I have Jeff’s phone number, and that of his agent. Mark my words, he will lead a band in Palo Alto soon.
Recently I named, as part of a poll I took, his band Tortoise as one of my five favorite musical tropes in the history of Chicago. Displacing, for this purpose, Sun Ra and Shure.
Rah!
Sure!
Hey, baby and I’m in it with you.
From Mark at Earthwise and Plastic Alto blog
edit to add, my favorite song, and i saw them live at SF Jazz front room, and I bought the cd plus have it in muy Apple phone, is “Rfifted” or “Drifted” and it’s based on an Aretha song that I had never heard before.
and: Jakob Baakgard in All About Jazz, 2016:
He doesn’t just play on the beat, he stretches it and improvises around it and a track like “Jrifted” is the definition of laidback cool with saxophone lines, catchy guitar riffs and a wondrous beat-epilogue with strings.
andand: AE, AA –that’s not a chord change, I don’t think,but it is how i remember to check and fix the spelling of the namecheckered abovely: Jakob BAEgAArd. I would be cool if Jeff replies to me or Jake with a improvised ditty B, A E, A, A, D or something. Strike up the band, Palo Alto.
andandand: Found the song, don’t know what the “jr” with “drifted” means. I think she is day dreaming and thinking of me. But I know her song is not called “Day Dreaming And Thinking of You”
andand but not anand:
(It is called “Day Dreaming” but not called “Hey Baby And…” I mean)
andand but not anand but ardan:
Hi, (redacted)
I noticed your name in the letters to council packets. Clicking thur, trying to follow your prompt, I instead ended up on your music page, with 60 or so videos that you had curated.
(Ironically, the page about your support for the city staff member seemed to be missing…)
Music is a big part of my life for 26 years here, as Earthwise Productions of Palo Alto, Between October 18, 2018 and March 13, 2020 I brought 16 shows and — I think — 25 acts to Mitchell Park Community Center, the new ball room. Concerts there hold about 200 people although my attendence – -this is apples and oranges — for 2019 via EventBrite was more like 25 percent capacity or 1,000 paid. The missing link is getting the word out — hence, here I am. Trying you.
The continuum of artists willing to play, roughly $400 per person per performance – -whereas the audience pays $20 each — in a community space to stars and superstars and hit songs that people will be accessing fifty years from now exists but is remote. I think it is a quality experience, Earthwise at The Mitch, and I hope you can check out a future show. I had 10 shows on sale at time of shelter-in-place decrees. Some will be rescheduled, others lost in the shuffle.
My Aretha connection is: 1) in 2003, on tour with my client Henry Butler, a piano player, from New Orleans – -and again I have changed the topic from bringing local, regional, national, international, clubsized acts here, to my even smaller and less significant management practice, wherein I’ve represented exclusively a handful of acts and artists over the years — actually at the bottom I will post a blog item about that, with links in many cases to their cds — was traveling with an all star blues band and we played large civic space in Houston, TX — about 2,000 capacity with a rotating stage and theatre in the round –like the old Circle Star Theatre in San Carlos – -which is defunct tho its site is marked by a rather large and bright messge board, on west side of 101 Southbound and — this is quite flimsy — the next night or two nights even Aretha was set to appear; I’m saying years ago I managed an act whose name appeared on a schedule in Houston that included Aretha. 2), Jeff Parker is a wonderful jazz guitarist and composer and recording artist in LA by way of VA and Chicago; his first New Breed recording has a song that samples in a unique way a less than famous Aretha single. Jeff appeared twice recently as a sideman in my series, or co-leader (not New Breed group — but they are on my wish list or hit list), one with Amendola Blades and once with Dave Douglas Engage.
I am going a bit fast and am fallible but: you might like to know the existence, similarly, of a jazz group built around electric guitar from Switzerland called The Great Harry Hillman (named after a famous coach and athlete, from 1904-1944, a good run, excuse the pun).
Cheers,
Mark Weiss
Plastic Alto blog
Earthwise Productions
The person you mention, does she succeed our first pr person on staff? My reaction was: with good leadership, we would not need spin doctors. Maybe the person you laud is better. Also, I like to think that music and even dance – I am guessing you like to dance — should be compulsory for people who make policy. An American radical once said: I don’t want to be part of the revolution unless it has dancing.
my memory is off a bit but the riff I am referring to is something like: hey baby and I’m in it with you….hey baby and I’m in it with you….hey baby and I’m in it with you. In Jeff’s song, it starts barely perceptible, in the background and repeats roughly 30 times in 3 or 4 minutes, but by the end the band is deliberately following the riffs, instrumentally so that group of chords, or part of the melody goes from a counter melody to the main story.
bw (“backed with” — like two singles released on a 45 rpm)
Janine De La Vega, don’t know her, she is the spokesperson for Palo Alto Police, a former news reporter on TV, a Santa Clara grad, a Mom and replaces Zach Perron who was a Palo Alto native, Stanford grad and got a midcareer advanced degree from a prestigeous tho far away school, and then got fired because a former co-worker recalled that while chasing a suspect years ago he made a joke about that person’s ethnicity, and their lack of propensity in swimming – the man had fallen into the creek, evading arrest. Good luck, Janine. My sister, her first car, in 1976 was a Chevy Spirit of America Vega. White with red blue stars and stripes, bicentennial even.
