Coke vs. Pepsi ~ that sort of thing.
How the World Sounds
Finally, a fresh, clear headed, energetic band, unbound by tradition and just enough off kilter to make it all brand new. Phronesis was riveting at the Lutheran Church last night. The bass player drove this band with wild abandon egged on by the frenetic drummer who dampened his snare with a towel and then rode on the snare, tom rims and just about anything but his ride cymbal. He sounded more like a tap dancer than a drummer. The piano player was great and the band tore it up.
1 Comment
I had always heard there was a “beer lady” at Durand Eastman and we walk that way a few times each week but I’d never seen her until now. The cans of beer she sells are on ice in the bucket attached to her cart. I reached for my camera and she said “Are you going to photograph me?” and then turned away for this shot. I told her it wasn’t a closeup but I’m sure she gets hassled by guys all day. As far as I can tell beer is big part of golf. We find cans in the woods all the time near the holes we cross and I chuck them right back out on the course.
I were asked to fill out a survey card at the Jazz Fest last night. It’s an opportunity to suggest artists you’d like to see at upcoming festivals but it’s also an opportunity for the promoters to ask how much you earn per year and how much you plan to spend at the festival. I lie about everything but the musicians I’d like to hear, Ornette Coleman, Mostly Other People Do The Killing, Ken Vandermark, Joe McPhee. Logic would tell you the information is used to give the people who have the most to spend the kind of entertainment they want. This might explain why the six venues we visited last night were packed with festival goers and such mediocre bands.
I tracked what we heard here.
We came home and watched Monte Hellman’s 1971 cult classic, “Two Lane Blacktop” with Dennis Wilson, James Taylor and Warren Oates. I remember seeing this with Dave Mahoney back in our Bloomington Days and remember not much happened but that is the whole point.So beautiful to see the movie unfold in what feels like real time with no manipulation or plot twists and the dead pan, non actors with the masterful Warren Oates. Laurie Bird is “the girl.” Monte Hellman deliberately holds back from giving us what we want. I loved every bit bit of it.
2 Comments
Is it my imagination or is the city falling apart? This view of downtown Rochester contrasts nicely with yesterday’s post of Madrid’s skyline. Midtown Plaza was built in 1960 and they are already tearing it down or at least we thought that was the case. We were scurrying to our next Jazz Fest stop at the Xerox Auditorium when we stopped to take in this view. I said “I thought they were tearing this whole thing down” to Peggi but a guy on the street behind us said “Oh no. They’re going to save that part of the building.”
I was thinking of the time Personal Effects had 2000 people up in that overhanging portion of this building for a record release party in the early eighties. It was called the Top Of The Plaza back then.
This post appears rather slight but it is sort of monumental for me in that I tried my card reader on the iPad for the first time. I loaded a photo I took in the park this afternoon and and then managed to FTP cropped and scaled versions to our server. I linked to those files in the WP app and posted from the iPad.
Margaret explosion plays our last gig (until September) at the Little tonight. There’s a bunch of new downloads on the Margaret Explosion site. Here’s Lube Job.
Bob Mahoney emailed us this morning to ask what song Margaret Explosion performed at Saturday’s annual Bob Dylan Birthday Birthday Bash. I emailed back “Long Black Coat” and asked, “Where were you?” He said “It was a grandkids night” and that exchange pretty much illustrates why Hunnu, the host band with core members from Colorblind James Experience, has decided to take a break after twenty five years. Rita Coulter, who arranges rehearsals and organizes the long string of guest musicians, admits it is just too much work. It has always been a bit of a slog and this year’s which started at eight was still going when we left near one but there are always shining performances that pay respect to the Bard while transcending the form. And Chuck Cuminale, the astute Dylan fan, who started this tradition when Colorblind hosted the first ten or so, lived for those moments.
