thank you Joe Miller of works, San Jose and San Jose State University, the alma mater of my alma mater, and my wife, for adding a pirate theme to this photo of a dog; grr plus aargh.
Assling, apparently is a town in Austria; it’s also a word used by Wendell Berry in the collection how it went: 13 more stories of the Port William membership page 81. Wendl turns 90 in August — which I am calculating at 245 days
gif bless
edita: not to get finical but August 5 is 255. god bless
shout out to lynn Stegner whose father was both my neighbor and “ex-neighbor” and who might have made of Palo Alto Hills/LAH a membership, that included the hoot owls; or possible Page Mill Road influenced “Port Willam” Kentucky of their melded minds
for Jim Adams who donated an 1891 rifle to Palo Alto Museum of American History, on display with other technical curiosities until March. His sons Bob and Jim were two of my first music peer heroes. I left two James Adams books near Cowper and Hamilton a short ride from the museum because one had in its title “entropy”.
San Franciso Mime Troupe commedia dell’arte reportage July, 2023 by Earthwise
I am focusing on a very different, non-arts project this winter, after completing my last few shows for Earthwise.
We hosted Anat Cohen Marcello Goncalves duo at The Mitch, plus Ben Goldberg combo at The Art Center — two of the top five clarinets in jazz, according to Downbeat critics poll. (And with Beth Custer Will Bernard duo this summer at Lucie Stern, that’s three of the top 25 in all of jazz!)
There’s something I’m chewing on, a math problem expressed as a dinner party: how many guests must you have to ensure that there are two who do not know each other and two who definitely do. What that means to me is compiling a list of musicians who have appeared in Earthwise jazz shows since our re-start in fall, 2018, followed by some thought on creating original combos from that list. (I also have a related enterprise, Lions With Wings, that funds studio projects with some of these same people; for instance, I helped two Monk projects: Ben Goldberg, Todd Sickafoose and Scott Amendola in Eugene, OR, but also Dayna Stephens bass with Ethan Iverson piano in New Jersey – -it was actually Rudy Van Gelder’s studio).
There are some sketches of spring offerings for Earthwise that I will keep under my hat for a beat or two. (Or as Bob Marley might say: war, war, RUMOURS of a war).
To be honest, I do not have an exact count of how many shows I produced this year. I am saying 60, sometimes 61 –like Ruth and Maris. I have to go back and count my EventBrite log plus flip thru my bank statements and my camera log to get an accurate count. People like Rachael Sage, and Tony Furtado popped up so suddenly at Lytton Plaza that I almost forgot they happened.
Generally I did shows this year at or in: Mitchell Park, Mitchell Park bowl, Lytton Plaza, Cogswell Plaza, Johnson Park, the JCC, Rinconada Park and Palo Alto Art Center. Plus I produced stages of the street fair on California Avenue called 3rd Thursday.
By style of music, what some call genre with italics: jazz, blues, folk, Celtic folk rock, classical, rock, comedia del Arte.
Thanks to all the artists for such amazing performances.
jazz subset by last name and instrument, in 2023 by Earthwise:
Scott Amendola — drums
JoVia Armstrong — percussion
Hamir Atwal — drums
Will Bernard — guitar
Anat Cohen — clarinet
Beth Custer — clarinet
Ben Davis — cello
Leslie DeShazor — viola
Jholey Garay — guitar
Ben Goldberg — clarinet
Danny Lubin-Laden — trombone
Larry Ochs — saxophone
Hana Shin — piano
Scott Sorkin — guitar
Kristin Strom –saxophone
bw found logo for Earthwise by Charlotta or as Jonathan Lethem 2023 pp 201-202 might say “wound paint for screamer”:
I just got word from her SF gallerist that Rose B. Simpson one of my favorite Pueblo artists from New Mexico has a commission that will be on display next year at Madison Square Park in New York City. Meanwhile her almost-relative Cricket Tiger is at Stanford.
Cricket is the daughter of Diego Romero the Cochiti potter and artist — who went to high school at Berkeley High; Diego was married for a while to the artist Roxanne Swentzell , Rose’s mother. Cricket also has cousins in Palo Alto who have a French name; we all had Indian food — masala and al that, recently.
So Cricket and Rose are like sisters or formerly steps. And Cricket is a dancer, speaking of steps. And I know that Cricket’s half-brother is Santiago Romero who went to Dartmouth and is definitely like family to Rose. Her sort of uncle Mateo Romero was a freshman at Dartmouth my senior year, plus he and Dan Bern (member of the tribe) and I hung out in Nambe recently.
I tried to hire Rose Simpson to lead a rock band produced by Jody Naranjo called Pueblo Girls but she was too busy, likes hip hop more that rock and didn’t want…I will stop right there. Rare for me.
