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.
Margaret Explosion poster for Abilene Happy Hour gig
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.
Bunk Gardner and Don Preston at Abilene in Rochester, New York
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”.
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!
Chief Projectionist at the Dryden Theater of the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York
Jim Heally is a fountain of film knowledge and a great interviewer. He held his own with some of Hollywood’s biggest stars and I’m sorry he left the Eastman House. I trust he is on to greener pastures. Last night was Members Night (free admission) and the last night of the Dydren’s Rock ‘n Roll series. They showed a beautiful print with a newly re-mastered soundtrack of “The Last Waltz” and Kyle Westphal, Chief Projectionist, did a great job of introducing the movie. I think they have found a worthy replacement over there as Kyle delivered the goods without notes, sometimes with his eyes closed like a improvising musician.
The Last Waltz has aged well. In fact the further down the road we get from it’s making the better this thing looks but then The Band always seemed a band out of time. That Big Pink album knocked me out when it came out. Garth Hudson’s organ on “Chest Fever”, Richard Manual’s take on “Long Black Veil”, Levon Helm’s sensational drumming and singing on “The Weight”. It was impossible to pick a favorite song (or a favorite vocalist) on that lp just like it is in the movie.
Dylan pulls the plug on “Forever Young”, just to show his old back up band who the boss is. Joni Mitchell sings otherworldly back up to Neil Young on the Band’s version of “Helpless”. And then Joni with her beautiful buck teeth belting out “Coyote.” Van Morrison kicking out the jams, a sincere, often funny performance. Dr. John gets down in a hurry with wicked version of “Such a Night.” Muddy Waters does a killer performance of “I’m A Man.” Like Buddy Guy in Scorcese’s “Shine A Light”, Muddy Waters made The Band look like toy musicians. These performances are so good you want to holler and clap at the end like you would at a concert. My favorite song in the movie was “The Weight” with the Staple Singers but I could easily be swayed.
Lew Allen photo of Buddy Holly in Rochester, New York, January 1958
We were in the last row of the Dryden Theater to hear Graham Nash talk about the Rock ‘n Roll photo show that he curated at the Eastman House so we were the first ones out of the theater. We had planned on seeing the show again so headed over to the gallery where we were the first ones in the door. Peggi had to visit the ladies room so I was standing at the entrance when Mr. Nash walked in. He stopped to look at the photo above and I thought wow, what can I ask Graham Nash. Then that moment was gone as someone came up to say “I really enjoyed your talk.” He pointed to this photo and said, “I really like this photo.” It was taken by Lew Allen when Buddy Holly performed in Rochester in January of 1958.
I never put it together that the Hollies were named after Buddy Holly and I learned that Carrie Ann was written about Marianne Faithful. One of the audience members asked Graham who he would most like to play music with and he answered Dylan. He called Dylan the best poet, singer and musician of our lifetime. It was interesting to hear the sweet voiced Graham put the word “singer” in that short list. He told a story about David Crosby singing on a Dylan track and how Dylan wouldn’t tell Crosby what the song was until the tape was rolling.
‘We Live Like Kings,” “Somebody Must Praying For Me,” “Pajama Pants” (Baby, you know what I mean), “Let The Weeds Take Over,” “High Time” and “Supermarket Employee.” There so many Pete LaBonne songs stuck in my head. The songs are stored in a place where they are easily accessible and it doesn’t take much to trigger them. Pete has digitized twenty two cds worth and he’s giving away a track from each on his website.
I heard Rick Simpson tell a listener he’d play a Pete LaBonne tune next week on his Thursday afternoon radio WRUR show. Pretty soon you’ll be walking around with lines like “You’re the 5th line on the eye chart,” “What am I gonna do when they turn me into a verb?” and “You gotta treat your woman like a sack of potatoes” floating around your head. Lucky you!
Pete LaBonne “We Live Like Kings” cover
Arouse The Thunder
C
They call her Miss Divisive on the street.
She put the spit in hospitality
Strandy hair parted around the ears
under her sweater’s a purple chiffon brassiere
F G
She turns me on flips me off
E Am
she’s not a hag puts me in a vacuum cleaner bag
F E
whips it out plugs it in
F G G
hits the switch and I hear the roar
C G G7
she could surely arouse the thunder
C
of the mighty Thor.
I’ve continued to adjust the sound of my tubs while they’re home for a few weeks. Tuning and dampening and listening. After all these years I’ve discovered that drums sound best at their lowest (loosest drum skin tension) position just before pitch falls apart. That is as low as you can go without the heads flopping about or having rattling unpleasantries attach themselves to the the way the drum rings when you strike it. There is a sweet spot right there and the drum rings with its fullest potential. You can imagine how big the drum is by the sound of it. You can just picture it. If you find that position on all the drums in your set they will undoubtedly be in tune with each other.
I play a Chinese kit made by Mapex with a snare, a 14 inch floor tom and a twenty inch kick. I hate their logo. Wrong font for the awkward space between the “A” and the “P.” When I bought the set I said I’ll take that maple set over their but put a different head on the front of the bass drum, one without that logo.”
“All Shook Up” Eastman House in Rochester New York
We finally got over to see the Graham Nash curated rock and roll photography show at the George Eastman House. The shot of Hendrix during the soundcheck at Monterrey Pop was worth the price of admission and there were plenty of classic shots and outtakes from famous sessions. Gene Vincent looked liked he invented rock ‘n roll in a 1959 shot. Anton Corbjn’s photos transcended the music aspect. His shot of Joe Cocker was my favorite in the show. Mick Jagger looks silly stretching before a show next to a shot of Iggy doing a back bend in performance. I could only wonder if that was an intentional dig. Graham Nash included a few of his own shots of Neil Young and his girlfriend Joni and he’s going to be here to talk about the show in a few weeks.