We followed the festivities from Snake Sister’s Café to Jazzberries to the Warehouse to Milestones and the last few in the Village Gate. The place was packed and full of old friends.”Old” is a key word. Chuck was born two days before Bob Dylan’s birthday and the annual bash was often on Chuck’s birthday. Today is Chuck’s birthday! Gary Brandt was always taking pictures and took this one of music critic Steve Dollar singing “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door”. Phil Marshall is shown on lead guitar (he transcended the form on Saturday night), Ken Frank (now with Margaret Explosion) on bass, Chuck, Jim McAvaney on drums and David McIntire on sax.
1 Comment
So Many Records posted a single from Rochester’s Dick Storms this week, a sensational Velvet Underground & Nico song. Not all 45 are hit bound. The format is a medium unto itself.
Peggi and I finished printing the second color (black) of our 45 sleeve last weekend. We had to do the second color in two passes because we didn’t have enough wooden letters to do “Margaret Explosion” twice. In fact we didn’t have any wooden letters at all until Bill Jones cut them for us on his type making machine. We ordered 100 pre-scored and die cut 45 sleeves, flat and pre-folded or glued, from Stumptown printers in Portland and Geri McCormick, a member of the Printing & Books Arts Center here, coached us through the press run on their Vandercook letterpress. Tom Kohn from the Bop Shop insisted that we hand number the edition so we did that as well.
Both songs were recorded live at the Little Theater Café last November. Jack Schaefer had joined us on bass clarinet for the second set “Juggle” was the last song of the night. We got an encore and that became “Purple Heart.” Jack is joining us on Wednesday at the Little for an old fashioned record release party so stop by and pick up a single. It includes free digital downloads of the songs.
Duane was in town for a wedding so we hooked up on Friday evening for dinner (Steve Lippicott leftovers) and then headed out to gallery hop. I dropped Duane and Peggi off at Anderson Alley and I headed over to Kurt Feuerherm’s opening at the Philips Gallery on East Ave. Kurt was my painting mentor at Empire State but last I knew he was doing abstract landscapes. This was a nice little show called “Ancient Images: Fayum Inspired Portraits.” I said hi to Kurt and reminded him I was a student of his. I remember Kurt encouraging me to go bigger and more abstract and I did that for while. I just ripped apart a pile of those old paintings last summer but I kept the stretchers. Peter Monacelli was behind the snack table at the opening. Pete taught drawing at MCC and has just retired. He’s a carpenter too and one hell of a drummer. He can make a snare drum with brushes sound like a whole kit. Turns out he went to Empire State as well and Kurt was his mentor. We finished up the evening wandering around the Hungerford building. That place was packed.
We printed the second color on the Margaret Explosion 45 sleeves on Saturday so now we’ll have to schedule a glue party. We’re planning to release it on Wednesday the 18th at our Little gig. We left the house with our earplugs thinking we’d check out SLT at a club on Monroe Avenue but the printing took forever. Actually the printing went pretty fast. It took us a few hours to get the registration right. In the end it was close enough for letterpress.
Leave a comment
I’m not much for talking on the phone but Brad Fox and I are in the habit of talking on our birthdays. He is the same age as me for two days, the two days between our birth dates. This year he reminded me of something we did a long time ago, so long ago that I had to get reacquainted with the me that would have done something like this. I had a summer job mowing lawns at apartment buildings during the day and then sweeping parking lots with this tank like machine at night. Brad worked with me for a few weeks and we stopped at Harry’s Hots on East Ridge for a late night snack. They had juke box there with satellite machines at each of the tables and Brad remembers us loading up the juke box with about ten plays of Bobby Goldsboro’s “Honey” and then leaving the restaurant.
Steve Lippincott is in town for a few days and he offered to cook dinner for us last night at Tom Kohn’s new house in the city. Tom’s place is in our old neighborhood and we just loved the house. Tom was was spinning records including the double, white vinyl, live Television album that was released on Record Store Day a few weeks ago. Steve is working on a cookbook and we were a live test group for ten spice chicken and vegetarian tortilla with fresh corn. We gave it our thumbs up.
I check in with So Many Records every day. The juke box in the sky that at first seemed like a museum now feels like part of current culture. With the resurgence of vinyl I thought it would easier to find die cut blanks for a 45 sleeve but the only ones I could find were chip board from Stumptown Printers in Portland Oregon so we ordered a hundred. With the help of Bill and Geri at the Printing & Book Arts Center Peggi and I ran the first color of our two color package on a Vandercook letterpress and tomorrow we are scheduled to run the black.
Leave a comment
You don’t have to be a drummer to like Toko Imports in Ithaca. The owner, Tom, carries hats and hammocks as well as congas, djembes, gongs and every type of percussion instrument imaginable. Peggi rattled a donkey skull with the teeth still in their sockets, a primitive Vibra-Slap.
I bought some brushes and commented on the huge leaves on the wall behind the counter. Tom confirmed that they were indeed real, locally grown leaves from some common plants. He told us that we knew what these leaves were and pulled the right answers from us by giving us well rehearsed clues. Sunflower, Burdock, Rhubarb and Horseradish. The woman from Holland who was standing next to us had never heard of Horseradish.
Leave a comment
Jack Schaeffer and Pete LaBonne join Margaret Explosion tonight at the Bug Jar. I should say “rejoin” because they were both original members. Jack doesn’t settle for ordinary and Pete doesn’t even know what it is so it promises to be an adventure. The shot above was taken at the Bug Jar about thirteen years ago so it will be a reunion as well.
Margaret Explosion – Abstract Express
I had planned on stopping by Record Archive and the Bob Shop for Record Store Day. Peggi had emailed the Bop Shop ad we did for Tom for the upcoming Jazz Festival and I wanted to make sure it looked ok before we put it into InDesign and sent it off. I would also check the racks for new releases from my favorite artists, most of which are dead. I’m still hoping for one from Ornette before he says goodbye.
As it turns out we started the day by downloading a live Neil Young gig. So much for supporting local record stores. Duane sent us the link so I can blame him. We saw the “Chrome Dreams 2” tour in Buffalo where they were still using pieces of the Greendale set. This is an audience recording, it sounds amazing.
I’ve seen a few Rembrandts, just a handful really, but I was knocked out by how timeless they are. I mean they actually appear alive. This afternoon we heard Bach’s “St. John Passion” performed by “Voices”, the local professional chamber choir. Bach wrote the piece near the end of his long life and it was performed on Good Friday. Today was Palm Sunday and it was close enough. The eighteen voice chorus and small orchestra sounded great in the Lutheran Church, a fitting venue as they have a weekly service in German, a large German contingent to their parish and Bach’s “Passion” was performed in his and their native tongue. Bach’s music is also still alive. The church was packed. We squeezed into the back pew and were blown away by how powerful this music is. We are so fortunate to have this accumulated culture to dip into.
The Stations of the Cross were always my favorite part of church. I collected sources from newspaper clippings for a retelling, the Unabomber was on the front page one Good Friday, and I still plan to paint the Stations some day. I showed the studies at the Bug Jar in 1998 and they were shown again at the Finger Lakes Show in 1999.
I heard the last pope added a fifteen station, the resurrection, the most suspect of all miracles to say the least, for a happy ending. And the current pope wants to rush sainthood for the guy who hired him to “handle” the countless sex abuse cases. I say “sainthood now” for Rembrandt and Bach and Ornette.
Leave a comment
Billy Bang loved Rochester because Rochester loved Billy Bang. You could tell when he took the stage and he said as much. Somehow the rough and tumble sophistication fit. He was a cocky star in the underground jazz movement when he appeared with Sun Ra’s band at the Red Creek in ’86 and over the years Tom Kohn brought him to the Bop Shop atrium, the German House and Water Street in many configurations. His music soared when he began writing his haunting Viet Nam suite. It took him a while to process his war experience but when he did it came out in an incredibly rich, dark, beautiful way. Track down “KIAMIA” on iTunes and I’ll stop trying to describe it. He tore the roof off of Montage during the 2004 Rochester Jazz Festival and did so again in 2006 when Garth Fagan joined him on stage. The violinist was scheduled to open the fest this year but word has spread that he’s died of cancer and we’ll miss him.
Bang’s music transcends jazz and could easily fit on Scott Regan’s “Open Tunings” or Rick Simpson’s “Gumbo Variations”. In fact I’ll request it tonight. We saw Scott last night at the Margaret Explosion gig and I hope he doesn’t come down with anything in the next few days. I was telling him I thought I gotten sick from sick from a reaction to the drug they gave me for my colonoscopy but it had been in the back of mind that maybe I caught a bug from Scott’s bandmate, Steve Piper, who shook Peggi’s hand after their gig on Saturday night and then told Peggi that he had been sick with a stomach flu. Well Peggi left the stage while we were playing last night in a rather dramatic fashion. I followed her to the bathroom and sure enough she had the bug so I was wrong about my bad reaction and just as wrong to blame Steve Piper for the bug that is going around. Who wouldn’t shake Steve’s hand after his rousing version of an Elvis’s “His Latest Flame”?
3 Comments
Cuong Vu Trio performs their own music tonight in a free concert at Kilbourn Hall. They have been in town for a week while Cuong Vu has been teaching a workshop on creativity. Last night they played six compositions by Eastman students in the brand new performance space Hatch Recital Hall. This is clearly the best sounding room in the city. And “clearly” is a good word for the way you hear sound in this space.
The room is small, 200 or so seats, and it was designed as a “box within a box” so none of the walls come in contact with the rest of the building. The room is live sounding but without added reverb and as natural sounding a space as I have ever heard. It’s nothing like the dead studio spaces of the past. If a band has it’s act together an engineer could put two mics here and be done and the producer would be out of a job.
Leave a comment
Ossia, the student-run new music performance group at the Eastman School of Music, held their last concert of the 2010-11 season last night in Kilbourn Hall. They performed Philip Glass’s “String Quartet No. 2: Company” and it stopped time. I have no idea how long it was but it wasn’t long enough. I had my eyes closed picturing the clouds in “Koyaanisqatsi” and then it stopped abruptly. My favorite piece of the evening though was “Marsias” for oboe and eight glass goblets by the Mexican born composer, Mario Lavista. The perfect fifth tones from the water filled glasses represented the “celestial” world of Apollo and the desperately melodic oboe stood for “the poet’s eternal search for perfect, precise expression”.
Lavista taught at Indiana University and currently teaches here at the Eastman. I visited his web site this morning and learned “He likes machines with hiccups and spiders with missing legs, looks at Paul Klee’s Notebooks everyday, hasn’t grown much since he reached adulthood at age 14, and tries to use the same set of ears to listen to Bach, Radiohead, or Ligeti.”
Margaret Explosion plays the Little Theater tonight without program notes or a score. Listen to Pit by Magaret Explosion.
I was really taken by these demonstrative plants as we skied around them in the Adirondack Mountains. I kept stopping in the fridig weather to pull my camera out of my pocket and photograph different clusters. They were all expressive, like they were singing opera or something. We had seen them earlier in the winter at Pete and Shelley’s and Shelley told us what they were but we couldn’t remember. We tried looking it up in Shelley’s book but we couldn’t find it because Shelley had drawn it in bloom not in it’s naked winter state. I sent this photo to Shelley and she identified the plant as Hobblebush. Hail the Hobblebush!
I ordered an expresso at the Little last night but Bill told me their machine was still out for repair. In fact, he said the machine was unrepairable and they had a new one on order. He was hoping to have it in by next Wednesday when Margaret Explosion returns. The first set last night felt unfocused but things gelled in the second and the songs swirled around their target. Maybe it was the Sirius “Chill” channel they were playing in the Café during the break.
I was in charge of the car radio on the way home and we stumbled on to “Dig This” (perfect name) on WITR. I wish they wouldn’t call it “witter. The Maestro mixes jazz, funk & hip-hop) on Wednesday nights from 9-11 and he posts his set lists and shows as mp3s on DigThisRadio. Last night’s show was “Extra Jazzy” and featured Ahmad Jamal, Miles, Digable Planets and The Roots.
1 Comment
Margaret Explosion makes a humble, triumphant return to the Little Theater Café tonight, the beginning of a three month, Wednesday night romp.
Bill Jones asked for a little help moving his type making equipment around. The router, the band saw and every one of those big green woodworking machines are heavy. Bill makes wood type from oversized patterns. You can’t be around all this stuff without dreaming about type projects, signs or posters that you could put together with all these little wood pieces. I’m thinking about a letterpress cover for the upcoming Margaret Explosion single.
On the way over, a ten minute ride, I scanned the college radio band and found Matt & Kim’s “Silver Tiles” on WITR, Althea & Donna’s “Uptown Top Ranking” on WRUR and Lou Reed’s “Walk On The Wild Side” on WBER. I thought my iPod on shuffle was pretty good.
Leave a comment
Somehow Margaret Explosion wound up with a long running Friday Happy Hour slot at the Bug Jar. This was back when Casey ran the place and Bug Jar Bob booked the bands and arranged the lighting and Steve Brown took care of the business and grudgingly stood behind the bar on Fridays. Rolling Rocks were a buck a piece and Casey brought in vegetarian Indian food.
Pete LaBonne named the band and played bass. Jack Schaefer played guitar and a parade of people sat in. We called our first cd “Happy Hour” and that vibe is an essential part of our sound. Rick Simpson played a song from that cd on hi WRUR show last night and it struck us how much the band has changed.
In 1998, before the band started one Friday, I took photos of everyone at the Bug Jar on one of those evenings, everyone who would let me take a photo of them that is, and I printed them out for a show of Mug Shots that went up a few weeks later.
Danny Deutsch invited us to play a Happy Hour at 6 tonight and Bob Martin has rounded up a batch of videos to project on the front wall of the upstairs lounge there. The Abilene site says there’s free munchies and there’s no cover. Sounds like fun.
In the second set at Abilene last night Don Preston looked up from his keyboard, quickly scanned the slim crowd, and asked “What is this? Is this a beer hall or is it somebody’s house? He didn’t wait for a reply or hear Bill Jones mutter, “It’s a gay bar” but he chuckled to himself as he and Bunk Gardner dug into “Holiday in Berlin.” It was such a treat to see these two old guys (they were old when they were in the Mothers) jump off the cover of The Mother’s 1968 album cover for “We’re Only In It For The Money” and come to life in 2011 in the paint-by-number room at Abilene. They sounded great as a sax/keyboards duo but Don kept turning on some pre-recorded drum tracks and they didn’t need them.
Between sets I told Bunk Gardner how Dave Mahoney and I returned to our little house while tripping to find someone had broken in and stolen our stereo with “Burnt Weeny Sandwich” still on the turntable. They left us the empty gatefold album to look at until we bought another copy. Bunk’s pictured in there but he didn’t seem too impressed by my story. I said, ‘You know. The one with ‘Little House I Used To Live In’ on it”.
Leave a comment
It seems miraculous that the chipmunks are out. We watched them pack their small caves with nuts in the Fall and now they’re out darting around on the piles of snow. We hadn’t seen any deer in weeks and we were speculating that they too were hunkered down in the cold but today we watched a group of eight up move across a hillside. There was a pileated woodpecker up in one of the trees too but we couldn’t spot it. Sounded like a jackhammer. We interrupted a hawk who was devouring this squirrel right in the middle of our path. On the way back the squirrel was gone.
Pete LaBonne has a song called “Code Of The Great Outdoors” with the refrain, “better out, better out, better out than in.” It’s on his “High Time” release, same album as “Punk Rock Dressing Room” and only seven bucks for the download!
Leave a comment