Rose is also the creator of a famous artwork built around a Chevy El Camino – and I am the son and grandson of Chevy Dealers — so I’m related too. I can relate. Maria. That’s the name of her car.
Or as Queen would say: I’m in love with my car, got a feel for my auto-mo-bile.
I think my parents had met Roxanne when they bought a bronze depiction of two humans crawling out of a pot which represents the Earth. When they died, I inquired about buying an urn from her. Cricket’s father has relatives who worked in Hollywood, both in the crafts or in front of the camera; he seemed to have some interesting insights into the history of Hollywood versus the history of his people.
ps as a promoter guy who feels NM, I think Rose should come do a live show here and have Cricket start a dance group of Stanford students for that event; her band was Chocolate Helicopters — “stay up late to hear the rain” I think she said — which reminds me of Chocolate Heads at Stanford with Aleta Hayes. I think Dartmouth should give Rose B. Simpson an honorary doctorate. Doctor of all around rad. Amandla! Aweytu! sister. And Cricket we hope the world is your oyster too, Or whatever the local version of that expression is.
I thought I already commented although I may be confused but I also wish to state that at the Bob Weir show a man left early – -and slightly after me — but he had parked his Mustang in VIP parking and backed into the very first space – -made me think he was Bob’s valet or driver. And he said “what is it to you?” or something dismissive but practiced when I asked him something about that – -in my not so terribly disguised former journalist or Scorpio rising tone. But he did answer my first question – -the name of the song – -not entirely audible from the parking lot but sometimes you can hear it from my driveway 2 miles from Frost Amphitheatre which is Stanford not Palo Alto tho I’m Palo Alto not Stanford — the song was “The Days Between” which I think is a recent Dead song or about the gap between the day Jerry Garcia was born and the day on the calendar on which he died.
yeah yeah year not that I mean now that I’ve actually read or re-read from my 1996 — see, on point–the passage — and it was Christgau on Frisell with Julian Lage that I was commenting on previous – all you substack guys look alike — but I wish to state that I went to high school with Mia Levin a co-founder of Mudwimin and she was the inspiration for Earthwise Productions which has comprised about 600 shows and 29 years of my life — they switch or switched instruments every song and someone once said that “surf” was a genre of theirs – beyond punk and now the last show of a cycle or series or maybe a siecle if you pardon my French is Anat Cohen an Israeli clarinet player which sounds like a joke but is less funny after Hamas has murdered 300 music fans near Gaza
and:
Jerry was born August 1 and died August 8 (actually 9) years later but this was written a few years before he died so its not really an elegy despite what I was gratuitously saying…sorry.and I am only semi-ironically wearing a Huey Lewis t-shirt in that I am a ’90s indie guy with a touch of gray but the college aged next gen clerk or partner at Palo Alto’s thrift store — three doors down, or north, of where Jerry worked when he met Bobby – gave me it as a gift because I asked in vain on a previous visit if there were any music t-shirts; And my computer earlier today suggested “bon temps roulette” apropos of NoLa.
andand: and the fucking anti-semitic AI at Apple want to change the name of the famous Berkley rock writer to “grill Marcus” which reminds me of the reports that the terrorists allegedly as war crimes were the ones who murdered babies in gruesome ways. And I was talking with a local yokel named V_ about the distinction between Tower of Babel and Fifth Column. And I said that when they came for people whose names started with a V I did not object because my name starts or started with W.
My coffee today is courtesy of We the People. I greeted two City of Palo Alto leaders* and in our conversation, the senior of the two offered me a cup of coffee— my normal cappuccino even — and I accepted. This rarely happens. It gives me pause — not to bust her, if this is not kosher. A kosher perk. Perk in two ways: perquisite meaning a gift; and perk like perky, meaning full of energy. Wasn’t there a fictional shop on “Friends” called City Perks or something? I almost wrote “We The Perkle” but my friend Amy Perkel from Dartmouth might think this song is about her.
The new employees are Melissa McDonough who works towards building homes that house the homeless, I think she said. She is from Cleveland and has been here about a year. She was orientating Kojo Pierce who said he is…give me a sec…DIE or DEI…Diversity…Equity…Inclusion. I spotted him because he was here just yesterday with The Chief.
And he has nice hair. Now, I am learning that apparently it is bad form or perhaps illegal to comment on someone’s personal appearance, even if my intentions are good. And he has good hair. And I once produced with Venus Opal Reese a Stanford MFA or PhD in the arts her monologue or one-woman or one-person or one-perker about how women especially in U.S., Africa and France can bond over their hair even if hair is their only mutual language, so to speak.