An accompanying show in the small gallery as you walk in had five projections of snippets of rock and roll performances from tv shows like Hullabaloo, Ed Sullivan, Dick Cavett, MTV and Hollywood movies. With five screens going at once we darted back and forth to catch the Ramones, the Sex Pistols, Tina Turner, Freddie Mercury, the Stones and Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs.
I was thinking how this thing we grew up with is really our culture now but it’s spread is not complete. It still has not registered for my parents and it never will for them. My father and I were driving back from the Van Gogh drawing show in NYC a few years ago when “Like A Rolling Stone” came on the radio. I said something like, “This song changed everything when it came out” and I remember the blank stare. I hope they had their own touchstones that got under their skin in a similar way.
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.
Carol Acquilano landscape at Little Theater Café in Rochester, New York
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.
Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band performing live at Ludlow’s Garage in Cincinnati in 1969. Photo by Kim Torgerson.
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
Margaret Explosion “Ritual” Recorded live at the Little Theatre Café 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.
Empty stage at Tala Vera restaurant on State Street in Rochester, New York
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.”
Yellow cherries in the woods with snow, Rochester, New York
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.
“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.
Jack Schaefer brought his bass clarinet and Pete LaBonne was in town for the holiday so he played the grand piano. Bob Martin was out of town for the holiday so Wednesday night was all new and different for Margaret Explosion. Just the way we like it. We also picked up another gig at Rochester Roots annual dinner party next Friday.
There was an article in yesterday’s paper about Netflix coming out of nowhere a few years ago and going from the Post Office’s largest customer to the internet’s biggest bandwidth hog. If someone raves about a movie they have just seen my inclination is to “Add to Queue” not “Go the Theater.” The Little Theater is a local treasure and they’re hurting. The independent film network is no loner independent. They need your support. If the the theater goes down the café goes with it. Hope you can stop out tonight for the Little Theater Benefit. Margaret Explosion plays one set at 7:45.
Last night “The Agony and Ecstasy of Phil Spector” played on the big screen at the Dryden Theatre in the George Eastman House in glorious mono. Most of the songs anyway. It’s adventurous and reckless and almost over the top. There are essentially three pieces running around: Old footage of the Wall of Sound bands, Court TV video of Phil’s first trial and and an amazing interview. You get the sense that the interviewer doesn’t really care about Phil or is even interested in the topics he raises. He just keeps that tight shot on Phil and prods him to open his mouth. Is he drooling? We went in thinking he was guilty and then wound up with a soft spot for the guy.
Donovan, on the other hand is strangely pure. John Gilmore came over the other night with a Donovan documentary. We drove with John to see Donovan in Buffalo a few years back. He still has a beautiful voice and his songs are as good today as they ever were. He played two sets in Buffalo, mostly solo but he had a clunky backup trio for a few songs. Donovan does NOT need a rhythm section. He has a perfect sense of rhythm and other players just clunk up his material (except for the Mickie Most, Led Zeppelin, Jeff Beck backed records). The movie is a bit encyclopedic (three hours and we didn’t make it to the end) but it gives Donovan a chance to introduce his songs by playing abbreviated versions on acoustic guitar.
I’ve been giving my orange ear plugs a workout in the last 24 hours. I wore them this morning while blowing leaves off the roof and I had them on last night at the Bob Dylan show and then after that I shoved them in as far as they would go for the second set of SLT at the Montage.
John Gilmore bought us reserved seats for Dylan but we never saw them. We arrived while Dylan was half way through his opening number, “Rainy Day Women #12 & #35, and we worked our way through the crowd on the floor to about forty people back. Bob was great, loose and adventurous and mischievous. His band kept him in check.
It occurred to me that you can’t get too good as a working, rock musician without getting into steamroller territory. That’s why Tommy was a better drummer than Marky Ramone. Bob spent half the night at the organ and that was the best half. He’s already got another rhythm guitar player and a lead guitar (who was trying to be annoying with repetitive figures) and a steel player so there was no way he could shape his own songs while on guitar. Was his band trying to make his harmonica playing sound out of tune? Rock can’t be too healthy. It doesn’t work.
“Like A Rolling Stone” was so sensational when it came out, way more than a pop song. It blew me away and I’m not a lyric kinda guy. I never know what bands are singing about. I remember going wild when they played the long version. Dylan finished with that song last night and it is still sensational. It was great to see him.
SLT Dead Gone Dead cd cover – Watercolor by Paul Dodd
Ken Frank was in “5 Star Buffalo”, one of my favorite bands in the Scorgie’s days. I played with Personal Effects back then and we released a few albums on Earring Records. Colorblind James Experience released their first lp on Earring Records. Ken Frank joined Colorblind in the nineties. Ken plays bass with Margaret Explosion and he never sounded better than he did last night at the Little. His bass amp crapped out so he’s been playing his stand-up bass acoustically and he sounds more melodic and punctual than ever. The overall band volume is lower now and his bass notes have a clarity that gets lost when it’s amplified. It’s subtle but an earful! And subtlety counts for a lot in my book.
But back to Earring Records. They have just released a new recording by SLT called “Gone Dead Gone” and it’s on the other end of the volume spectrum. It’s dedicated to a gone dead old friend, Luke Warm, the one who took to the dj booth at Scorgies to remind the patrons to, “Don’t forget to tip the bartenders for keeping you drunk.” Ken Frank plays bass in this version of SLT along with Phil Marshall and they asked me to supply the cover art, specifically something with a bare light bulb and moths. It sounded like Philip Guston territory to me. Ken co-wrote and produced this rip roaring hard core pop anthem.
Listen to SLT – “I Should Have Been A Guru” on Earring Records.
