30th year presenting concerts as Earthwise

 

Jenny Scheinman, violin, Todd Sickafoose, bass, Scott Amendola, drums and effects, performing as Damn Skippy, Mitchell Park Community, March 4, 2023: soundcheck

Jazz and folk at three public facilities in Palo Alto

Earthwise spring summer series 2023

Phoebe Hunt, Lytton Plaza, Monday, February 20, 2023 (pop up– President’s Day)

The Tiptons Saxophone Quartet & Drums
Palo Alto Art Center, Wed. March 1, 2023 8 pm, free;

Damn Skippy
Mitchell Park Community Center, Saturday March 4, 2023 8 pm, $20 at door;

Stephan Crump
Lytton Plaza, Saturday, March 11, 2023 5 pm, free (rain cancels 🌧️);

Crump

Edu Ribeiro Trio featuring Edu Ribeiro drums, Vinicius Gomes guitar, Noah Garabedian, bass
Lytton Plaza, Thursday, April 20, 2023 5 pm free;

Nellie McKay, Karla Kane, Mitchell Park Community Center, Sunday, 7 pm, $20;

Allison Miller Carmen Staaf Duo, Mitchell Park Community Center, Monday, April 24, 2023 8 pm, $20 at the door;

Raffi Garabedian Octet
Palo Alto Art Center, Thursday, May 11, 2023, 8 pm, free

Laurie Lewis and Men of Note, Alyssa Burgart
Mitchell Park Community Center, Sunday May 14, 2023
7 pm, $20 at door

Amendola Vs Blades, JoVia Armstrong Destiny Muhammad Duo, Mitchell Park Community Center, Sunday, May 21, 7:30 pm, $20;

Jim Campilongo Ben Davis Duo Lytton Plaza, Sunday, June 11, 2 pm, free

Earthwise Summer Solstice show, Lytton Plaza, Wednesday June 21, 7:30, artist tba, free

Adam Levy Mint Imperials Lytton Plaza, Monday July 10 7 pm Free

Jim Campilongo Ben Davis Duo Lytton Plaza, Sunday, July 16, 7 pm, free

 

edit to add:

Stefan Crump, Lytton Plaza, Saturday March 11

edit to add: the headline of this post is misleading in that although I started Earthwise in Palo Alto in 1994, there were years where I focused on artist management and not concerts so there were no shows in Palo Alto (but I worked on shows in New Orleans or New York). There was only one show in 2018 (Allison Miller Trio at The Mitch) in 2018 – -the year my mother died — and no shows the year before. I did 43 shows last year — my most ever — but I also said that, like the rain Saturday, Earthwise is doing shows intermittently — let’s say its once or twice a month, on average. 

 

 

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Dole with a pole

Stanford athlete Norman Dole broke the world record for athletics pole vault in 1905. He was related to the Hawaii fruit dynasty, and one of numerous people from that family to attend Stanford. (Source: Malcolm Harris , 2023, p. 94. See:

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Zoh Amba vs Zelmo Beaty


this is stupid, and i was you may have noticed phasing out my blog but I had basketball on my mind. Zoh Amba a – m-b-a, Zelmo ABA…

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The Lockhart Loo (2023)


Seale Park playground, Palo Alto

Here is a photo of the basketball court at Henry W. Seale Park (formerly known as Stockton Park) in Palo Alto. The PAHA calls it a “multipurpose bowl with basketball hoop.” It is quite near to 3134 Greer, where Kent lived from 7th grade on, and where he and Jerry Chang, and Mark House, famously (at least, according to Kristin Huckshorn of the San Jose Mercury News) would in the driveway bounce the basketball for hours on end, and where, not entirely incidentally, Lockhart helped his mother Marlinda Fitzgerald design and install a very unique surviving garden, itself fit for either PAPAC attention or Steve Staiger’s files as an arts landmark.  Kent later said that carrying and placing the 50-pound boulders, which supposedly came from San Simeon with the direct permission of William Randolph Hearst, was equivalent to putting in that many hours in the weight room. When they weren’t in the drive way, they were often around the corner at the single hoop at Seale Park; Kent and I re-lived those days in a shootaround in 1988, the year he was MVP of the SF Pro Am league that also featured NBA’s Scooter Barry and Lester Conner.

Seale Park, formerly Stockton Park until 1982 and named currently for a large land-holder who was part of the founding of Palo Alto and died in 1888, is getting some sprucing up; a sign says that the new restrooms were to be finished in March, 2011. I left a voice mail last week with Holly Boyd of the City hoping to find out, at the very least, whether there would be a re-dedication ceremony (apparently there was one in 2000). Although these matters are better first vetted via Roger Smith, Greg Betts or Annette Glanckoph, I did mention in my voice mail for the City engineer something about wanting to dedicate the new bathrooms “for a famous Palo Altan.”

Lockhart led Gunn to two SCVAL basketball titles in 1980 and 1981 and was also the Central Coast Section player of the year (and an honorable mention Street and Smith’s All-America).

 

At University of Texas El Paso (UTEP) he set a school record for most wins and most games in a four year career, for a team that was ranked as high as national top ten and was featured in Sports Illustrated (he played with Dave Feitl, Luster Goodwin and Jeep Jackson, and against John Stockton and Karl Malone). In the 1985 NBA draft he was selected by the New York Knicks, as the 119th player chosen overall, but broke his arm and missed the cut. After time in the CBA (playing for Cazzie Russell and Phil Jackson), he signed to play pro ball in Australia, where he was first team All Australia (a continent of 3 million square miles and at the time about 15 million people, as in he was among the top five players among that many people), and continued coaching and playing for about 20 more seasons at various levels. (He coached Andrew Bogut, for instance). He teaches art at a secondary school near Melbourne and makes sculpture. His mother sold 3134 Greer in 2007 and now lives Down Under with Kent. Continue reading

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Dispatch from Austin

Spring, 2017 nearly six years ago: has Palo Alto degraded as dramatically?

 

The more than 260,000 new residents who have moved to the area since 2018 might not understand that they’ll be frolicking in a symbol of Austin’s transition from livable city to tech-bro theme park. Nor would the hundreds of thousands expected to join them in the coming ten years, filling jobs at Tesla, Oracle, and countless other companies lured here by generous tax incentives. There was nothing we could do. Austin was now a surf-park town. Texas monthly 

…The bang you get for your buck is terrible traffic, doubled property taxes, annual rent hikes, chain restaurants from Denver and Portland, Oregon, sidewalks littered with electric scooters lying flat on their sides, and a “culture” owned primarily by Live Nation.

Austin was never as laid-back or “weird” as it claimed it be, but it was appropriately grungy, and relaxing, and you could flourish here even if you didn’t have a ton of money. Not anymore. The cost of living in and around Austin shot up by 17.8 percent between 2010 and 2020, and home prices have almost doubled. Average rents are now higher than in Paris and Naples (and, yes, we mean the ones in France and Italy)

and:

I started my day with a observation that the month that David Crosby died at age 81 the cover of the Rolling Stone issue #1371 was Rizal Leah, who writes her own rules.

andand (but not Anand Wilder, x-Yeasayer, not yet at least…): after a three month hiatus, Earthwise will announce a 10 show spring series, mostly jazz, but eclectic. March 1, Tiptons Saxophone Quartet Plus Drums; March 4, Damn Skippy f Amendola, Bernard, Scheinman Schott & Sickafoose; March 11, Stephan Crump; it still feels quixotic; would the planet be worse but for Earthwise? Part agit prop and Situationist, “MOLOCH! MOLOCH! MOLOCH!” and all that but I think I know how Zidane felt right before he head-butted his way to a red card and out of the World Cup…

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Would this win the Super Bowl of carne de res, or only the World Cup?

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Dylan admits machines wrote his masterpiece

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Amazon has a $953 BILLION market cap and can pay more than $500k for a Palo Alto business license

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AFI ‘96 v. AFI ‘22

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Lord of the fried

The harder they bank, the harder they spank

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