Category: Lopsided Observations

Bratwurst and German beer under a tent in the rain. Colleagues, artists, students and especially family all laughing and telling stories about Fred, aka Fritz, shown above with his older brother, Hans. Fred would have loved it. Wish he could have been there. If only to hear him laugh one more time.

This article was hanging on one of the walls inside the tent.

France and Germany were tied at the half when left the house for the jazz fest so we had to finish that game before we moved over to the U.S. vs. China match. France had outplayed the No. 1 German team in the first half but Germany regained their form in the second half. The game stayed tied for the two overtime periods and then our recording ran out. The penalty shots are no way to settle a match anyway. We were happy to see the U.S. playing like champs, quickly moving the all with one touch passing. Everyone was doubting the coach but she fielded a great lineup last night. Left the lumbering Abby on the bench for most of the match and came to her senses near the end and put Heather O’Rielly in.

We saw three early shows last night and hustled home to watch soccer. Ikebe Shakedown at Montage is from Brooklyn New York and were here two years ago playing at the Bug Jar. The seven piece band apropriates Afrobeat and is really smart to play only the essentials in fairly tight arrangements of simple parts. Imagine Fela Kuti at a frat party. The horn players were really good, good enough to play with with Sharon Jones last night at Kodak Hall. They get the party going with no misfires.

Before they started their gig at Christ Church Denys Baptiste said his Triumvirate doesn’t discuss what they are going to play before they start the set and he said he was not really the leader, “the best idea wins.” They play versions of pop songs or iconic songs from the recent past. They don’t stop between songs and their set is one continuous piece. They really take their time skirting around the theme of each song and then easing their way out and into another. They were laid back and slightly detached from the material. Their music would work well in a moody Film Noir movie. We realized how narcotic-like their sound was once we were back out on the street.

Melissa Aldana is a great tenor sax player. Her young Crash Trio was doing Ellington’s “I Got It Bad” when we walked in and the drummer was sounding especially good with the brushes. They work well within the tradition of jazz but at the same time their sax, bass and drums trio shows how elastic the form can be as they carved out their own sound. They asked if they could do an additional song and finished with a one Aldana wrote for Sonny Rollins called “Back Home.”

I this is a low rider but it was riding pretty high yesterday afternoon on East Avenue.

The notice on the Jazz Festival’s site says: The group, Arstidir, scheduled to play twice tonight at Xerox Aud and twice tomorrow at the Lutheran Church, will not perform due to State Dept.Visa issues. There will no replacement concerts.

There are lot repeats at this year’s Jazz Fest. Not just acts from other years but acts that play two shows at one venue on the first night and then two more shows at another venue the second. And they’ve done their best to disguise that fact on the program guide by using a different promo picture of the artist on the second night. Fred Hersch, Jane Bunnett, Benny Green, the Rad Trads, Kat Edmundson, Arstidir, Raul Midon, Christine Jensen Jazz Orchestra with Ingrid Jensen and Julia Biel are all double booked and our options are closing in.

I take notes notes on the acts each year and I post them over here. You’ll have to click on the 2015 Jazz Fest pass to get through.

For a lot people cilantro tastes like soap. I am not one of those people. I love the stuff. We planted it for a couple of years now it just keeps coming back and our crop is peaking now. Our green salads are half cilantro. We’re thinking about making a batch of cilantro pesto but this jazz fest is getting in the way.

We heard this guy from a distance and he sounded great. He sounded great up close as well and I loved how he set himself up in the middle of East Avenue. We went into Christ Church to hear one of the English bands and when we came out a half hour later this guy was playing exactly the same beat at the same tempo.

Jeffery has one hell of a yoga studio. He teaches a Saturday morning class at the Rochester Yacht Club in the mouth of the Genesee River. It was the first time I have taken a class from Jeffery and my first time inside the Yacht Club. He is a great teacher but I can’t see him without thinking of that song by the Pixies, “Jefery, with one F, Jefery” even though he has both. He’s good because he talks you through the poses explaining what you should be concentrating on. And he is right there with the release pose once you’ve pushed yourself. His 9:30 class is for all levels so I just qualified.

We planned tonight’s jazz fest lineup around the Germany/Sweden match. We’re thinking Germany is on course to meet the US in the semis. Eric Revis Trio at Xerox Auditorium looked the most promising act so we planned to start there. Because we got such a late start we parked on East Main walked across the Inner Loop which in that area has almost been filled in. That was a cool sensation.

A week or so ago the local paper asked me to write a piece on the jazz festival. It was in the this morning’s paper.

We take the annual Jazz Fest a day at a time. We generally preview the sound files for the night’s offerings on the day of the show and then head out the door with a rough sketch. We like to be surprised. Tonight we only found two bands that caught our interest and no surprises. The best is yet to come.

Free parking is getting harder and harder to find in Downtown Rochester. All the spots we we found in years past are in areas that are being redeveloped. I dropped Peggi off near City Blue and went on the hunt for a spot. When I reconnected with her she was standing in a long line between two rows of port-o-johns on Barrett Place. But she had already talked to the vocalist, Cecile McLorin Salvant, telling her, “We’re looking forward to your performane” as she walked by. We brought our dinner, a green salad, rice dish and two Sam Adams and before we knew it we were inside Kilbourn Hall.

At twenty three Salvant has a voice way beyond her years and a fabulous piano, bass and drums trio. She opened accompanied by only the bass player with a song called “Lonely Town.” Then Glitter and Be Gay” and three Cole Porter songs. Most of her songs are from a long time ago. She is very theatrical and musical but just didn’t draw us in with her readings of these classic songs. I would prefer more of a personal stamp.

If you search for a sound file of “Music Music Music” you won’t come up with the band, “MusicMusicMusic.” Despite their digital indexing problem the Swedish band has been together for more than ten years . They were at Jazz Fest in this same venue back in 2008. Their first number tonight opened up to a drum solo, the second one was slow with bowed bass and a pretty, spacious effect on the piano. They were so enjoyable I almost forgot to snap a photo of them. The piano player leads this trio and was expeceptionally melodic. They finished the set with the Theresa Brewer song, “Music! Music! Music!” Hard to get that one out of your head. Hope they haven’t been doing that for ten years.

I’m keeping track of what we see at the 2015 Jazz Fest over here.

We were riding our bikes down to the pier near the bay winding our way through the funky neighborhoods that line the bay. There was a garage sale at the house in front of the backyard pictured above. I checked out the books, “I Am Ozzy, “The Long Hard Road Out of Hell” by Marilyn Manson and Nikki Sixx’s “The Heroin Diaries,” and then noticed someone standing in the backyard. There was some sort of temperature inverse going on that day, we rode through warm and cool pockets, and long low cloud hung over the bay so I wanted a closer look.

They owner was out there and she said they were planning on putting the house up for sale in the next few days. I took note because our friend, Kathy, has been looking for a house for quite a while. Like us, when we moved from the city, she has no real need to move so she was taking her time, like years worth of time. We emailed her this photo and said something like, “Here is a view from your backyard.”

She called two days later and told us she had bought the house. Turns out the owners were only living there temporarily. They had downsized and sold their former house to Lou Gramm of Foreigner and were living here while they built a new home. A man who lives down the street is responsible for fixing the house up. A young French couple lives next door. I hope it all works out.

Linda, down the street is in Peggi’s yoga class and she told Peggi she thinks they have a fox living in their backyard. It turns out a few neighbors all think they have a fox living on their property. It’s surely the same fox, golden brown, somewhere between a cat and dog in size. We’ve seen it many times now and we were sitting out back when it pranced by with something in its mouth. I was certain it was part of our neighbor’s black cat. I kept my eye out for the cat the rest of the day and grew even more certain that it had met its demise. I was afraid to ask them if they had seen their cat recently but after a day I got up the courage. Turns out the cat was fine and they too had seen the fox many times.

I asked Jared, at the other end of the street, if he had seen the fox and of course he had. He told us foxes won’t bother a cat. Maybe a kitten but not a cat.

There is nothing like local strawberries. Red all the way through, sweet and juicy, a completely different fruit from the West Coast ones we get here in the winter. We rode our bikes up to Amans Farm Market yesterday and brought home a couple quarts. I didn’t see any local cherries there and that got me thinking. I always thought the cherries came before the strawberries.

