Category: Field Recordings of the Future

How the World Sounds

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Vuvuzela Time

Great Blue Heron in Eastman Lake, Rochester, NY
Great Blue Heron in Eastman Lake, Rochester, NY

Does the Great Blue Heron sound anything like a vuvuzela? Not really but I’m trying to make sense of this collision of coincidence. Rich sent us a photo of a Heron in Sausalito and we just spent some time watching one practice tai chi in Eastman Lake. The World Cup and the Rochester Jazz Fest both start today! I’m a little worried about how we’re going to keep up with our work in the next few weeks.

Maybe it is just the sort of distraction we need to wean us from obsessive Jazz Festival devotion. The organizers added a new venue, a tent in parking lot at Abilene. We were excited about hearing jazz over there but then found out all those acts are Americana, a categorization that bothers me. And the success of the last eight years seems to have only diluted the presence of American jazz. Still no Ornette, Pharoah, Joe McPhee, McCoy Tyner, Art Ensemble but Bernie Williams is here. We have the Club Pass and we’ll wander and we always find some cool stuff so I’m optimistic. Pay no attention to me.

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To Chuck

Someone named Mike Weber took video at the annual Bob Dylan Birthday Bash. Chuck Cuminale started this tradition about thirty years ago and the last incarnation of his band, The Colorblind James Experience and now Hunu, carries the tradition on. It is always fun but a bit melancholy without Chuck. Chuck, real name James and really colorblind, was born a few days before or after Dylan and he was always one of Bob’s biggest fans but not all of Dylan. He was very particular. I know he liked this song because I remember Peggi singing it with him. That’s Ken Frank, CBJ bass player from the classic lineup, on bass in this video.

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The Illest Setup In The City

Low Rider in parking lot at Charlotte beach
Low Rider in parking lot at Charlotte beach

Our neighbors were headed home from the beach when an SUV pulled in front of them. A guy hopped out and offered to sell them his homemade cd for ten bucks. They made another offer and came home with the goods and then let us borrow the unlabeled cd. It was produced by Bricksonion and his studio is in his car! The same car that pulled in front of our neighbors. If you get the itch to lay down a few tracks, give a call. Check out his YouTube Channel and you’ll see local rappers performing in his car.

Bricksonion (“like Smithsonion”) wasn’t around when the Stones recorded “Exile On Main Street” but it too was recorded by a mobile unit. I’m reading the 33 1/3 book on “Exile” now and it’s coinciding nicely with all the press from the re-release of that double lp. This 33 1/3 series would make good ebooks. Wish this one wasn’t so tedious. It doesn’t even make me want to put the lp on. It wasn’t the Stone best either.

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Last Night, Tomorrow Night

I just checked back with the Amy Rigby/Wreckless Eric video that I took when they were here last year. I expected more that 478 views but there are two other versions of “Dancing With Joey Ramone” up there. I wish I could inflate their numbers. This is a sensational song. They’ll be back in town tomorrow night at the Lovin’ Cup in Henrietta and they are not to missed.

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33 + 45 = 78

Onion and pepper in the pan
Onion and pepper in the pan

It seems all good home cooked meals begin with onions and peppers. Agreed?

Roy Sowers goes to a lot of garage sales. And he likes to share the curiosities he picks up. He comes to see the band a lot and in the last year he has given us an old Miles lp, a drum case, Dr. John’s “In The Right Place” and a Benny Goodman lp with Gene Kruppa on drums. A few weeks back he gave us a 78rpm Count Basie set. I was pretty sure our Stanton turntable could do 78s but when I got home I couldn’t find the setting. I considered recording the lp at 45 and speeding the files up on the computer but I returned the recordings to Roy.

While listening to the stack one dollar lps that scored at Record Archive I spotted the 78 setting on our turntable. You press 33 and 45 at the same time and of course, you get 78. I never put this together until now.

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Air Is Now A Dollar

Vinyl records purchased at Record Archive Sidewalk Sale in Rochester, NY
Vinyl records purchased at Record Archive Sidewalk Sale in Rochester, NY

Peggi headed out to pick up her mom and stopped to talk with our neighbor who’s putting up a new fence to combat the deer. He pointed out that our left rear tire was low so Peggi turned around and asked me if I wanted to pump it with our bicycle pump. I had done this before but it’s a lot of work so I suggested she stop at the corner and visit the 50 cent air machine. When she returned home with her mom she informed me that “Air is now a dollar.”

This reminded me of the conversation I had with John on Saturday night as we sat around the picnic table out behind Abilene next door to world’s loudest air conditioner. John is an antique dealer and he was telling me that he could buy anything for a dollar. “Everything can be bought for a dollar.” “Things used to be rare,” he said. “Now, nothing is rare.” He pointed to the Labatt Blue bottle in front of him and said, “If they stop making this beer I could still buy it online.” I knew John was right but it still sounded astonishing.

We had been at Record Archive’s Sidewalk Sale on Saturday morning and they had a row of tables set up with $1 CDs and $1 LPs. Jeff Spevak was just finishing sifting through the boxes of vinyl. He told us, “I got all the good stuff.” I couldn’t tell if he was kidding or not but he did have a nice looking George Jones lp in his stack. We found fourteen treasures and sure enough each one was a dollar.

The Last Poets lp is beyond astonishing. “White man’s gotta god complex.” And the “Flamenco Moods” record turned out be a hard core mournful flamenco mood. Already had Peggy Lee’s “Is That All There Is” but it too was only a dollar.

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Like A Hurricane

Neil Young "Trunk Show" at the Dryden Theater in Rochester, NY
Neil Young “Trunk Show” at the Dryden Theater in Rochester, NY

I’m sure there will plenty of seats left at the Dryden Theater tonight where they are screening Shakey Productions newest release, the Jonathan Demme concert film, “Trunk Show” with Neil Young and Crazy Horse. Last night was the official Rochester premier and we got there about an hour early. Heather and Gretchen were just ahead of us at the ticket booth and we watched the projectionist lug the film canister up the stairs to the booth. The theater never never did fill up but it hardly mattered. It felt like we in Philadelphia where the show was being filmed.

Neil Young "Trunk Show" at the Dryden Theater in Rochester, NY

The Dryden has a state of the art sound system and they aren’t afraid to crank it. Neil’s guitar sounded amazing. What is in that giant red stomp box? He pushed Crazy Horse to the limit and made Ben Keith (Grandpa in “Greendale”) look lost most of the time. He was so distracting I kept closing my eyes. He redeemed himself with his beautiful keyboard playing on “Like A Hurricane”. The title of this song alone pretty much sums up the energy Neil brings to a performance.

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Run On Sentences

Margaret Explosion performing at "Live Dive" CD release party upstairs at Abilene in Rochester, NY. Photo by Brian Peterson.
Margaret Explosion performing at “Live Dive” CD release party upstairs at Abilene in Rochester, NY. Photo by Brian Peterson.

We don’t set the alarm. We wake up when we wake up. Of course we work pretty late on occasion. Sometimes that’s before Rick and Monica and sometimes they are already at work when we crawl out. Rick brings our paper up to the door if he’s up first and I bring theirs to the door if I’m out there first. I have developed a sneaky approach to their doorstep that doesn’t set their dog alarm off but sometimes the dogs sense me and let loose. This morning I was headed up their driveway in my pjs and slippers, multitasking (brushing my teeth and reading the headlines as I walked), when the garage door popped open. Monica backed out and rolled down her window. I think she asked me how I was or something but I all I could manage was “Ugh Um.”

At last night’s Margaret Explosion (a five piece last night) gig I was still thinking about the post I made here before leaving the house. Although that post was filed under the “Notes on Painting” category it applies perfectly to what I feel we are trying to do with our musical collective. Start with an idea, only add things that improve on, develop or add to the expression. And if it’s not adding value, like my painting teacher says, “shut up.” I believe it to be a useful template but I am only the drummer. We have one more Wednesday at the Little and we will be off for the summer. James Nichols will be joining us on piano.

“And that’s the way I play. I play for the benefit of the band.” — Baby Dodds, New Orleans drummer

Here is Margaret Explosion – Dance Trance from the gig pictured above

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Pact With The Devil

Gary Numan on the tv at Monty's Crown in Rochester, NY
Gary Numan on the tv at Monty’s Crown in Rochester, NY

I designed the menu for this place when it was Tuzz’s and Ted Williams held court here when it was Granna’s. He called it the “Literary Bar.” And then it was the Rose & Crown where Watkins & the Rapiers got their start. Today Monty’s Crown makes a pretty good rock n’ roll club. Tattooed women bartenders, cheap beer, dart board, pool table, very few tables and chairs in way of the stage and guys in Ramones t-shirts and Psychobilly leather jackets hanging around. And then there was this wacky slide show on the tv at the end of the bar.

It was the perfect setting for Terese Taylor and her band. Margaret Explosion’s bass player, Ken Frank, produced some tracks a few years back for Terese. Jeff Spevak calls her a “San Francisco country-punk, lo-fi guitar muse” and that’s seems to work although I didn’t really hear any country from her last night. You couldn’t hear the words either when it got loud but that only made it artier. James Whiton played some beautiful bowed bass and we told him so after the show.

SLT with Ken on bass channeled eighties Iggy. Marathon Mark was there. Did he used to be in SLT or am I confusing him with Luke Warm. Ted Williams was at the bar looking younger than he did in the eighties. The conversation turned to the “War in Heaven”, a poetry performance piece of Ted’s that Peggi and I played on. Robert Meyerowitz, who has been in Alaska for the last two decades or so responded to my fb post last week that he would be “attending” the Margaret Explosion gig at the Little. I just assumed he was kidding but there he was in the first table. He drove all the way from Anchorage! And when we were leaving the bar last night he was just walking in, true to form.

Peggi woke up this morning singing the theme from Ted William’s “The War In Heaven.”.

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Record Day

Local records section at Bop Shop Records in Rochester, New York
Local records section at Bop Shop Records in Rochester, New York

I’d rather think of of “Record Store Day” as record day. It sounds more fun than supporting a dying business model. And it was fun. Bop Shop had two turntables set up in the atrium and the Modern Lovers first record cranked when we walked in. We saw old friends plowing through boxes of vinyl and got caught up in all. Every record in the old Bohdi’s Café space was one dollar. We came home with “Guitars Ala Lee”, Debussy “Nocturnes, Wagner Preludes and Overtures, Carpenters “Close To You”, Toscanini conducting Wagner’s “Good Friday Spell”., Purcell’s Funeral Music for Queen Mary, “South Pacific”, Lesly Gore’s “Love Me by Name” with a picture of her on the cover looking like Bowie’s Alladin Sane and something called “A Bunch of Bongos.”

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Prom Night

Deer parts in the woods
Deer parts in the woods

A piano player named James sat in with Margaret Explosion last night. He sounded great and he had a good time so he will probably be back next Wednesday. Bob Martin was in Las Vegas for a trade show so Jack Schaefer played guitar and bass clarinet. We fell into another prom night thing (I’ve posted the last one below) and it went over really well. I had my eyes closed and half expected to see people slow dancing when I opened them.

We found the bones shown above on the left on one side of the creek and the ones on the right on the other. What looked like the head of a strange animal turned out to be the back end of a deer. When we flipped them both 180 the entire rib cage fell into place. You can see the saw marks in the skull from where a rackaholic cut off the deer’s rack.

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Shrewd & Bone Headed

Margaret Explosion 50 Song Compendium to Live Dive
Margaret Explosion 50 Song Compendium to Live Dive

We’ve listened to a lot of live Margaret Explosion in the last month while we picked songs for this 50 Song Compendium to “Live Dive”. Once we settled on the fifty song we liked best we tried them out and in the last week bumped the sampling rate of the aiffs (wavs on the pc side) up to 320 variable bit and re-uploaded them. Even tweaked a few of the covers and launched the site today. We sent out a few emails and we’ll see if the server holds up. We’ve broken even with cd sales so now we’re giving away the store. A shrewd and bone headed marketing move.

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No One Has More Fun Than People

Chandler Travis Philharmonic at the Bop Shop in 2010
Chandler Travis Philharmonic at the Bop Shop in 2010

Chandler Travis Philharmonic played at the Bop Shop on Friday night and Ricky, the cross dressing drummer extraordinaire and Candler’s Incredible Casual bandmate, was back home in Cape Cod. Chandler has put more space in his arrangements which almost sounds impossible with six big guys in the band. He writes NRBQ/Colorblind James like rock/popsongs and has sweet voice but he shines as the evening’s mc in pajama pants and clown hats. He performed a beautiful song with words written by David Greenberger from the Duplex Planet. We talked to him after the show and he told us he has a third band that does a cover of Pete LaBonne’s “Pajama Pants Baby”. That would work.

Tiny horse (born five days ago) and mom
Tiny horse (born five days ago) and mom

This little horse is less than week old and already running around like a miniature race horse. He may be a race horse someday because the three horses in the corral next to him compete at the track in Canandagua. His mom was being very protective and and didn’t want us to get too close so we continued on our way.

Spring Valley Finger overlooking marsh in Durand Eastman Park
Spring Valley Finger overlooking marsh in Durand Eastman Par

We headed down the hill and over to Spring Valley where the mustard green is already covering the ground in the sunny spots. Not only is it invasive, it also gets a head start on the competition. We hung around on one of the ridges that dead end up there overlooking the marsh. The vegetation is just slightly more brown than grey at this point.

Most of Saturday was devoted to chopping up the big pine trees that fell on the street’s pool lot during that heavy snowfall. There was enough sun out there to get a burn so we felt especially warm in Rick and Monica’s living room on Saturday night for their house concert. Connie Deming dedicated a beautiful song called “Beautiful Boy” to her son who was sitting nearby and she told the crowd that the setting reminded her of a Joni Mitchell song. She proceeded to do a spot-on version of Ladies of the Canyon. Maria Gillard followed and sounded great. Like Wreckless Eric, she is full of personality and most enjoyable between songs. As she laughed at one of her own stories she told the crowd her uncle used to say, “No one has more fun than people.”.

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Field Recordings Of The Future

New batch of Margaret Explosion singles
New batch of Margaret Explosion singles

Margaret Explosion records most nights but we don’t get around to listening to it all. I had a pile of cds on my desk that Peggi and I have been working our way through as we work away our lives. It’s not that dire but enough is enough! We selected eighteen more songs that we like, stuck a title on them and created a picture sleeve for the mp3.

If you’re planning on doing any psychedelics this weekend I would recommend “Burning Man”. The lights were dimmed in the Café and we recorded this. We were accompanying Rob Storms’ “Burning Man” video projection. Bob’s guitar is amazing.

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MP3s As 45s

Margaret Explosion singles with picture sleeves
Margaret Explosion singles with picture sleeves

I used my paper route as an excuse to be late for school. I could tell it was really effective. Hard working kid. Papers weren’t delivered on time so I missed the bus. No problem. I would take the city bus and have to transfer at midtown. I was often the first customer at Jay’s Record Ranch on Clinton Ave. They a had the new releases up on the wall and a listening booth. It hardly mattered if there was a picture sleeve. The object was desirable even when packed in a company sleeve. I share Kevin Patrick‘s enthusiasm for the 45 but on a little league scale by comparison. I continued buying 45s at Record Theater through the eighties when Martin Edic worked there. And we just ordered one from Amy Rigby and Wreckless Eric. I’m glad the album format is dead. Very few bands can manage a good one any more. Single downloads from blogs or the iTunes store works fine for me.

We knew “Live Dive” as going to be the last cd Margaret Explosion released before we put it out. We’re going to have to find something else to do with our band money. I reworked the Margaret Explosion site over the last few weeks and we started posting singles to the MP3 Downloads page. It’s kind of fun making the picture sleeves and then giving away the songs. Is this what they call “the race to the bottom” as a business model?

I wish the new HTML standards would just hurry up and get here. Bob Martin emailed from Paris to wish us luck at our gig tonight. (Jack Schaefer will be sitting in for him) Bob couldn’t see the little Flash players on his iPhone so he couldn’t listen to the songs on the site. The new built-in-to-browser music player works fine in Safari and WebKit but the other browsers aren’t ready for it. I would love to put that little player in the page. And only Safari (and WebKit) can see the rounded corners and drop shadows that I put on the main white div of the new Margaret Explosion site.

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Redefining Happiness

Peggi Fournier with guitar
Peggi Fournier with guitar

Now we’re stuck on that BOC song. The lyrics do dovetail nicely with Peggi’s birthday. Stop out at the Little Theater Café tonight and celebrate with Margaret Explosion. We have ordered a cake which we will share during the break. Happy Birthday Peggi!

Listen to Margaret Explosion – Live Dive

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How Do You Like Me Now?

Peggi getting her eyes examined at Dr. Goodfriend's office
Peggi getting her eyes examined at Dr. Goodfriend’s office Rochester, NY

Peggi and I had back to back eye exams today at Doctor Goodfriend’s. His partner, Doctor Searl is the father of Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad’s bassist, Jamie. The Dub Squad’s playing in Buffalo tonight at the Nietzsche’s in Buffalo. Not a good night to drive to Buffalo. We used to play Nietzsche’s back in the eighties. It’s a funky old club in a quiet part of town, nothing like the rough and tumble Continental. Nice warm sound to the room. I really liked the place.

Joan Weissegger and Cheryl Mitchell, two classmates from Rl Thomas came out to see Margaret Explosion last night. I saw them chatting with another classmate, Mike Allen AKOS, while we were playing. Yet another classmate, Jeff Munson, is usually there but he’s in Mexico. It’s kind of odd how you get thrown together in high school and then see these same people for your whole life. That kind of thing happens in Rochester.

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Why I Hate The Beatles

Today’s paper had a picture of “Rain” doing their Beatles tribute. I guess they are in town at the Auditorium. It was one of those dreamlike pictures where the people sort of look like somebody you know and you stare at it but something is off.

Maybe my perception was altered by the dream Peggi told me about this morning. We had a big party and my brother and sister-in-law’s RIT buddies were all here with my family. I was thinking, “we don’t really know these RIT buddies.” My mom sat on the coffee table that my brother built and it broke so my brother tried to fix it. Maybe it was the Vox amps in that picture but something triggered “From Me To You” and that damn thing was stuck in my head.

I went to Kevin’s blog hoping to cleanse my mind but he didn’t have a fresh post up there. He has some cool links to other music blogs so I followed a few and bought an Amy Rigby/Wreckless Eric 45 with PayPal bucks, the perfect audio antidote.

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Pandora’s Box

Fountain Blue Hair Shop in Rochester, NY
Fountain Blue Hair Shop in Rochester, NY

We stopped by Canaltown Roasters to pick up 10 pounds of “Rochester’s Choice” coffee for 4D and spotted Fountain Blue defiantly standing on the city block that Wegman’s wants. I had just seen the newest plans that call for a monster store that will surround this tiny building because the current owner can not be bought. Good for him. Around the corner we couldn’t resist stopping into the Ravioli Shop. I love their baguettes and Peggi likes their semolina bread so we bought both. We tried to buy some mushroom raviolis but they were sold out so we picked up some pumpkin ravioli.

I went down to paint last night but their wasn’t any music on my iPod because I had copied over the iTunes Music Library.xml file with the one from our laptop and my old playlists were gone. I checked out Pandora. I hadn’t been here since I first bought the Touch. It remembered me saying I liked Sun Ra so I clicked the link and it played Miles tracks from Jack Johnson and A Silent Way, early Ornette, Archie Shepp, Yusef Lateef, Eric Dolphy and even Joe McFee. About every tenth track was from Sun Ra and that’s about the way all music stations should be. Why did I ever buy all this music and who need’s iTunes? It was a little humiliating to see how predictable I am. The people at the Pandora genome project really have my number.

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