Kojo to my eye has braids or dreads piled or styled into a ball or shape facing forward. Not sure what you call that, but it’s pretty cool. And says “Black” or “Africa” in some ways — this would not look as good on a white person. Like, I sometimes say that Adam Duritz of Counting Crows is one of my favorite rock contemporaries — I’m a music promoter — and perhaps emblematic or epitome of my generation of activist and non-conformists and he used to wear dreads but I also am pretty sure he switched to a weave fairly early on. Not to digress, but when I dated Anthea Charles my Gunn classmate and the daughter of Susan Charles the school principal she said that while they were at UC Berkeley together he would ask her about her hair. And I also say – and it still happens apparently, I have not learned — that Anthea scolded me once for mis-remembering or mis-stating that someone we had just met had braids not dreads. I lump them together so to speak but others do not. Duly noted.
I think noting our mistakes is a step towards fixing them, but maybe not.
Kojo said he is from Ghana originally but has a degree from San Jose State. And I said that my mother and my wife both have or had degrees from there. Terry (Terry Acebo Davis) has a BFA which she got mid-career and an MFA and was, I said, on the Palo Alto Public Art Commission. She was actually the chair of such when We The People built the new library complex the Mitch so we know like the back of your hands that the three art elements Percent for Art are by Bruce Beasley, Brad Oldham and Roger Stoller (the arch, the owls, the tree).
I think I succeeded in not triggering his animus by pulling from my bag a copy of a book about Nelson MandelaI know this to be true Chronicle Books Nelson Mandela Foundation which I bought from Gwen Gasque at Letter Perfect. (Not to be confused with Nelson Mandela Education foundation of Cape Town which is run by my Gunn and Dartmouth schoolmate Kim Porteus who came to my Tuck & Patti show and may or may not accept my invite to hear and see Abdullah Ibrahim next week at SFJazz).
I recounted for Kojo and Melissa that at Dartmouth in the 1980s the anti-apartheid pro-divestment activists would yell AMANDLA AWEYTHU which means “power to the people”. And I also sometimes say FIST UP — and I demonstrated, in fact I sort of shouted and sang AMANDLA AWEYTHU here in The Coup, a coup of a sorts, methinks.
And I also name-checked Tommy Smith and John Carlos and Kojo said “We have a statue” which foreshadowed his mention of SJSU per se.
All good omens for Palo Alto being a better place for We the People.
Fist up.
Tanks for the perk. (Cue Tank and the Banghas): nice things!
*We the People thru our leaders attempt to self-govern. Our leaders are elected Council members, appointed commissioners and paid staff including Melissa and Kojo but also Chief Andrew Binder and city. manager Ed Shikada. I think of myself as dissent in that I ran three times and applied 10 times but mostly just speak out and observe very little result. Or, things would be worse but for my occasional utterance like AMANDLA and FIST UP or this. Good luck and thank you in advance for your service Melissa and Kojo.
and1: somewhere in there I name checked Brandynn Williams aka Kopa and Antonio Pierce, both coaches — which are leaders and sometimes educators. But I forgot to say Rigo who made this monument and artwork:
andand: shout out to, here since February shambayati Alice in the City Clerk’s office — its counter to the thrust of this article to complain that it took me six tries to reach someone at 250 to fact-check the name of Ms. McDonough.
andandand but not Anand Patwardhan: history repeats every two hours or rinse and repeat: I met Austin O’Such the real estate developer and son of my LAH Little League nemesis David O’Such and he bought me my second cup of coffee. Not that I need it. I tried to recount for O’Such that his dad in a recent phone catch-up mentioned three men who died too soon: Paul Hanley(2016), Don DeGrasse(2019) and Jerry Dowd, age 19, who died with his father and three others in March of 1984. Actually and now I’m really on a tangent, I met Paul Hanley’s roommate at the ASU-Stanford game and we drank a beer in his memory and now I sound like Blanche DuBois who was over-reliant on the kindness of strangers, according to Tennessee Williams who was, like Tarriona Tank Ball from New Orleans of which we should inport some but not all of its attempts to self-govern and just dealwith being human. Bon Temps roulette, AI suggests, semi-ironically. I set an alarm to stop this after 45 minutes but went a full 90, to the chagrin of Young Dubliners, Anat Cohen and Ben Goldberg/Ben Davis 4 – I’m supposed to be selling 700 tickets to upcoming shows!!!!! (So meta note to self: now I’ve checked “Platos republic” meaning government and “filthy lucre” meaning money)
Oy: speaking of modest, MMcD mentioned Cleveland but not her two degrees from Mills — or that she worked at Cody’s perhaps while I was at Green Apple, though I’m likely before her time. Which reminds me that my initial impetus and primary directive today was to read a story by Elmore Leonard in an anthology I found at the same aforesaid library. I was toting both the Mandela book and another spine on Western writing.
And there are 15 revisions of this screed. A good number of these posts are uni-drafts or less. Word count 1,150, name count: 36 which means “life”.
Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss 