Peggi’s dad and Gary Bennet calling from beyond the grave. Are people saving their cellphone messages these days? This stuff is priceless.
Chuck Cuminale aka Colorblind James opening for Personal Effects at Scorgies in 1985. Photo by Gary Brandt.
The headline in the “Local Beat” section of today’s paper reads “Colorblind James Experience Reunites.” I wish! Chuck Cuminale, aka Colorblind James (both colorblind and real name, James), song writer extraordinaire, lead vocalist and rhythm guitar player, has been dead ten years now. Chuck insisted that the lyrics to his songs be included in any lp or cd package. They address life’s big themes and read like poetry, dark and funny and sweet, a world away from trendy punk or new wave of the day. Chuck was humble but opinionated. He knew exactly what he wanted in a backing band and he ran a tight ship.
Gary Brandt took this photo of Chuck when Colorblind James opened for Personal Effects at Scorgies in 1985. Gary worked at Midtown and MotoPhoto and used to shoot black and white film and run it through the color processor at work to achieve this look. It was Colorblind’s first gig at Scorgies and Bernie Heveron, PE’s former bass player was on stand up bass. The band had recently settled in Rochester after a stint in San Francisco and Phil Marshall, Chuck’s brother-in-law, moved back with the band on lead guitar. Gary Miexner, who was with Colorblind when we first saw them at Red Creek in 1980, was back in the band as well. Jim McAvaney was the perfect drummer for Chuck’s theatrical numbers.
Chuck is seen performing “Considering A Move To Memphis” above. The band could move mountains and continued to do so with Ken Frank, now with Margaret Explosion, on bass. Tonight, with Chuck’s son Mark standing in for his father, they pay their respects at Abilene.
Chuck gave us a copy of their first 45 at that Red Creek gig. Jan Marshall did the cover art. This is the B side.
Dreamland Faces performing upstairs at the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, New York for the opening of the “Extreme Materials II” show
It was great playing with Minneapolis’s Dreamland Faces at the Extreme Materials show but because they were playing at the same time as Margaret Explosion we didn’t get to hear much. We chatted before the show and Andy said they were going to do their “dissident stuff”. We heard from others that Karen didn’t sing for some reason. I caught part of one song while we were on break and it didn’t sound dissident to me. It sounded other worldly. Andy’s from Rochester so they’ll be back. With two accordions, two saws, two totally unique voices they are a marvel. Here’s a clip of Andy from Prairie Home Companion.
We have a mouse in our spice cabinet but it’s not going after the spices, it is stripping the labels of the Cream of Tarter and other containers in order to use the paper in it’s nest. That’s not so bad but the droppings are sort of unappetizing. Our cat has been looking at the walls like there is something going on in there so I’m thinking it’s time to bait the traps.
Margaret Explosion records most shows. We never rehearse (we sound it, I know) and we hardly ever play a song more than once so it takes a while to work our way through the recordings. Some songs survive multiple listenings and stay on the “A List” until we can give them a title. “Strip Club”, from October of last year, is one that wouldn’t go away. It features Jack Schaefer on bass clarinet and Pete LaBonne on piano. I just added it to the site today.
Pete LaBonne joins us for Friday’s gig at the Eastman House opening and Saturday’s gig at the Memorial Art Gallery. Jaffe, former keyboard player with Colorblind James, said he might stop by and sit in tonight at our Little Theater gig. Stop by. Live a Little!
Bob Martin setting up at Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY
Margaret Explosion played last night at Visual Studies Workshop, the first of our four art gigs. We played up on the stage in the auditorium in front of a fifty minute propaganda movie that Rochester Gas & Electric made about the city back in the early sixties. We did the the gig as a trio, just Bob (above), Peggi and me – no bass. Ken was rehearsing with his other band, SLT. They’re opening for Hugh Cornwell from the Stranglers in a few weeks and Blondie’s Clem Burke is playing drums.
The auditorium had some big sound and we took it to some new places but we forgot to turn the recorder on so it will have to live on in our memories.
Here’s Margaret Explosion – Turntable recorded last week at the Little Theatre Cafe.
