I love the Blindfold Test that DownBeat gives a musician in each issue. Listening with with an open mind, no cover image, liner notes or baggage, can be exhilarating. That’s why I like “iTunes DJ” shuffle mode so much. Knowing what song is going to come up in what order takes all the fun out listening. I’m always running to my computer to find out what it was I just heard come out of there.
I was working at my computer with the iTunes DJ at work in the background when Peggi came in to ask who the last song was by. I was kind of surprised because it was her on sax with Margaret Explosion doing “Sargasso Creek.”
Duane sent us this link to his newest video, one he did for “Juggler” from Margaret Explosion’s latest 45. He takes the the light side of the single and goes dark on us, enriching the music twofold. It’s a total knockout.
We finished Netflix Season 3 of “Breaking Bad” last night and spent some time today with extras at the iTunes store. In that spirit I posted some of Duane’s comments on the making of “Juggler” below.
“The camera is shooting 10 sec clips and turning them into 40 sec slo-mo’s internally. So those little swaying camera moves were actually happening fast. And those swinging planes that sailed by within inches of the camera were really going fast. On another take, I jumped back suddenly, thinking I was about to get hit. Shot at Coney Island till they closed. Back home I came to the shot of the swinging chairs and immediately decided that shot was the opening w/o even seeing the rest. It dictated the whole feel & path. The machines are juggling people. The life we lead juggles us, we learn to be juggled by it from childhood onward. It all fit. I started seeing it all this way and it basically assembled itself. I made a choice not to ride any of the rides, to keep the point of view objective vs subjective. But I’m dying to go back at nite & just ride the rides.”
So Many Records posted a single from Rochester’s Dick Storms this week, a sensational Velvet Underground & Nico song. Not all 45 are hit bound. The format is a medium unto itself.
Peggi and I finished printing the second color (black) of our 45 sleeve last weekend. We had to do the second color in two passes because we didn’t have enough wooden letters to do “Margaret Explosion” twice. In fact we didn’t have any wooden letters at all until Bill Jones cut them for us on his type making machine. We ordered 100 pre-scored and die cut 45 sleeves, flat and pre-folded or glued, from Stumptown printers in Portland and Geri McCormick, a member of the Printing & Books Arts Center here, coached us through the press run on their Vandercook letterpress. Tom Kohn from the Bop Shop insisted that we hand number the edition so we did that as well.
Both songs were recorded live at the Little Theater Café last November. Jack Schaefer had joined us on bass clarinet for the second set “Juggle” was the last song of the night. We got an encore and that became “Purple Heart.” Jack is joining us on Wednesday at the Little for an old fashioned record release party so stop by and pick up a single. It includes free digital downloads of the songs.
Margaret Explosion playing at Bug Jar Happy Hour in 1998. Jack Schaefer on guitar, Paul Dodd on drums. Pete LaBonne on bas guitar and Peggi Fournier on soprano sax.
Jack Schaeffer and Pete LaBonne join Margaret Explosion tonight at the Bug Jar. I should say “rejoin” because they were both original members. Jack doesn’t settle for ordinary and Pete doesn’t even know what it is so it promises to be an adventure. The shot above was taken at the Bug Jar about thirteen years ago so it will be a reunion as well.
Invisible Idiot CD “Outta Sight, Outa Mind” (EAR 7) on Earring Records, released 1999
Margaret Explosion poster for Abilene Happy Hour gig
Somehow Margaret Explosion wound up with a long running Friday Happy Hour slot at the Bug Jar. This was back when Casey ran the place and Bug Jar Bob booked the bands and arranged the lighting and Steve Brown took care of the business and grudgingly stood behind the bar on Fridays. Rolling Rocks were a buck a piece and Casey brought in vegetarian Indian food.
Pete LaBonne named the band and played bass. Jack Schaefer played guitar and a parade of people sat in. We called our first cd “Happy Hour” and that vibe is an essential part of our sound. Rick Simpson played a song from that cd on hi WRUR show last night and it struck us how much the band has changed.
In 1998, before the band started one Friday, I took photos of everyone at the Bug Jar on one of those evenings, everyone who would let me take a photo of them that is, and I printed them out for a show of Mug Shots that went up a few weeks later.
Danny Deutsch invited us to play a Happy Hour at 6 tonight and Bob Martin has rounded up a batch of videos to project on the front wall of the upstairs lounge there. The Abilene site says there’s free munchies and there’s no cover. Sounds like fun.
Yellow cherries in the woods with snow, Rochester, New York
I don’t remember this yellow cherry tree from last year. It’s the first thing we saw today as we entered the woods. The skiing was excellent as long as we didn’t stand still. The ground is not quite frozen yet so the snow is sticky down there.
People were talking about sixteen inches but that doesn’t seen possible. We have about five out there now and I just checked the weather – “Occasional lake effect snow showers. Additional accumulation 3 to 5 inches in the most persistent snows…greatest near Lake Ontario and in the eastern suburbs. Lows in the lower 20s. Northwest winds 15 to 25 mph becoming west. Gusts up to 30 mph. Chance of snow near 100 percent.” Didn’t keep Peggi from going to her yoga class.
Did anybody see that article about the State of Kentucky using economic development funds to build a replica of Noah’s ark. It’s kinda down there near the Creation Museum. Separation of church and state issues make it sort of controversial. They’re talking about rebuilding the Tower of Babel down there. I’d like to be there when they speak in tongues. Or how about that article about the neo nazi’s lawyer who has hired a make up artist at $125 a day to cover up his defendant’s tattoos during his capitol punishment trial. “Could be distracting or prejudicial to the jurors.” Is there such a thing as a fair trial? My friend Rich sorts a lot of these issues out for me.
“Far Out Charlie” shot this video of Margaret Explosion last Wednesday. It’s a view from his table and it has even more crowd noise than our recordings. Pete LaBonne plays piano in this video and Jack Schaefer is on guitar. Bob Martin will be back in the guitar chair tonight and James Nichols joins us on piano. Stop out and make some noise. It is an essential part of our sound.
Most of the birds are getting out but the smart ones are hanging around for this beautiful Fall weather. It’s not Indian Summer because we haven’t had a frost but that’s only a technicality because we live so close to the lake.
We were headed home from Peggi’s mom’s apartment with the last load of stuff to get rid of and we head this clanging under the car. I couldn’t even see out the back window because the big, green ,overstuffed, lift chair took up most of our cargo space. We stopped at the bank and I crawled under the car. Our tailpipe had broken off where it meets the muffler so I stopped in Jerome’s to have them take a look at it. They put the car up on the lift with the lift chair inside of the car and reattached the tailpipe. Further up the exhaust chain we noticed the heat shield on the catalytic convertor was falling off. I find these in the road all the time while on my bike but I’ve given up collecting them.
We don’t really have a piano player in our band unless Pete LaBonne is in town. Fred Marshall sat it a couple of weeks ago and he sounded great. Jaffe from the old Colorblind James Experience used to come all the time but we haven’t seen him in months. James Nichols threatened to come last week but didn’t. Maybe he’ll stop by tonight. He always sounds great. There’s no piano in the song below but the Little Theatre Café’s grand piano was sitting right next to us when we recorded the track so if you listen closely you’ll hear it vibrating sympathetically.
SLT Dead Gone Dead cd cover – Watercolor by Paul Dodd
Ken Frank was in “5 Star Buffalo”, one of my favorite bands in the Scorgie’s days. I played with Personal Effects back then and we released a few albums on Earring Records. Colorblind James Experience released their first lp on Earring Records. Ken Frank joined Colorblind in the nineties. Ken plays bass with Margaret Explosion and he never sounded better than he did last night at the Little. His bass amp crapped out so he’s been playing his stand-up bass acoustically and he sounds more melodic and punctual than ever. The overall band volume is lower now and his bass notes have a clarity that gets lost when it’s amplified. It’s subtle but an earful! And subtlety counts for a lot in my book.
But back to Earring Records. They have just released a new recording by SLT called “Gone Dead Gone” and it’s on the other end of the volume spectrum. It’s dedicated to a gone dead old friend, Luke Warm, the one who took to the dj booth at Scorgies to remind the patrons to, “Don’t forget to tip the bartenders for keeping you drunk.” Ken Frank plays bass in this version of SLT along with Phil Marshall and they asked me to supply the cover art, specifically something with a bare light bulb and moths. It sounded like Philip Guston territory to me. Ken co-wrote and produced this rip roaring hard core pop anthem.
Listen to SLT – “I Should Have Been A Guru” on Earring Records.
Wednesday nights at the Little Theatre Café are always interesting but many times it’s the conversation between the hangers-on after Margaret Explosion has finished playing that is the most interesting.
Three CrimeFaces (Rochester mug shots) for Lucy Bryne Show at Creative Workshop in Rochester, NY
For the last six months or so I’ve been painting on paper with water color, opaque water color, kid’s tempera paint to be precise. The Creative Workshop passed out a flyer to announcing a portrait show and students were asked to submit up to three works that were properly mounted and ready to hang. I don’t Know if push pins through the corners of works on paper would qualify and I waited ’til the last minute so I chose three small oils from earlier this year. I snapped a photo of them in my driveway before dropping them off. Rachel, the Workshop director told me they would only have room for two which I took to mean two of your “crime faces”. So I let Rachel pick the two she liked and I took the one on the right back home with me. The show is up now and it looks pretty good.
Stop by the Little Theater Cafe tonight for Margaret Explosion. We’ll be there every Wednesday until the new year.
Spring Valley woods in Durand Eastman Park, Rochester, NY
Margaret Explosion started back at the Little Theater Cafe last night. We’ll be there every Wednesday until the new year so you have some time to see what all the fuss is about. We had a good night and the place was packed. Those two things don’t always go together. Our best song of the evening is usually the first one when there is hardly anyone there. We had emailed people that we were playing all new material which is true but it implies that we worked on new songs when in fact we hadn’t even seen each other all summer except for the two art openings we played. A few people told us how much they liked the new stuff and one even thought we were going in an electronica direction. Jame Nichols sat in on piano in the second set. He said he would have been there earlier but he was teaching a Mexican history class at RIT.
Each night is different and we wouldn’t have it any other way. We perform songs that have not been written or predetermined. We spontaneously compose them and if we try to go back to a song, it never sounds as good as it did the first time. As Paul McCartney once said, “You can’t reheat a soufle”. We are best off going out on a limb every night and that can be intense or it can be mundane.
I’m happy that most people don’t see it for what it is because we are doing our best to make them sound like songs and not jams. As we packed up Peggi was talking to a young kid who who also played sax and an old couple came up to tell Bob and I how much they enjoyed the music. They were such a cute couple I felt like I was looking at a Grant Wood painting and I could hardly digest what they were saying. Before heading to the door the man asked, “Is your music off the cuff?” I was more than happy to fess up.
I’ve will soon be able to cross one of the items on our summer to do list off. Our garage is almost organized. It had become a dumping ground since we moved in. People keep asking us if we’ve seen the Hoarders show. We don’t get cable so we haven’t but I can imagine. I’ve been pushing the limits of our Waste Management pick-up service each week for the last month. I have a pile of old paintings out there including the one above. I’m stripping the old canvases and saving the stretchers.
I’ve been a fan of Peggy Lee since “Lady and the Tramp“. Now that we digitized our music library iTunes calculates it will take months to hear it all but we can’t go an hour in shuffle mode without hearing a Peggy tune. As it should be. So I was ecstatic to see Kevin’s post this morning. We played it three times in a row. Stunning arrangement. Minimal for maximum impact. Please stop reading this and visit “So Many Records” now.
Our old band, Personal Effects, covered “Is That All There Is?” and our new band, Margaret Explosion, covers “Fever” and we don’t do very many covers. Duke Ellington called her “The Queen”.
Peggi and I were watching tv at her parents house in the mid eighties and a Peggy Lee tv special came on. We flipped out and scrambled to get a VHS cassette in the machine. Peggi’s dad said, “Not that old broad?”. Peggy (with a “y”) had already had a stroke and she was having trouble with one side of face but she was god like.
Soon after we visited Peggi’s (with an “i”) sister in LA and asked if she knew where Peggy Lee lived. She had a hunch so we headed up in the Hollywood Hills. We bought a star map and Peggy Lee was not on it. We asked around and had it narrowed down to a particular street in Bel Air. We walked the whole street and looked at every house so I’m sure we saw it.
Painter Jim Mott has updated his blog with posts on the last two stops of the local edition of his “Itinerant Artist” project. We feel very lucky that North Irondequoit was one of those stops. I was happy to read that Peggi’s tapioca made an impression on him. Jim plans to have a show of these local paintings when the tour is over.
Margaret Explosion plays another art opening tonight. This one at the NTID Dyer Arts Center at RIT is for the Arena Art Group and it’s open the the public so stop out. We’ve played here before and like the sound of this room. Here’s a song from the Edith Small opening from a few years back. Phil Marshall plays guitar.
Webster Avenue is our preferred route to downtown so we travel it quite a bit. I read about the mud house that is being built there in City News but I couldn’t find it the first few times we drove by. It’s tucked behind another building, right near Rosedale Terrace where my mother grew up. In City I read that “Superadobes are the brainchild of architect and author Nader Khalili, who taught the technique at Cal-Earth Architecture, a California-based design center he founded in 1986.” This is the first one in New York State. The building seems to be going up under the direction of a church group because two of the people we met when we stopped by are called “Brother” and “Sister” and they didn’t look related by blood. And the worker bees are all city kids. The girl above was taking photos of us while I was taking photos of the giant beehive (and her). Her shirt read, “Before My Boyfriend Comes.” I didn’t ask.
Margaret Explosion plays tonight at RoCo on East Avenue. It’s a benefit for David and Sally’s son Oscar. He has a condition (Spinal Muscular Atrophy) that will seriously compromise his strength for the rest of his life. They’re raffling off an iPad as well. Come on out for a worthwhile event. Details.
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
“And that’s the way I play. I play for the benefit of the band.” — Baby Dodds, New Orleans drummer
This quote is printed in the front of a book of Lee Friedlander photos that I have on loan from the Rochester Public Library. And I love it. Not just because of the guy’s name but because I think Baby Dodds is addressing the nature of the creative act.
Take a simple example. You start a painting with an idea. You make a few marks and already you are committed to constructing an image that is worth looking at. The more interesting the better. Exciting would be nice. It is your duty to follow that up by only adding strokes that strengthen the picture. The original idea was the springboard but that is history. Your focus is now on how you can make this picture communicate more clearly. Step back for second and look at what you have. Fix the clunkers. It may go in a surprising direction. Wouldn’t that be nice? You are playing for the benefit of the band (painting).
Paul Dodd being arrested at an anti war demonstration in Bloomington Indiana
We stopped in Abilene on Monday night to hear Jenna sing with her new old band, Krypton 88. Reconnected with left handed drummer, Dana Gregory, from my high school days and asked Jim Via if he was nervous before going on. He laughed and said he wasn’t.
Jenna and the band sounded great but we had to leave before their set was over in order to catch the PBS show on the My Lai. That doesn’t sound like much, fun does it? I had read an intriguing review of the show in the morning paper. US soldiers under Lt. Caley’s command were interviewed and Vietnamese survivors told their side of the story.
I was so out of it in high school that I chose “Hawk” when asked to write a short essay on whether we were a Hawk or a Dove. It was my junior year and the war was raging. That summer Doug, who had already graduated and gone off to war, showed us a belt of gook’s ears that he proudly wore on the plane on the way home. End of tour senior year Rex’s dad wanted his son to go in the army before college. My mom wrote me at school that Rex had been killed, shot in the back by friendly fire. Tom, who lived down the street from my family, came back on leave and I asked him what he did over there. He said he sat in a helicopter and kicked napalm canisters out without even looking at what or who was was below.
I think Kim took this photo at a demonstration in IU’s Assembly Hall. I got arrested at another anti war demonstration (above), eventually dropped out and was reclassified 1A. I was considering my options when they decided to institute the lottery draft system. I watched them pick my ping pong ball in Kenny Macher and Dave Jolly’s apartment. I think Rich was there too. My number was in the two hundreds.
Later I worked with a guy named Paul who wept when Viet Nam came up and I’ll never forget him describing how they were so scared they shot at anything that moved and one time it turned out to be a bunch of kids. And then John the postman, who used to come see Personal Effects, got his Viet Nam photos out and shot himself in the head.
The PBS show was very well done, as good as Hurtlocker which we watched last night, better in fact because it didn’t try to wrap things up with a hokey scene with a soldier talking to his infant son.
My new Obama health plan covers yearly physicals and I had one yesterday. The timing, so close to a significant birthday, made it feel like a test to see if I can handle the whole thing. So far, so good but the blood tests are still out. We walked up to the park to see if the yellow magnolias had opened and they have. We plan on celebrating tonight at the Little Theater. Peggi ordered a big cake. Stop out if you’d like a piece. Not sure who’s gonna be in the band tonight. It’s been been fun playing with James the piano player. If I’m lucky it will be all new and different for my birthday.
The Rochester Music Hall of Fame has a shindig this weekend and we were asked to do a site for them but we have had a hard time getting around to it. We dove in today and did it live. There’s not much up there but an announcement and a form but it’s a thrill building it while it’s live rather than offline. We just finished doing Buffalo’s PosterArtUSA that way. It’s an Xcart site with credit card authorization, and he got an order within minutes of pulling the secure transaction switch. We’re behind with a few other sites so I won’t link to them.
