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What The Hell Is Goin’ On Here

I brought my laptop to Jerome’s over on Atlantic Avenue but can’t find a wireless signal here. I’m sitting in the waiting room reading old Newsweeks while they put new brakes on our car. They are the best car shop in town. I used to just walk home while they worked on our car but we moved out of the neighborhood. Alan, who retired a while back but still checks in, is smoking at the desk. It smells fantastic. I miss small does of secondhand smaoke. Alan talks to himself these days. I find myself doing that more too as I get older. Igor, a mechanic who has been here for years, has his own stable of Russian customers. One couple just stopped in to pick up their car and they looked like something right out of Diane Arbus photo.

I drove by Sparky‘s house on way here. His lawn needs mowing. I used to do that when I lived over here. Maybe I’ll check in on him on my way home. He stops by our new place often and keeps us up to date with our old neighbors. Some of the people who lived on our street when we first moved into this neighborhood are still here but just barely. Their spouses have died and now they are struggling to stay in their homes.

Elite Bakery used to be next door to Jerome’s but it’s gone and Leo’s Bakery is too. They merged and moved out to East Rochester. PCI Studios used to be right next door. They started as a chemical company but morphed into a recording studio somehow. We recorded a version of “Love Never Thinks” and Rich Stim’s “So Hard” in there back in the eighties. The windows are all boarded shut now.

Alan keeps mumbling, “What the hell is goin’ on here”.

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Pill Popping

Freddy Sue Bridge in Rochester New York
Freddy Sue Bridge in Rochester New York

Although a dying downtown does have it’s advantages, like easy parking and relatively cheap loft space, it is still sort of sad. One bright spot is the new Frederick Douglas Susan B. Anthony Memorial Bridge. I heard Frank DeBlase call it the “Freddy Sue” which illustrates how crazy the real name is.

We checked out Gato Barbieri yesterday at Paetec Park. There are so many tenor sax players in the world and yet no one else sounds like Gato? He’s still got it. Peggi came home and put on a few of his digital files. I guess he is almost blind so he probably didn’t even notice how few people were there. We hung around by the fence near the admissions gate instead of paying to get in. We did that once at the old baseball stadium when the Dead were playing. They had a huge crowd hanging around for them. There was only one other couple outside listening to Gato yesterday. I talked to Brad Fox on the phone yesterday and he reminded me that we named one of our cats after Gato. I didn’t tell him that Gato is cat in Spanish.

We ran into Laurie Barnum who works for the city. She said she brought an ibuprofen to Mark Iacona, one of the concert promoters, when he was back stage with Gato. She opened her pill container and Gato grabbed one of the pils, popped it and then asked what it was. She told him and he said, “Good, I could use one of those.”

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You Think We Would Have Had Enough

Cyro Baptista on the street at the Rochester International Jazz Festival
Cyro Baptista on the street at the Rochester International Jazz Festival

We ran into my brother, Fran, and then Cyro Baptista on the street just after Cyro’s show at Montage. We were knocked out by the way this woman exhaled her cigarette smoke. It seems every time Cyro Baptista steps out of the house he is peforming with a new band under a new name. He has played with everyone from Paul Simon to Yo Yo Ma. Supergenerous featured Canadian guitarist Kevin Breit and Cyro with a new bass player. We were excited to see them because Cyro’s performance with Beat The Donkey in this same club (Montage) a few years back was sensational. This time around the band barely gelled. 

Carolyn Wonderland played the night before at Montage and we heard a few rave reviews from friends who caught her so we made a point to check her out when played for free on the street tonight. She was surrounded by the Headhunter’s trappings but all eyes were on her. She is cute and tough at the same time and an incredible guitarist with a great voice. What else is there? She plays without a pick and sings like Janis Joplin. If she is not already huge, she should be.

We walked down East Avenue to the Alexander Street stage to check out the scene and Medeski, Martin and Wood. They were pretty good but nothing to write home about. Wait, we are home, I almost forgot. We have seen and heard so many amazing groups in the last week, our heads are spinning. We stood in line for Catherine Russell but couldn’t get in. We talked to Tom Kohn, Frank DeBlase and Julia Fiqueres outside of Kilbourn while a fight broke out across the street. Frank said, Now it’s a real festival”. Julia had just interviewed Catherine Russell for WXXI’s Sound Stage. Now it’s over until next year. You’d think we would have had enough but we’re thinking of riding our bikes over to the soccer stadium hear Gato Barbieri open for The Roots this afternoon.

I’ve added my last batch of photos from this year’s Jazz Fest here. Click on 2008 Club Pass.

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Tom Waits Translates

Billy's Band performing at the 2008 Rochester International Jazz Festival
Billy’s Band performing at the 2008 Rochester International Jazz Festival

We were in line early for Billy’s Band at Max’s. Someone came by offering Chap Stick courtesy of Toyota and then free Vitamin water. It said “no sodium” but it tasted salty. Must have been the “natural flavoring”.

Billy’s Band looked like a bunch of hobos. In fact they were hard to photograph because they all huddled in circle like bums around a barrel of burning trash. The Saint Petersburg quartet sounded like Tom Waits but they sang Russian. Most of the material was Tom Waits’ too. Tom Waits is good so Billy’s Band was good. The guitar player looked like Abbie Hoffman or a miniature Armand Schaubroeck from the House of Guitars. The bass player worked the room with his broken English and they were very entertaining.

I’ve added some more photos from the Jazz Fest here. Click on 2008 Club Pass.

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Whistle While You Work

Blake Tartare performing at the 2008 Rochester International Jazz Festival
Blake Tartare performing at the 2008 Rochester International Jazz Festival

The callous on the crouch of my left hand between my thumb and forefinger is starting to flake off. I haven’t painted or held my pallet in tat hand in a week. I did install the new Firefox browser and spent way too much time playing with the add-ons.

We didn’t find time yesterday to read the lineup for the Jazz Fest until we were in our seats at Kilbourn waiting for Joe Locke to start. The notes in the program guide said “Blake Tartare’s repertoire included works by Charles Mingus and Sun Ra” so we decided to leave and head over to Montage. Blake Tartare was loose, freewheeling and sensational like a wedding band after a break in the parking lot. They did a song from Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s “Rip, Rig & Panic” that lasted a half hour or so and they received a standing ovation. We made plans to come back for the second show.

Is there such a thing as punk jazz? If so these guys hold the crown. Not to imply any lack of musical ability, just to emphasize their wild streak. Michael Blake is the leader but he called a song, a cover of a Curtis Mayfield tune, which led to a few minutes of discussion amongst the band and then the decision to launch into a different song. Blake lives in New York and the other three live in Copenhagen. I can’t imagine how they pull this off. They did an encore of the Slickers’ “Johnny Too Bad” complete with an audience sing-a-long but that wasn’t enough. They stayed on stage and improvised a whistling (the piano player is playing the beer bottle) song with percussion that brought the house down again. They were the most exciting group of the festival so far.

I’ve added some more photos from the Jazz Fest here. Click on 2008 Club Pass.

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We R Lucky

David Murray performing at the 2008 Rochester International Jazz Festival. David Murray's piano player and drummer before the show at Kilbourn Hall in Rochester.
David Murray performing at the 2008 Rochester International Jazz Festival. David Murray’s piano player and drummer before the show at Kilbourn Hall in Rochester..

This Jazz Festival thing is taking over my blog. What else is there? I took our car in for an oil change and found out it was a few months past due on inspection. I talked my father through downloading a new driver for his Canon printer. And I helped our neighbor, Jared, straighten out some heavy metal forks for his tractor. At first he had me bang on them with a big hammer but that was going nowhere. So he suggested that I take them out in the yard where we laid them on a tree stump. I took a big sledge hammer to the two bent parts. Jerod pointed to the spot he wanted me to hit and I swung away. I only hit the target about fifty percent of the time so it  got worse a few times before it got better. I don’t think I did any 4D work today.

The line for David Murray was already halfway down Barrett Alley at 5:15. Murray’s bass player, Jaribu Shahid, is also the new bass with the Art Ensemble of Chicago. He started a song called “Banished”, from the documentary of the same name, with a beautiful bowed intro. Murray switched to bass clarinet and the drummer played mallets. It was the stand out tune of the night. We tried to add the movie to our NetFlix queue but it has not been released yet.

We caught a few songs by the Jae Sinnett Quartet at Christ Church and Jae reminded us how lucky we are in Rochester to have jazz at our Jazz Fest. He said, “Compare yourselves to fifty other major cities and look at the line-up of their jazz festivals”. Here we were worried that the promoters were bringing in too many mainstream music acts. I guess we’re doing better than we knew. Thank John Nugent when you see him darting around.

I’ve added some more photos from the Jazz Fest here. Click on 2008 Club Pass.

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New Electric Chair

We spent the morning out at Monroe Wheelchair looking at chairs that take you from a reclining Lazy Boy position to almost upright in less than a minute. We bought the floor model for Peggi’s mom and the guy gave us a good deal on it. We expected the blue green color to be a problem but Peggi’s mom likes it so far.

Wildbird & Peacedrums performing at the 2008 Rochester International Jazz Festival
Wildbird & Peacedrums performing at the 2008 Rochester International Jazz Festival

JazzFest Day 5: We passed John Nugent on the way into the Lutheran Church for Sweden’s Wildbird & Peacedrums last night. He said, “You won’t be disappointed. This is my favorite act of the whole festival”. They were pretty sensational. Mostly voice and drums, they managed to sound like they were playing folk songs from an undiscovered tribe. I have a recording of prison tunes from down south where the songs are all voice with foot stomping, banging or hand clapping accompaniment. Wildbird & Peacedrums kept reminding me of those blues based tunes but in this case they removed the swing like only the Europeans can. Vocalist Mariam Wallentin sang mostly in English, I think. But I could only catch phrases and imagine what she might be singing about. I really liked this aspect.

Doctor Lonnie Smith made a triumphant return to RIJF with two sets in the tent. He is from Buffalo and he used to play sock hops in this area way back in the day so he is a thoroughly seasoned entertainer. He did impressions of Stevie Wonder of Johnnie Mathis. He smiled a lot. He got down on his knees and crawled under his Aztec organ to do a bass solo on the foot pedals. The band got all revved up and muscular but I liked it when they got slow and groovy.

I’ve added some more photos from the Jazz Fest here. Click on 2008 Club Pass.

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You Tell Me

Dave Liebman Quartet performing at the 2008 Rochester International Jazz Festival
Dave Liebman Quartet performing at the 2008 Rochester International Jazz Festival

The Dave Liebman Quartet was last here for the 2003 version of the Rochester International Jazz Festival. He tore it up then so we prepared ourselves for takeoff last night. We grabbed a table down front at Montage and sat with Rick and Monica. We ordered a Brooklyn Lager (one of the sponsors of the show) and the waitress asked for the cash up front. She explained that she had to buy the beer from the bartender. This club is on its last legs and I suspect they are already out of business. They still had the “STEEL” sign up on the wall from the days when they went metal and the barricade to keep the meatheads from diving on the stage.

The set was exhilarating. Dave is in complete command and he gets there every time. The group has been together for years and they play like a real band. They listen to and work with each other like pros. They did a tune from their new cd that was the slinkiest, low down, film noir track I have ever heard. Dave started it with a little wooden flute and he switched to soprano sax while the bass player strolled through some dark, swinging neighborhoods.

At the end of his set he told he crowd, “OK. You go see the rest of the bands. And you tell me.” Martin Edic had just chided us for darting around. He said, “You can’t just pop in for one or two songs and decide whether you like someone or not”. So we looked at each other and decided to just stay right here for the second set. It was equally good if that is possible. Dave did a song dedicated to an African pop singer who he heard everywhere while traveling to the Sahara for his sixtieth birthday. He played percussion in the intro and then some wildly exotic tenor. You rule Dave!

I’ve some more photos from the Jazz Fest here.

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Transportation Please

Crowd on Gibbs Street at the Rochester Internation Jazz Fest

The tabla player, Badal Roy, who was featured in the program as the key player in Dharma Jazz was a no show last night at Max’s. Dan Johnson sat in and did a pretty good job but he was filling some big shoes. The keyboardist, who did most of the talking, said this band is a collective but he acted like it was all his. He did have a better sense of rhythm than the two percussionists.

We hung around Gibbs Street, renamed “Jazz Street” for the week, until Kamakazie Jazz started. We skipped John Scofield at Kilbourn but kept our ears open for reviews from people who had seen the first show. Kathy Palokoff said she had “never seen a band that old playing rock and roll” and in this morning’s paper Jeff Spevak said “With John Scofield the Jazz Festival really felt like jazz”.

We stopped into RoCo where pieces continue to sell in the 6×6 show. There are over a thousand red dots on the wall now. And then we went next store to Christ Church for Yggdrasil who transported us to a Nordic seashore with a beautiful forty five minute piece.

I posted a bunch of photos from the jazz fest on the Refrigerator. You can get to this years batch by clicking on the 2008 Club Pass.

I kept thinking about the feature on Marlene Dumas in the Sunday Magazine Section of the NYTs. There is a major retrospective of her work opening at the LA County Museum next month and that show moves to MOMA in December. I know where I’ll be.

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Rock Stars of Jazz

Stephanie McKay performing at the 2008 Rochester International Jazz Festival
Stephanie McKay performing at the 2008 Rochester International Jazz Festival

We started the night in line with Peter and Nancy for the Bad Plus at Kilbourn Hall. The Bad Plus are the rock stars of jazz, adored by their fans and the individual players seem to each have their own fan base, especially the drummer, David King. The bass player in the middle holds the wildly divergent classically tinged piano player on the left and the raucous angular drummer on the right at bay while tying it all together. But the three of them became a competent back up band for Wendy Lewis when she took the stage to sing beautiful versions of new standards by Nirvana, Pink Floyd, the Bee Gees, Bobby Vinton, U2 and Heart. This was their first gig with her, a preview of their upcoming cd.

We finished the night standing near Peter and Nancy, this time at the newly remodeled High Fidelity (they took the Labatts beer signs down). We thoroughly enjoyed Stephanie McKay, “Soul Sister Number One”. Her sincere, heartfelt songs deserved a real band, not the hot dogs (five string bass, one handed rolls with a goofy smile) she appeared with. She has one cd out in England and another on the way here. She took the stage like Sly Stone and came out in the crowd to dance and invited people back up on stage with her. She is a great entertainer.

On a tech note: A few days ago I was looking for a script that allow me to add rss feeds to a site and have them scroll. Dynamic Drive offered one and they had a live example that was pulling in current tech related feeds. One of the heads caught my eye. It was something about WordPress sites getting hacked. I followed the link and it had a few tips about settings that I was already using so I moved on. But when I checked in on my blog this morning I was alarmed by the fact that my recent posting were missing. I thought maybe it had been hacked so looked for articles but couldn’t find any. I suspected the server so I called the guy who rents the space from the guy who rents the space from the guy who owns the server in Las Vegas. Sure enough it was down yesterday and they installed a new drive and restored the sites with backups that were two days old. I back up my blog but in that space between backups it is worth noting that the only copy of this stuff is online. Unless you are in the habit of coping the entries to a text document before posting. I sometimes do this and so I found one the deleted entries there. I found the other entry in a Google cached version of that page. This was just two days ago and Google had a cached version of an entry that had gone down with an old server hard drive. Welcome to the modern world.

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Never Rehearse

Timo Lassy Band performing at the 2008 Rochester International Jazz Festival
Timo Lassy Band performing at the 2008 Rochester International Jazz Festival

Helsinki must be a swinging city. I know I liked the section of Jim Jarmusch’s “Night On Earth” featuring that city the best. And Helsinki’s Timo Lassy Band at the Lutheran Church for the opening night of Rochester’s Jazz Fest was hot. They play jazz like it was played in America in the fifties and sixties and they manage to make it sound exciting and new. This is the third time we have seen Timo Lassy at the Jazz Fest and each time it was in a slightly different setting. Last night he switched from tenor to baritone for an afro centric, Pharoah Sanders like thing where the drummer played mallets and the percussion player dug a deep groove.

We started the night with the Al Foster Quartet. Al played drums on two of my favorite Miles albums, “Get Up With It” and “On The Corner”. We saw him a few years back at Art Park in Buffalo with Joe Henderson and we stopped in to see Sonny Rollins at the Eastman during the 2005 Jazz Fest to hear him play behind Sonny. He is loose with a master’s touch. Al started one song playing with his hands and liked to play the rim of his floor tom with the side of a stick. The band stayed in check and were the perfect foil for Al who took off at a moments notice but always returned with a soft landing.

We stopped in the Harro to see Ben Riley’s Monk Legacy. Riley played on some of Monk’s best work and still had the goods but the four horn players in the front line were too chart oriented for our tastes. There was a great quote in Frank DeBlase’s interview with Ben Riley where he talked about rehearsals with Monk. “We never rehearsed. If you rehearse you start playing things you know, and you don’t put anything creative in it.” The sound in this room though is problematic at best.

We finished the night in the Big Tent with the Spam All Stars while it poured outside. It was a new tent this year. No leaks and no poles to obstruct our view. A guy with a really short haircut stood behind two turntables and a sound generator of some sort kicking out contemporary bass and drum loops while three horn players and timbale player played along. The horns lines were kind of exotic and worldly. But having just seen two of the best drummers in the world the rhythmn section seemed pretty lame.

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I Mow The Lawn

Pete LaBonne, along with Bruce Eaton, released a 45 with their Buffalo group, “The Party Nuggets”. It was called “I Mow The Lawn” and it was pretty close to the Staple Singers’ tune “I’ll Take You There”. I start singing it every time I fire up the lawn mower. Yesterday was one of those days.

We were supposed to be at Peter Pappas’s for a pre Jazz Fest party at 7 and I got a late start and so I mowed while walking really fast which reminded me of the job I had in Bloomington mowing the lawns of University owned houses. There were about a hundred of these houses all over town. Caroline Peyton from the Screaming Gypsy Bandits who went on to do the voice for many of Disney’s animated cartoons (Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Pocahontas, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame) lived in one of the houses that I mowed. And I think her roommate at the time was Andrea from Angel Corpus Christi. I would stop and chat with Caroline but my main objective was mowing my lawns as fast as I could, hiding the mower in someone’s bushes and then riding my bike back to the trailer I lived in to hang out for the rest of the day. Then around four I would have to ride back into town to punch out.

My boss had mouth cancer but he continued to smoke Lucky Strikes. He had open sores on the side of his face. It was my first glimpse of cancer. I remember a woman opening a window and giving me six pairs of grey socks. She said her husband had recently died and I looked like I could use them. It was a little creepy the first time I put them on but I got over that. Near the end of the summer one of the other mowers told me that the boss was spending some time driving around looking for me. So I made a point to hang around and let him see me. I remember smiling and waving when he drove by.

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Give The Bass Player Some

Ken Frank on bass
Ken Frank on bass

We had our second Margaret Explosion rehearsal last night in preparation for this upcoming WXXI Sound Stage thing. I am beginning to see way we never rehearse. It gets complicated. Trying to play a song better than it was the first time is next to impossible but if you’re gonna try you need to discuss a few things. We started with a few nice jams and then played our set. Since we generally arrange songs as we play them we found ourselves offering opinions as to what would make these prearranged songs better. It would help if I could play better, I know that. The band works like magic and if you know the trick, its not magic. It’s a delicate thing. I was really happy when rehearsal was over.

Today I kept thinking how lucky I am to play with such amazing musicians. Peggi tosses off creative, original melodies as naturally as she smiles. Bob has a world of sounds and at his fingertips and the musical ability to express any emotion. Ken is the best bass player in the world. Rock solid when he wants to be yet as wild, inventive and musically adventurous as anyone I’ve met.

The Poet ((Chuck Cuminale) from the "Community Icons" series by Paul Dodd. Acrylic house paint on billboard paper, 54" wide by "60" high, 1989
The Poet ((Chuck Cuminale) from the “Community Icons” series by Paul Dodd. Acrylic house paint on billboard paper, 54″ wide by “60” high, 1989. Ken Frank is shown in silhouette.

I guess the first time we met Ken was when our bands played together at Scorgies. He was in 5 Star Buffalo and I was in Personal Effects. They blew us away. Ken wound up in Colorblind James after Bernie Heveron (former Personal Effects bass player) left and I painted Ken behind Chuck when I did my “Local Icons” series in the eighties.

I checked in on a few of my favorite blogs today and found a great interview with Angel Corpus Christi by the Next Big Thing. Lloyd Mintern used a live Margaret Explosion track as a backing track to a video of his photos. Frank Paolo described his cancer diagnosis and Kevin Patrick started a column on Alan Vega that found its way to local dinosaur rock station, WCMF, Roger McCall’s murder and even mentioned a band we were in a long time ago. The links in the right column should take you there.

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Stopping The Crimestoppers

Crimestoppers from Democrat & Chronicle in Rochester, NY
Crimestoppers from Democrat & Chronicle in Rochester, NY

I had my last painting class at the Creative Workshop last night, that is my last until we go around again in the Fall. “Going around” is not really it at though. Fred Lipp conducts a class with no end. Every class, like every painting, is another beginning. I can only hope to not repeat my bad habits and move forward incrementally. No matter how many of his classes I take or how far I come, there is always a new host of problems to contend with. It will always be a daunting challenge and Fred is always there to help. I’m trying to recommend his class to anyone who is serious about improving their work. He is an incredible resource.

I was thinking I might take a break from the crime faces but then in this morning’s paper there is a whole new batch.

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Cliente Número Uno

It’s 4 PM and I still have my pajamas on. Some days go like this when you work at home. We weren’t even finished with our slim local paper this morning when when the phone started ringing. First it was the physical therapist who was supposed to be attending to Peggi’s mom. Peggi’s mom told her that she didn’t want pt so Peggi had to call her mom and do some tough love. Next call was on the business line and it was cliente número uno with immediate demands. I duked it out with the graph making function Illustrator while Peggi battled tables in Quark. And we still haven’t come up for air.

I will have to get dressed to go to my last painting class tonight. Peggi is stuck here doing rush changes to a 48 page book that needs to be sent off as a pdf for review. Nice, boring blog entry. What could anyone possibly comment on?

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Getting Our Digital House In Order

Bird In A Nest
Bird In A Nest

I spent some time adding gadgets to our iGoggle home page this morning. We took a break at noon and went down to the street pool. The air temp is in the nineties and the water was 78. Peggi checked the chlorine levels and the ph. We swam for a bit and came back to work.

I finished converting a stack of Sun Ra cds over the weekend and that completes the big rip. I tidied up the duplicates folder and made a backup. Big time Party Shuffle tonight!

Still don’t have a cell phone but we could use one now. A client is desperately trying to reach Peggi and she is with her Mom at a pain clinic. I see Apple’s new phone is twice as powerful and half the price of their last one.

I’ve been following Kevin Patrick’s, “So Many Records, So Little Time” for the last few weeks and I’ve put a link in the right hand column. It is a pop aficionado’s paradise and timely too. According to the Recording Industry Association of America, shipments of LPs jumped more than 36 percent last year while shipments of cds dropped more than 17 percent during the same period.

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Red Dots

Lorraine Bohonos paintings at 6x6 Show at RoCo
Lorraine Bohonos paintings at 6×6 Show at RoCo

We got to the opening of RoCo’s 6 by 6 Show too late to buy a Lorraine Bohonos painting. They all had red dots on the them by the time we got there. All the work in this show is six inches by six inches and it is all for sale at twenty bucks a piece. There were over three thousand pieces in the show, some by big name artists and it was all displayed annonymously. RoCo keeps the money and they made some, judging by the number of red dots. We wandered around for hours and kept finding things to buy. I’m happy the show was such a success for them. We finished the night over at Abiene where I managed to beat Bill Jones in 8 Ball.

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I’m Not There

I fought to find some time to paint today. There are so many things that need to be attended to around the house. It was ninety something out there but it was cool in the basement. I have a few paintings that I did in the last year that I am just not happy with. I identified what it is that I don’t like about them and I’m tackling those issues. I have this guy that I’ve been calling “the PR guy” whose nose was in the wrong place. And once I moved it I realized the mouth was in the wrong place too. So it was today’s project. I looked for the original source for about twenty minutes (the small photo from the Crimestoppers page of the paper) but couldn’t find it. So I tried correcting the painting by looking at only it. I fixed it alright but he doesn’t look Puerto Rican anymore.

Painting without the source made me realize that Fred (my painting teacher) hardly ever asks me to see the source when he determines what is wrong a painting of mine or when he assesses whether or not it is done. So if he doesn’t need the source, why should I?

Before heading down to the basement I asked iTunes to “Show Duplicates” and it had over two thousand. Of course if they were all duplicates that would mean something closer to one thousand. But what they are mostly is different artists doing the same song. All I had to do was look at the title of Dylan’s “I’m Not There” and it was stuck in my head. I found a Sun Ra version of “I Could Have Danced All Night” and I gave it five stars.

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Iconic Lyell Ave.

This over the top letter was in this morning’s mail.
Dear Frige,
I used to live in Rochester and was trying to find out if Tent City was still in business. (I bought a tent there once and it was great, dirt cheap and lasted for ages.) I found your Lyell Ave feature and just wanted to tell whoever took the photos that your images are very good.
You have a real knack for composition, colour, form and irony. I couldn’t find any credits for these images on the site but I wouldn’t mind having a chat with whoever this photographer is. Really, your photos are artworks and you should be having gallery shows of them. They should be published in great big expensive glossy books about Rochester. They probably already are and you ought to credit your work and protect it. Then you should buy the best camera invented to humanity and travel the world making images for National Geographic and Magnum and live like royalty on your commissions. Just thought I’d tell you, your work is wonderful. In a single feature you’ve raised Lyell Ave (!!) to the level of Iconic.
Thanks. Best Regards, Meg, London, UK

It reminded me that I promised to photograph another one of Rochester’s streets this summer for the “Streets of Rochester” section on the The Refrigerator. I haven’t decided which street to do yet. If anyone has any suggestions, send them along. I’ve been spending a lot of time on East Ridge Road and it has potential but it is a pretty hostle place for bicycles.

It’s funny how many people think refrigerator is spelled with a “d” and funnier that its abbreviation, “fridge” has a “d’. And this Meg person misspelled that.

I bought a Remmington hair trimmer so I could cut my hair without bugging Peggi to get the back. I chose the fitting that looked like it would cut my hair about a half inch long. I thought I could do the whole thing in minutes but it took me about a half hour. The damn thing just wouldn’t cut. If I can find the receipt, I’m going to take it back.

Peggi’s mom called while I was cutting my hair. She wondered if she gave us the the tickets for La Bohéme tonight. We looked around and couldn’t find them so Peggi called Mercury Opera to make arrangements for getting in without tickets. Then Peggi’s mom called back to sat she found them.

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You Can Not Reheat A Souffle

We had a Margaret Explosion rehearsal last night, our first in ten years as a band. WXXI called to say they needed a set list with the times of the songs that we plan on doing on our upcoming segment of their “Sound Stage” series. This series of one hour shows featuring local bands is being paid for with money from Elliot Spitzer’s successful payola lawsuit.

I told Todd, the program manager who called, that we don’t have have set times. We improvise. I didn’t have the guts to tell him we really didn’t even have songs. He pushed on. They need a set list next week and a cd of the songs we plan to do.

We decided to open with a jam so the first song will be called “Improvisation” and then we picked six or seven things we do quite often. They’re things that were originally a jam and we stuck a name on them and try to revisit the theme. But we really have never done a version of a song that was as good as it was the first time.

And that reminds me of that old Paul McCartney quote about getting the Beatles back together. “You can not reheat a souffle”.

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