I just spent several hours listening to various covers of the Prince song when you were mine: by Prince Live!, and in STUDIO, by Cyndi Lauper, live and in STUDIO, by Lakeshore Drive, by Mitch Reider, by someone named Raisch,, by someone named Katie Gyom, by Har Mar Superstar, by candidates for Palo Alto city Council.
and then I sent this to a bunch of musicians as if I was asking for them to cover it.
apparently Mitch’s version is used in a ski movie called hot dog.
So far (mostly presented by Earthwise) :
Including: DJ Sep, Caroline Davis, Beth Custer, David James, Keith MacArthur, Chris Grady, George Jackson, Rachel Baiman, Rabiah Kabir, Larry Ochs, Sonny Smith, Carmen Staaf, Jenny Scheinmann, Jayla Chee, Maya Kronfeld, Hannah Marks, Paul Cornish, Rachel Sage, Matt Wilson, Josh Thurston Milgrom, Bennett Paster, Will Bernard, Adam Klipple, Adam Levy, Or Baraket, Marta Sanchez, Akira Tana, Peter Barshay, Cien Mil Mangos, Jim Campilongo, Ben Davis, Noah Garabedian, Vinicius Gomes, and Stephan Crump—did I miss anyone?
There’s an article in the local papers that seems to revive an ongoing discussion about Lytton Plaza. The landlords, it could be said, react against the ongoing situation of people with nowhere else to go who congregate here. I too have observed people doing drugs. There was an overdose right in front of the bandstand once. I am deliberately framing this in awkward and crass terms. To me music is general good and not merely a cultural mouthwash.
I’m hoping to sit down with the sources in this article, the ones who hold the power.
Maybe we will work together, or maybe we’ll just bat some ideas back-and-forth.
The First Amendment (still) guarantees our rights of assembly. If someone is doing something obviously illegal at Lytton Plaza, we can intervene.
I would recommend spending $500,000 on programming rather than spending another $500,000 on bricks and mortar. [Note: after I wrote this post, I realized that what triggered the article was a $50,000 gift from a local billionaire to the Friends of the Palo Alto Parks group, and not $500,000].
I’ve donated 50 shows to the plaza in the last five years. I can poll at least 100 or so musicians who can testify about what they think the plaza is or isn’t. Meanwhile, I’ve also registered something like 500 or more attendees via EventBrite.
Earthwise is a private initiative — a sole proprietorship, a business– that showcases public facilities, public plazas and parks, mostly in Palo Alto. I do this because I think it’s important; yet I also get absorbed when the public agenda brushes against values that overlap with my motivation. So I’d love to influence what local leaders do about Lytton Plaza, or 3rd Thursday street fairs on Cali Ave, or music in the parks.
I had two conversations today on this topic. One went very well. The other was frustrating.
I will probably do between four and ten events in Lytton Plaza next spring, summer or fall; and a similar number in the parks. Plus hard-ticket events at Mitchell Park Community Center and Palo Alto Art Center (I put on-sale tickets to see Johnny A at the art center on January 4 — for only $20 – that’s practically free; I’m about to release tickets to see Corey Harris for $20 at the Mitch, a three-show residency, that overlaps with a two-day run of Gary Clark, Jr. at The Guild, for $154. I guess I’m targeting people who like country blues more than electric blues and like a bargain).
BW
CATFISH BLUES CUTTING CONTEST
neo-byzantine revival mogen david by Alfred Alschuler photo by lily finnegan, december 2025
One of the things that I think is true is that you should find what calls to you. It could even be rescuing dogs, but something that is in a positive nature, has to do with kindness, empathy and all the things that they’re trying to erase. Don’t think about whether or not that will affect the bigger scene — because it probably won’t. Probably nothing I do is going to affect it, but I have to do my calling, and the sooner you find your calling, the better it is for you and everybody. It might be something that doesn’t look that important at all, but if it’s positive, and it’s kind and it affects somebody else in a good way, I say, ‘Go for it.’” — Joan Baez, as told to Elise Andrade, April 2025
bw
on Monday, December 15, two thousand twenty five 🙏🏼😉🇮🇱🤛⛄️🎶💯🤝🕺🏿👂🏻🎺👁️
Check your local listings
A good time 🎵 🎸 trumpet 🎺 🪘 🎹
bw
search eventbrite “earthwise” “russian telegraph” $23.36
This one looks bass clef:
bw
WANDERING THE RUSSIAN TELEGRAPH OF MY MIND
Presenting the band Russian Telegraph reminds me of living in North Beach, fresh out of college and the optimism I had, which was tempered by the realities of a big world that is largely indifferent to us. But I have distinct memories of climbing the Vallejo Steps, peaking at the apex and then descending down towards a cup of cappuccino at Cafe Trieste, and the myriad types one would meet there and still do. And the vista as you would look out from Telegraph Hill towards Russian Hill.
And the bowl it seemed to form, and the thought that there was a microcosm of the world formed in that bowl, maybe 5,000 people from all over the world. Various walks of life: investment bankers, ad slicks, panhandlers, merchants, students, tourists, Asians, Blacks, Latinos, bourgeois Jews like me who wanted to write a modern version of being 99.4 percent pure -pure what?
I’m tempted to invite the Russian ambassador, Michael McFaul to our concert Saturday at the Palo Alto Arts Center. Maybe he will read this post It is doubtful. He has more pressing matters, such as his fond hope against an indifferent world that something he can say or do saves lives in Ukraine and Russia, and to end a war. The only reason, the only possible reason, McFaul would respond to this message in a bottle –these lights, these ones 1s and zeros0000 is because I did once go to a concert with him.
It was 1982, me and him and our respective two friends went to see the Grateful Dead at the Greek Theater, which also, if not a bowl, at least forms an amphitheater, and people like Beth and David and Jerry and Bobby and Chris and Keith, and Phil and Billy and Kjell channel consciousness turned into vibrations, which are simultaneously amplified and dampened when 100 or 1000 or 10 thousand bodies are in the mix. But I’ll be honest: at Saturday’s concert it’ll be more like 50 people who wake up to decide that We Are The Eyes Of The World. However few or many, we appreciate your presence, brown, pink, and otherwise. Will that do anything? How do we know anything does anything? Other than when you put your lips as an embouchure or form your fingers trained around the neck of not your lover, caressingly or firmly, but a guitar descendant from a lute descended from perhaps a diddly bow, not a bo-diddley beat, but a samba beat in some cases; not jazz, but pop.
Not apathy, but trying in our own way to pop the bubble of hate or at indifference, to pierce it, to appreciate the presence of our fellow humans and the miracle of sound and harmony and rhythm. I am with you in rock-land, a tua presença.
THE BELLE OF THE BALL
THIS IS WHERE I CAME IN
Is it okay that I published this?
Briefly: quickly: Jenny; 456; pies; shirtless sax guy; Johnny A at Lytton Plaza by Randy Lutge; yours truly, my hound, a pair of twins in grad school who are future diplomats; Trish or Tina who hit the high notes in “What is Hip?”; scrimmage ND v SU; guitars at Gryphon; mazel tov to Molly Tuttle and Ketch; George Packer Emergency; Packer and Eggers at Kepler’s; Terry and I and an unknown bombing Yuman; **** review for Dayna and Ethans’ Monk’d; Silvana Estrada Sabre Olividar with 94,339 plays on Shazam; Ebuku Kotorie; football by Theo Bill Brown circa 1957; Katseye; Marylin Monroe ornament at Stanford Theatre; Matt and Bill at The Lyt; Thai Bui; Laufey on tv; candy dude.
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