That notion was fixed a long time ago when I was 14 or 15. I know school was still in session and a farm on Ridge Road, just outside of the village of Webster, was hiring kids to pick cherries. I had to get a work permit and that’s when I got my social security card. I already had a paper route for years but somehow they got around all the labors laws with paperboys.

Picking cherries after school was a great job. You got paid by how much you picked so it was solid work experience At that time we’d climb the trees with a bucket in our hands and climb down when it was full. Today they have figured out a way to keep the trees low to the ground so you don’t need a ladder or anything. I remember someone had a transistor radio up in the trees and we’d be listening to our favorite songs on WBBF and WSAY and eating as many cherries as we could. I think my brother ate too many and got sick on them or maybe that was me.

Once the cherries were all picked and school was out we were offered jobs picking strawberries out in the hot sun. It was brutal. I quit.

Following up on yesterday’s post about photographing interesting looking people there is this whole selfie phenomena. There is no negotiation with a model and the subject is always ready and willing. It is hard to even look at a painting in a museum without someone standing in front of it for a selfie.

I thought maybe I’d read a little something about selfies so I googled it and before I had the word spelled out I was prompted to click on “selfies before death.” I better get busy.

On Saturday we got to Chelsea much earlier than we usually do. We were prepared to see some art before all the galleries disappear down here. The place is on the move. Up. Most of the galleries were closed. Not because they’ve been squeezed out by condos but for the holiday. Everywhere we go holidays are getting in the way.

The Marlborough Gallery on W. 25 was open unfortunately. The sculpture show on the ground floor was silly so we followed a sign that read “Landscape Painting, Julius von Bismark” to the second floor where two videos were playing on a large screen. One had a group of workers in a tropical setting painting the leaves of large plants. Green on green. The other showed workers on ladders painting the rocks on the side of a hill. Lol. We were offended. Susan Inglett Gallery was open. The Hope Gangloff painting show there had had a nice write-up in yesterday’s paper. I liked them but not a lot. I like who her influences are, Alice Neel and Egon Schiele.

The new Whitney’s inaugural show was really fun. The building itself is fun. They pulled out their best stuff but arranged it in a mostly chronological order from the top floor down and a very curious thing happened. The oldest stuff was the best, the most engaging as well. By the time we got to the fifth floor with the Barbara Kruger and Matthew Barney stuff I couldn’t wait to get out of there.

Downtown Detroit looks like a war zone but there is so much optimism in the air you just know they are if not over the hump at least on top of it. We are staying in a hotel at the very beginning of Woodward Avenue, the street that runs north from the center of the city past Eminem’s “8 Mile” and all the way out to 12 Mile where we planned to hook up with Peggi’s high school buddies.

The few restaurants that are down here are packed. There was an hour and half wait at the first one we stopped at. And a restaurant named “Hudson”that we stopped at for breakfast was so crowded we ordered coffee to go. There’s a Hard Rock Cafe here and a creepy, high end, rock’ roll gear, chain store called “John Varvatos.” “Vintage guitars, Records & Audio. Tailor on Premise.” We looked at the rock’ roll coffee table books but had hard a very hard time with the clothes.

We found the Juventus vs Real Madrid game from last week on the tube in our room. I knew was a 1-1 tie but it was still thrilling. There’s a dance club across the street from our hotel so we’re lucky the heating system sounds like a white noise generator. We Watched a guy on a bicycle stop and pick up cigarette butts left in front of the club in the morning

Shephard Farley’s doing a huge mural around the corner at the Martius building, formerly the Compuserve headquarters. We headed over there to watch but he wasn’t up yet.

We were listening to Tom Petty’s “American Girl” as we stood in line to buy Flash tickets over the weekend. The song sounded great but once we got in the stadium it turned out to be a cover band. Every song they did sounded as good as the original. So you have to wonder why. Why not just play the recording? I’d much rather hear Angel Corpus Christi’s dreamy Tom Petty covers.

We went up to Olmstead’s Highland Park tonight where the Psychedelic Furs were were playing for free at the Lilac Festival. The guys, the Butler brothers, were covering themselves. They sounded exactly like they did thirty years ago, same songs, nothing new. Kind of an odd experience.