Twice in the last 24 hours I have posted at PAW about the government decree to ban vaping and cherry-tobacco from Palo Alto and its likely negative impact on Mac’s Smoke Shop, which I frequent for newspapers and magazines. I think flavored tobacco at Mac’s to adults should be grandfathered in. Leadership should work with the landlord to give Mac’s a break while they figure out what to shelve to displace the offensive-by-decree items. Further research indicates they also sell a pretty good $2 cup of Joe that is a bargain compared to the places I usually buy from. The title I found objectionable — see above –is Cherry Boxxx Pictures “Black Virgin Teens” but it says they are over 18 years of age and has contact info for the publisher, 2005. Seven-ninety-nine reduced from $13.99 originally. I opted instead for Living Blues Magazine with a plain black cover “50th” anniversary issue, mainly for the ad for Ruthie Foster Big Band live album (“evokes Ellington, Sinatra”) on Blue Corn Records. (There were also magazines such as Marie Claire –Megan Thee Stallion–Sports Illustrated-Deandre Hopkins– and National Geographic with more wholesome and respectable images of black people, if you excuse the digression into race). I spoke to the owner Neil Khoury about the possibility of eliminating the porn section of his store, which is behind a beaded curtain. But there is a difference between stores deliberately changing their wares for their own reasons and their hand being forced by government over-reach, which is how Dubois rightly describes his board’s unfortunate result. I also bought a Gatorade, due to the heat. Earlier today, I had bought The Times, The Chron and the Merc.
Earlier (trigger warning: I say “fuck” and I make a joke, based on Bertrand Russell’s work or Marshall McLuhan, about the inconsistency of “virginity” and “promiscuity”)
With new vaping ban, Palo Alto expects smoke shops to shutter
Council members vote down proposal to exclude adult-only shops
The Khoury’s published an 80-word broadside with their view on this story and a call to action. They are partly right in that unlike the other businesses impacted, they are a marketplace of ideas. I buy roughly 10 newspapers there per week, easily $1,000 per year on that, magazines, plus pork rinds, and juice, the rare Nabisco product. I bought Take Five bars with two different packagings, intending to write about appropriation.
The location is great, they can survive the blow. They could do more with their logo — they sell t-shirts but of a weak design.
I’ve opined here hundreds of times plus posted 2,600 articles to my own blog, (which itself and in its name protested installing fake grass at the Page Mill soccer fields, but also covers local news and jazz music, for ten years).
Maybe Mac’s Smoke Shop could publish “Smoke Signals” that covers this dispute and other pro-retail, unique to Palo Alto issues.
Maybe I’d pay them to handle an exclusive weekly broadside based on “Plastic Alto”.
I’d ditch a lot of the bongs and pipes, piled embarrasingly high. Likewise “Black Teen Virgins Who Like to Get Fucked” — this paper won’t even print the title. (Note: so far, 23 hours, it stands)
Maybe the successor beneficiary landlords would give them a break.
But if Neil and Lori Khoury can step to the step of the true spirit of Palo Alto, they can not only persevere but prevail.
The council voted: Tom Dubois, Liz Kniss, Adrian Fine –no (3)
The council voted: Eric Filseth, Greg Tanaka, Lydia Kuo, Alison Cormack — yes (4)
I hope besides engaging in the government or self-governance process — leadership interacting with citizenry, being both representative and responsive — customers of Mac’s who read newspapers read magazines, drink coffee, eat snacks, eat ice cream or smoke tobacco — shop at the store and reach out to Neil and Lori Khoury with your words of support and ideas.
Mark Weiss
Plastic Alto blog
resident, Downtown North
All played for Fremont High in Los Angeles.
The Times meanwhile hints that Watson’s scoring MLB’s 1,000,000th run was not verifiable. They gave him among other spiffs a million Tootsie Rolls, which he regifted to the Scouts.
According to his obit in the times N.Y. Watson played with Tolan and Willie Crawford. Whereas as you can see above Tolan and Hendrick squared off in 1972 Series.
