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If Sun Ra Can Die Anyone Can

Last week I read that Jimmy Carl Black, “the Indian in the group” had died. I liked the early Mothers and felt sad. Yesterday’s Rochester paper had a nice tribute to Arthur Deutsch, Danny’s father, who recently passed away. As a reporter he covered City Hall, politics and crime during what the golden age at the Democrat and Chronicle along side of Henry Clune. He later ran the War Memorial and booked Parliament-Funkadelic on the “Mothership Connection Tour” for the city in 1978. Peggi and I were down front for that one. Anita Ward opened with her hit and then Bootsy stole the show before P-Funk even took the stage. Today I read Mitch Mitchell died after a gig in Portland. He was one of my favorite drummers.

Martin Edic was at the Little Theater Cafe last night for the Margaret Explosion gig andthe conversation that followed. He was raving about “Suzy, Led Zeppelin, and Me” by Martin Millar. “Best book I’ve ever read”. And Martin has read some books. He often finishes books while still in the bookstore.

But earlier he told us that his dad had just started hospice. When you meet Martin’s parents they quickly become friends because they hang with you. You don’t exchange niceties with them. You engage them in real conversation. Ken Edic is one of the greatest guys in the world.

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Possibillities for Dreamers

Donuts Delite in Rochester New York
Donuts Delite in Rochester New York

But sadly they are no longer either one. Donuts Delite went out of business years ago and the pink Art Deco building on Culver Road is still still up for sale. My family used to head down there after church and Peggi and I used to stop in there all the time for a fried cake and the best cup of coffee in town. I stopped by yesterday for sentimental reasons and walked around the building. The place has possibilities for dreamers.

I think I overheard Fred Lipp right last night in painting class. I think I heard him say, “How can I make this job easier – for myself?”. If I didn’t catch this completely out of context, I’d say he was explaining how he came up with his teaching methods. His methods are directional and purposeful and efficient and clear. They can take a long time to digest and put into practice mostly because there is so much unlearning to dispense with. His rules are concise. “Get to the subject. Address the worst first. Trust your eye.” These are so powerful that it makes perfect sense that they would also be the right tools to make his job (teaching people how to see) easier.

Fred continued moving across the room and stopped next door at the table where my father was working on his watercolor of the UofR regatta. My father was saying something about what he planned on doing in this painting. Fred was saying, “Painting is a visual adventure, a delight for the eyes. You have to learn to trust your eye. If your eye questions something, pay attention to it and address it”.

Your eye knows more than you give it credit for.

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Leaving The Leaves Alone

Lots of leaves in the backyard
Lots of leaves in the backyard

Wow, do we have a lot of leaves! This is what our backyard looks like. We put some big yellow leaves on our table as a centerpiece for our post high school reunion dinner party. Jeff Munson and Mary Kaye came by and Marianne Gocker and her friend, Dave. We learned another classmate, Holly Clarke, was in the Woodstock movie without her clothes. I’m going to have to re-watch that classic. I don’t think we have room for any more leaves in our compost pile. We need to find a few more creative uses for them.

Frank DeBlase liked the Polaroids I put on line yesterday. He asked me to drop some of them off at City to use in the Scorgie’s piece that he’s doing next week. While I was out I stopped by with a package of seals that I photographed for a site we’re building. The Post Office parking lot was empty. How come we don’t get Veteran’s Day off?

I was too tired to paint last night so I spent a few hours trying to track down a problem with the Lightbox javascript on the Scorgies site. It started acting flukey yesterday and and now runs the photos from one gallery right into the next. Bill Jones called while I was duking it out. He asked me to do a logo for The Art Pile, his e-commerce site for artists. I like doing logos.

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Scorgie’s Mania

Martin Edic, Peggi Fournier and Paul Dodd of the Hi-Techs backstage at Scorgies in 1980

Jeff Spevak from the Democrat & Chronicle, Michelle from Freetime and Frank DeBlase from City newspaper all called today wanting to talk about the November 21st’ Scorgie’s Reunion. When I say “talk” I really mean they were looking for usable quotes. Jeff wanted a funny story because everyone else had one. I kind of didn’t answer that one even though I could think of a few. I did put put about fifty Polaroids from Scorgies days from those days up on the Scorgies site this afternoon.

Robert Slide sent this photo to us this morning. He played bass in New Math when I was in that band. I think he took this photo when the Hi-Techs played with New Math at Scorgie’s. There’s only about ten days left before the show. We had a rehearsal yesterday afternoon but we still haven’t been able to get throught the forty five minute set we have planned. We have two Margaret Explosion gigs between now and then. Ken Frank was suggestting that we try a few of the Personal Effects songs at those gigs.

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Art Aficionado

Frank DeBlase photos at Record Archive - A View From The Pit
Frank DeBlase photos at Record Archive – A View From The Pit

There’s Nod right in the middle of Frank DeBlase’s “View From The Pit” show at Record Archive

Record Archive was hopping last night. There were about twenty five skateboarders out front on the unseasonably warm night. Inside Alanya offered us a can of ice cold Rolling Rock and Dick Storms had Nino’s pizza laid out on the table. It was hard to get an unobstructed view of Frank‘s photos. I centered my shot around Nod so I didn’t get Joan Jett or Ivy. There are hundred photos in this show and the prints were selling fast. So you better get over there before all the good ones are gone.

Art opening hound at Svan Aken’s “Audition” at RoCo
Art opening hound at Svan Aken’s “Audition” at RoCo

We go to a lot of local art openings but I’m willing to bet this fellow art aficionado goes to all the art openings. I usually see him chowing down at the refreshments table but last night he was checking out the Sam van Aken’s “Audition” at RoCo on East Avenue. His outfit was nicely cordinated with he work last night. Chas Davis had some nice big Paul Jenkins like paintings in the back room.

Back view of am Svan Aken’s “Audition” at RoCo
Back view of am Svan Aken’s “Audition” at RoCo
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Welcome Back Willem

Willem Breuker Kollectiief at the Bop Shop, November 6th, 2008
Willem Breuker Kollectiief at the Bop Shop, November 6th, 2008

Willem Breuker Kollectief played the Bop Shop Atrium last night and this time they had Willem at the helm. He was recovering from an organ transplant last year when his band played in the same place on the same date.

That coincidence coincides with another. One of my first blog entries here was on last year’s show. It was impossible to get all eleven band members in one shot. This is a big band with big orchestral ideas and perfectly executed small ones like funky circus sounding pieces. They are a pure delight.

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Call Of The Wild

Eight point buck walking through our yard
Eight point buck walking through our yard

I saw this guy come from the back yard and pass by the window near my computer so I grabbed the camera and caught him walking through our front yard. All year we see deer frolicking in the woods, usually in packs or as a family unit. But in the fall the males get right down to business. They grow their antlers all year to use in battle with other males while trying to breed with the females. The gentle deer become possessed and are transformed in the line of duty. We watched a head to head butting battle last year with two males and it is a wild ritual. In another few weeks when the mating season ends the males will be trying to knock those damn things of their heads.

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Stress Test

We had some web work that had to be done today so it left way too little time to meet our other more pressing deadline. We had to have a package to FedEx by seven with the Personal Effects master cd and art files so Discmakers will have enough time to make some cds and get ’em back to us by the reunion gig. As it is, we paid two hundred extra in rush charges for this seven day turnaround. We did the cover art and credits and the little p in a circle and a three PMS color label in InDesign this afternoon and dropped them at FedEx on the way to our Little gig. It could have been worse. Brian Peterson got in a car accident and spent the day at emergency. He is well enough to email.

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Yippee!

Ann at work at Parkleigh in Rochester, NY
Ann at work at Parkleigh in Rochester, NY

I woke up early, like 6:30, thinking about how far behind I was in trying to get this Personal Effects cd out of here in time to get it back in time for the reunion show at the German House in a few weeks. Peggi and I did manage to pick songs from the six lps this morning and burn a copy in Toast with some cool cross fades.

We headed over to the Point Pleasant fire house at noon to cast our votes for Obama. Our route there takes us down Wisner to the dead end and through the woods to Culver. We ran into a guy with a wood splitter that swivels on its axle so you can split wood without lifting it. He told us he lived in a 500 square foot house near the woods and he offered to rent his splitter if we need it.

I took the car over to Jerome’s ignition Service to get an oil change and I put my bike in the car so I could take a cd to Bob Martin’s office to get his approval on our song selections. Bob was in the middle of a phone conference so I dropped off the cd and rode over to Parkleigh on Park Avenue to visit my sister at her new job. She was explaining the virtues of a $150 hair brush to a customer when I walked in so I strolled around the store and then stood near her while she closed the sale. A woman asked if she could help me and I said, “No”. I think she thought I was a shoplifter because a guy came out from the back to watch me. I picked up a small bag of licorice, a “Bridge Mix”, for my mom and Ann rang me up.

I rode over to our old neighborhood to visit Sparky but he wasn’t there. I rode back to Jerome’s and Sparky was there, in the garage, talking to Mike and Ted. He had a new three wheeled walker said he was gonna try to buy some of that Polish sausage and bring it by soon.

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IU IOU

Bloomington Indiana Crew 1969 including Larry Malman, Steve Hoy, Kenny Macher, Dave Jolly and Paul Dodd
Bloomington Indiana Crew 1969 including Larry Malman, Steve Hoy, Kenny Macher, Dave Jolly and Paul Dodd

We brought our plants in from the deck for the winter and found a plate from the Indiana University dorms under one of the the plants. I hadn’t thought about Indiana in a long time. I did notice that it is a swing state. It was pretty swinging back in the day.

Peggi and I sat down to watch a movie last night and I reached into our container of matches and pulled out some from the Indiana Memorial Union. You could still strike the match on the front and and the back had a list that included Bowling, Beauty Shop, Food Service, Guest Rooms and Post Office. I loved hanging around the Commons in that place. I hung around Indiana long enough to meet Peggi and then I came back to Rochester.

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Baby Steps

Fall colored vines in Spring Valley
Fall colored vines in Spring Valley

Another beautiful day in Western New York and I spent most of it in the basement, painting. Time flies down there. Sometimes my paintings go fast like one in a day but my average must be somewhere near one every ten days or so because I just counted my recent stack and I have done about 40 in the last year or so, all 18”  by 24″ assuming the width comes before the height. I should know these things.

I did one yesterday that crashed on me. I should say “I crashed it”. It was nice, loose, expressive, colorful and fun but the chin looked awkward. I tried carving out the chin and in the process of trying to fix it I killed it. Not just the chin, the whole thing. I spun out of control, chasing bad spots that formerly looked fine until I managed to take the life out of the whole painting. Why would someone do that to their own painting? I set it aside and started another one today and I’m trying to drive carefully this time.

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Long Live Ray Tierney

Ray Tierney III at dedication ceremony in Brighton, NY
Ray Tierney III at dedication ceremony in Brighton, NY

My mom asked us to be over at the twelve corners in Brighton by 4 o’clock for the dedication ceremony to her brother, Ray Tierney Jr.. Ray owned and ran a super market here for many years. My mom and sister were cashiers. My brother Mark and I worked as stock boys. My uncle, who was also my godfather, caught me eating a whole banana cream pie in cooler. Brighton added Ray’s name to a plague in the small park in the middle of the twelve corners. His son, Ray III who is a Brighton politician and grocery store manager at Hegedorn’s gave a short speech and then invited us all down to Grinnell’s for drinks.

Tierney family mid nineteen fifties
Tierney family mid nineteen fifties

Ray III and I were talking about how many cousins we have. It’s over thirty but we gave up trying to count them. Most of them are in this photo. My grandfather, Ray Sr., got the grocery thing going. He and his two brothers had the biggest grocery store in Rochester back in the thirties long before the Wegmans took over.

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Cumbia y Arroz y Frijoles

Juan and Maria's Empanada Shop
Juan and Maria’s Empanada Shop

We met Anne Havens at Gallery 354 this morning and had a private tour of her show,”
Desultory. Peggi took a few movies of the work and I took some still shots on a tripod. The show looked beautiful in the morning light.

We went across the street to the Public Market for lunch and found a comfortable turquoise table in the sun at Juan and Maria’s Empanada Shop. Cumbia music was playing and we felt like we were vacation. I guess we were. Juan gave us a “Vistas Hermosas” calendar for 2009.

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Sandwich De Oliva

Olive Salad Sandwich
Olive Salad Sandwich

We don’t usually have lunch. We usually just grab something from the kitchen and return to our desks where we eat whatever it was that we grabbed. It could be toast with peanut butter or an apple or leftovers. We’ve been helping John Gilmore with a project lately and he comes over a few times a week. He has gotten in the habit of stopping by Rubino’s on his way here so he shows up with olive salad, bread and Italian pastries. That makes a good lunch.

Last visit though, he came from Wegmans with a loaf of their fresh baked Tuscan bread (brushed with oil and herbs) and olives from their Mediterranean Olive Bar. John’s mixture included onionsand olives stuffed with almonds, blue cheese and peppers. I made three olive sandwiches (as shown) and gobbled them down. There was enough left for a midnight snack and more tomorrow.

Palermo’s on Culver still has the best olives but this sandwich is sensational.

And this just in from the desk of Martin Edic:
There is a new company offering bus service from Eastview mall to NYC (Penn Station), $9.00 each way starting Dec 4. They go to Toronto too for $10.

Sounds too good to be true. I’m ready to book.

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Go Phillies!

Hank Aaron and Eddie Mathews of the Milwaukee Braves
Hank Aaron and Eddie Mathews of the Milwaukee Braves

I want one of those red hats with the “P” on front and the pull down flaps for your ears. A couple of the guys were wearing them in the Phillies dugout last night.

It was warmer in Rochester than it was in Philadelphia. And it wasn’t raining here. We got a fire going and Peggi made popcorn. We sat down to watch the Phillies clean Tampa Bay’s clock and then the weather got in the way. The postseason games push the season to almost November now and it seems way too cold to play baseball but I did notice a few local games going on under the lights at Cobbs Hill on Friday night so maybe it’s just me.

It seemed like the Phillies always finished near the bottom when I was kid so it has been a lot of fun to root for them this year. I always liked the National League better and the Milwaukee Braves were my favorite team back then. Eddie Mathews was my favorite player because he played third base like me. Hank Aaron was the best player on the team and he was in the stadium last night giving an award to someone. The game got so spaced out in the rain that that they called it. I just checked the weather in Philadelphia and there is a 100 per cent chance of rain. You never know, though.

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Popwars Endorsement

Obama
Obama campaign poster 2008

I always wondered who got polled and now I know. Me. I just got off the phone with someone who polled me on who I was likely to vote for. They wanted to know my opinion, from “Very Favorable” to “Very Unfavorable”, of John McCain. That was easy. It is one week to the election so here is the official Popwars endorsement.

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Thank You Clarencee

Our house being built in 1948
Our house being built in 1948

Clarence Meyer came to visit this morning. He planned on coming last week but he had some sort of issue with his heart and spent the weekend in the hospital in Columbus, Ohio. Clarence rode up here with his daughter and son-in-law and they pulled into our neighbor, Leo’s, driveway. Clarence will be 97 in a few weeks and he and Leo were neighbor’s from the forties to the eighties. Clarence lived in our house. He built our house in fact.

We had me him once before but were really excited to see him. We watched as he walked up our driveway and we went out to meet him. First thing he said was,”the house looks good”. Leo must have told him that we painted it this summer because it is pretty much the same color. And then he asked, “What’s going on with this area?, as he pointed to our pile of blue stone near the front door. We explained that that was our next project.

Inside we showed him what we had done since the last time he was here and he showed us some pictures he took when he was building the house. Peggi ran in the other room and scanned them. Clarence told us he made the floors with trees from our property and he pointed to some of the trees that he planted. And he said he and his wife pushed the architect, Don Hershey, to put a cathedral ceiling in the living room. Clarence even liked my paintings. Most peope look at them and turn away. Clarenece looked at the dark Crimestopper paintings on the way and said, “I really like your work”. Clarence is our hero.

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Desultory

Ann Havens Show Grace 2008
Ann Havens Show Grace 2008

Anne Havens has a show of new work at #354 in the Hungerford Building on Main Street. We got to the opening at the tail end last night and I really wanted to see the show before getting bogged down in conversation so I walked briskly to the back room and studied “Grace” as it wiggled to the evening’s vibe. Anne is one of my favorite artists and this show is sensational, as in exciting for all the senses. There is movement, lights, reflections and sound in the work.

Back out in the main room I poured a glass of red wine and grabbed a fig while talking to Anne. I fumbled the fig and then dropped the wine on the floor. Anne gave me a rag to mop up the mess. Anne’s husband, Stuart Davis, tried to make me feel better by telling me how he gestured with his arm at another opening and knocked a sculpture on the floor. And then today I read how Steve Winn, the Los Vegas casino czar, was showing Picasso’s “The Dream” to a prospective buyer for $139 million when he accidentally slammed his elbow though the painting. So now I feel a little better.

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Suburban Propane

Chucky Cheese's in Rochester, NY
Chucky Cheese’s in Rochester, NY

Today started with another robo call from “John at NSBA”. Most of the calls we get on our business line these days come from India and I hang up as soon as I hear the accent but John has a good old fashioned American studio voice. I have never listened to his prerecorded rap but we get this call at 9 o’clock most mornings.

After work we joined Bill and Geri out at Chuckie Cheese’s where they were celebrating their son, Sam’s birthday. Sam was wearing his Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup t-shirt for the occasion. This place is insane and that’s why kids love it. It is a sensory onslaught and the really young kids just run around like maniacs. Older kids pump tokens into the games and machines and the parents sit at tables and overeat. On the way out we overheard the hostess apologizing to the mother of an obese kid for the other kids roughhousing. We watched her give the kid a complimentary bag of blue cotton candy.

We followed a van home that had had a logo Suburban Propane on it. I was thinking that would be a good name for your band.

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