Edit to add Don Cherry jazz great briefly attended Fremont high school in Los Angeles but was forced to transfer out because he was cutting class to go play jazz; where is Bobby Watson the jazz musician is from Kansas City and then university of Miami before New York City
bw I was bs-ing Aidin V of the Chron about the fact that his claim that Shoreline looks like “steal your face” is as valid as my yarn about Bill Graham being circumcised, and that’s what the seats look like. If you listen to Dan Scher, he says that there was talk of using a bird logo.
bw
My tall tale so to speak about Shoreline and the Dead:
Yo, Aidin-
What is your source for the May 2011 article that claims that shoreline amphitheater was designed by Bill Graham to resemble “steal your face”?
Bill Graham spoke to the Young Adults Division YAD of the San Francisco Jewish Federation and said that from above the Amphitheatre resembles my dick. It has something to do with Aurevoir Les Enfants by Louis Malle. Graham being a refugee but having to leave behind his foreskin.
Mark Weiss
In Palo Alto
she says jerry’s pants are confused — wasnt Dave’s company called “something pants”?
Lisa E. Harris vocals theremin electronics composer
Nicole M Mitchell flute electronics composer
Julian Otis vocals
ZARA ZAHARIEVA Violin
Ben lumbar gay trumpet electronics
Tomeka Reid cello
Avreeayl Ra percussion
Krista Franklin Art
Wheatgodess creations publishing administration studio enertia media
6/22/07 Chicago
Bob Weston master by
Bw randomly selected collage art by Ms Franklin:
And1and1and1:
7. a note sent to Matt Merewitz, Nicole’s publicist, and Nicole herself, at her University of Pittsburgh office email address, announcing that I posted this much;
8. My wife is watching Barbara Streisand and Omar Shariff as Fanny Brice in “Funny Lady” with music by Jule Styne and my neighbor’s teenage son and a friend are making noise but not yet destructive non-neighborly acts of aggression outside the window and over the fence, and I am reading the first 70 or so parts of David Shields’ “Reality Hunger” and I am wondering to what extent “Funny Lady” influences “EarthSeed” or is it preposterous to try to compare the works and the workers – and I captured a wee bit of it on TV – -BS preggers — seems thematic — but then, reading about Nicole, I jump to some official website hoping to determine by Survey Monkey type survey the 35 biggest jazz moments in Chicago history — though Nicole Mitchell and this piece is arguably also L.A. and Pittsburgh and Houston — and here is what my two clicks worth yields: 1915: The word “jazz” first printed in the Chicago Tribune to describe a musical form: 1943: Muddy Waters moved to Chicago; 1980: The Chicago-based Blues Brothers film released 1990: Tortoise formed 1994: Wilco Formed Which sort of relates in that Tortoise is a project featuring Jeff Parker who is a peer and collaborator of Mitchell, but of course I missed AACM and a couple others, like Sun Ra. Sun Ra would seem an influence on anything afro-futurist.
And it was Sun Ra’s birthday last week.
9. I noticed that Megan Thee Stallion is on the cover of Marie Claire. Again, it depends on how much Lisa Harris, or Li Harris or Lisa E. Harris is a true partner relative to the more advanced Mitchell;
10. I do recall and was just REMing thru it, Nicole by GR in the Times from about 2 years ago. There is something, an image, in the Lynda Barry sense, of Nicole roller skating on campus and getting noticed by a professor who tells her to come join the jazz band, did I make that up?
11. I’m Looking for a contemporaneous review of Nicole Mitchell EarthSeed from when it debuted at Chicago Art Institute or Art Institute of Chicago.
12. Riane Eisler, “Chalice and the Blade”, 1988, I saw somewhere cited by NM:
I wonder if Sylvie Simmons (Blondie, Leonard Cohen) ever thought to write about Sonny Simmons? Or maybe they can jam, hot sax and cool uke. Happy thought.
Now my brain goes to Darth Vader: I am your father, L’ll uke.
Way before I knew dick about jazz, I saw Sonny playing in the financial district. I also posed with the guy who plays in front of Willie Mays. Hutch. In . Son.
My computer — ps — suggests not too helpfully…Sylvia…Brown….rig?
Con Dempsey, a Sequoia grad, played for the 1952 Phillies
This is not Nolan Dempsey the former Serra and Fresno State Star, but it is a snippet of the Stanford – Fresno State game on June 3, 2019 9-7 eliminating Fresno although Dempsey scored twice and was cheered on by the locals:
Nineteen-sixty-six memories of the Dempsey crew with pals Joe DiMaggio and Lefty O’Doul:
Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss 