I don’t speak Italian but it looks like my old friend Jack Walrath is out and about, for instance he is in Italy Ascoli with Gary Smulyan and friends. Go, Jack! Bravo!
JACK WALRATH & GARY SMULYAN QUARTET al CottonJazzClub di Ascoli C=Lounge / 6 marzo 2015 h 21,45 (circa)
A guardarli all’opera da vicino mi ricordano quei temerari ma tranquilli operai che costruivano grattacieli a Boston – Chicago – N.Y. negli anni ’30: l’arcinota e abusata foto in B/N (ma si dice sia un primordiale fotomontaggio) con loro seduti in fila sul braccio di una gru a cento e più metri d’altezza, a “riposarsi” in bilico, sicuri e apparentemente felici. Operai-Artisti. Sotto di loro il vuoto, ma anche il Jazz.
Certo, questi di stasera sono dei signori operai. Non vestono tute e caschi, non maneggiano chiavi inglesi, cazzuole e martelli. Ma non hanno neanche luccichii da palcoscenico, vezzi da star, arie da maestri. Non posano. Anzi, sono praticamente mimetici, si confondono col pubblico, bevono birra. Semplicemente “lavorano” jazz sublime. Con “arnesi” normali, quasi da mercatino dell’usato: la tromba color argento
Jack Walrath, my former client, is a jazz trumpeter from Montana who went to Berklee and played with Mingus and lives in New York.
Applejack Walroth is a bluesman from Chicago who played with Boz Scaggs at the 2009 Hardly Strictly Bluegrass.
Jack Walrath also played with Willie Nelson in the 1990s which got my hopes up that he had snuck out to mean ol’ frisco for this hit.
he says he’s the bass player on Maxwell st circa 1966
and1: Bob Devine on Delmark blog:
A guy named “Apple-Jack” Walroth showed me how to pack the rare records so that they wouldn’t shatter in shipping. I later learned that he was a musician, played blues guitar and was picking up the blues harp from some of the players around Chicago — Little Walter, Shaky Walter Horton (also known as “Mumbles” Horton who had earned the “Shaky” nickname on the basis of his head movement when he played), Jr. Wells and others. Apple Jack made a point of telling me not to take any advice from Charlie Musslewhite, known as “Memphis Charlie”, another harp player who was deemed by Koester to be an excellent blues man, but one of the dimmest and least reliable workers at the store
here is video of Charles Mingus group doing “Sue’s Changes” at Montreux, 1975:
he is sometimes also known as Jack Zappa:
from TapeOps:
As a songwriter, home recordist, and musician who gigs frequently, sometimes on stage I encounter the ugly and dreaded situation where the AC power paths will be such that when I am holding my instrument [harp mic or electric guitar], and also touching the PA mic as I sing, I get zapped by the way-too-familiar 110 volt electric shock. Yes, after the fact, I flip the amp ground switch when there is one, or reverse AC plug on the amp otherwise. And yes, some amps have a grounded 3 prong plug and some just have 2 prongs. All amps are not created equal and all circuits are not always properly grounded, by any means. We are not at liberty to rewire every faulty circuit we encounter in the universe. Any musician who plays out frequently under many different scenarios is almost certain to be zapped once in a while. But I don’t want to get shocked in the first place, and don’t always have the luxury or desire of using a cordless mic to avoid the problem.
edit to add, February 26, 2024: I am a Jew, sitting on the porch of the Santa Barbara mission, staring at one of those rusted El Camino Real bells, with the Pacific Ocean in the distance— thoughts are with Walroth, who timed out this week.
more than that, maybe the people who drive this van actually make the behind the scenes decisions here
Five years in with my “constructive engagement” project, which comprises three runs at Council and now five runs for commission or boards and I have to admit I don’t think I know what is actually going on here. Even becoming conversant on more than 200 projects and issues, I wonder what it is that leadership per se knows, that informs policy, but doesn’t tell us.
i also like 2006 Chris Nolan “The Prestige”
I am reading the Comp Plan, the existing Comp Plan, the one that is being furiously outdated, yet relevant nonetheless, from 1998-2010 officially.
There’s a meeting tonight, if we want to be super-current.
The other day I was driving south thru Professorville and noted a van painted like the Mystery Machine from the popular cartoon series “Scooby Doo: Where are You?” and it occurred to me that maybe our politics is like the show and eventually a mask will come off or a fog will lift and we will understand what is happening here and why. I still maintain for instance that leadership listens to developers (of commercial real estate, a billion dollar industry just here) more than the rank-and-file and that leadership is therefore not complete representative of nor responsive to, We the People.
Every episode of the original Scooby-Doo format contains a penultimate scene in which the kids unmask the ghost-of-the-week to reveal a real person in a costume, as in this scene from “Nowhere to Hyde”, an episode of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! originally aired on Septem
I don’t think we have responded adequately to the Grand Jury Report of June, 2014, the one that said we did not follow procedure in dealing with the interest of John Arrillaga in building an office tower complex at 27 University.
I am a dissident and part of the dissent here, even though I’ve been here since 1974 and have been actually quite engaged with the community virtually all that time.
The press, especially the Weekly and the Post paints me in grotesque terms, that border on the Sullivan standard of reckless disregard for the truth. And more to the point they cover doings here with a pronounced pro-developer bias.
Maybe Plastic Alto, over these last five years is the best readable-viewable picture of what is Palo Alto. One of my models is Sherwood Anderson “Winesburg, Ohio” which I read as an undergrad and mean to re-read. Makes me George Willard, I guess. (If I’m not equally influenced by Ring Lardner, “Haircut”, Faulkner, Dos Passos, Hemingway, Stegner, Dao Strom, and Marlon James “A Brief History of Seven Killings”; I’m also meaning to take in, perhaps as soon as today “Leviathon” — I do think about Nemstov; also I was trying to think of the circus Leopard the false baby in “Bringing Up Baby” as a metaphor for the politics here, the other night)
Or as Bob Marley say you can fool some people some time but you cannot fool all the people all of the time.
edit to add: if there is some take on Palo Alto or Deep Palo Alto that is informed by study of Russia, and the Nemtsov* case, “Leviathan” film is the long way home, as is the Bloomberg cover story on the Ukranian-American banker Natalie Jeresko. The Granby, Colo. “killdozer” case that supposedly inspires the Russian film is interesting reading but pretty far from useful. *If you are going to write about Nemtsov and Palo Alto that is a different post.
A point about our Comp Plan, although we incorporated in 1909 we did not adopt our Comp Plan until 1966, when citizens sued the City to finally do so. Even the 1998 version seems more like what we think someone wants us to say, than what we actually are. I am arguing that we are gutting that rather than refining it. The document may have always been flawed.
I ain’t got there yet but will write something about the Yale basketball player who quit the team to join the singing group. Reminds me of:
Holcombe Waller, a Palo Altan living in the North West, also a former Yalie a cappeler
Paul Thorn, folkie I saw last week, also a former boxer
I have to look up his name — Area 51, my term for not having the exact recall, at 51,that I had for the last 40 years of this — a former Penn basketball player with a Nigerian name who writes and produces music in New York, two-time all Ivy and I met at Cantor, wrote about;
Javier Arizmendi a Dartmouth classmate may make a cameo . I may claim that Holcombe before applying to Yale fought Roberto Duran and won a gold medal for Mexico in Pan Am games in taekwando.
I meant Ugonna Onyekwe, two time Ivy Player of the Year and proprietor of this dunk:
The SAP Labs HANAhaus cafe and Blue Bottle coffee at 456 University, The Varsity, that Chop Keenan assured me, as Gennady notes, would “rock” opens next week, Tuesday March 17, 2015 and so we can give it until Labor Day to see whether he is right. If it sucks, I am saying condemn the building, and just as we are putting $8 M from public coffers into Buena Vista for affordable housing, we can do something similar to, as our Comp Plan stipulates, enact some of our human services policies and programs downtown, at 456.
Meanwhile Chop told me the other day things are going well over at Hamilton and High. He says its his biggest local build since the Wells Fargo Building Hamilton and Waverley. When the High Street thingy was announced, and it seemed, to normal people’s standards, to be under parked, I suggested via a local popular online forum that the tenant could be a clown college, because clowns are known for extreme carpooling.
Also: I mean to circulate under the organized resistance movement that there is a rumor that if and when permits are issued for Downtown North and Professorville neighborhoods (and I am forgetting the acronym, DPP?) city manager Jim Keene plans to privatize and outsource enforcement, and I am opposed to that.
edit to add, the big day: I noted that the door, from the parking lot, says Open Daily 7am-10pm and the door was unlocked, it being nearly 8 a.m. let myself in, snapped a quick photo of the grand hall and was chased out lock distance like by people doing their own photo shoot other side of room. I guess I am excited. Straightening my files the other day, I found about 50 extant TLPW456 flyers I made in 2011, I may hand out a few, today, for yucks. I hope this works: I’ve been fantasizing about inviting such-and-such act to come play here, but I am doubtful. And I’m even more doubtful about the repercussion: let Chop have it? Have what? But so far it does not look that different than it did with the pop up novelty shop.
And I wonder about the glass door and doorframe blocking one-eighth of the courtyard, or bridging the chain barrier — strange outcome. Does it even pass fire code? If you gather 300 people or whatever, and they need to exit in a hurry, they squeeze thru the doorway?
If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern. William Blake
and1: if they have invited Eugene Robinson to the opening, to sing, I’ll kiss Chop’s shoe:
andand: ok, just for yucks, I am reprinting here one of my essays on “Save The Varsity” or “Save The Varsity Part 2” or TLPW The Last Picture Waltz 456:
still capture of pigeons from Jim Jarmusch "Ghost Dog" (1999)
I dubbed my initiative to affect the future of 456 University, The Varsity Theatre site, “The Last Picture Waltz”. I am referencing the Larry McMurtry book, “The Last Picture Show” and the Martin Scorsese concert film “The Last Waltz.” I’m suggesting not that the theatre should permanently go back to its intended purpose but only that the cultural community have the opportunity for a last kiss goodbye there, maybe 50 shows a year for the next 10 years.
Most of my efforts on this project involve contacting people in the music business to see if there is a qualified operator who wants to try to get the lease on the historic theatre. I am also trying to talk to council to see if there is anything that government could or should do to lend a hand, invisible or not. I did have a meeting with Tom Ferhrenbach*, Palo Alto’s economic development director, to try to sway him to this cause. Plus I mention this to every third person I meet, and have made business cards specific to this project, and some handbills (TLPW 456 they read, in “Palo Alto green” — the “Color of Palo Alto“).
snipe campaign handbill or broadside for The Last Picture Waltz initiative
Plus my writings, here, at “Plastic Alto” at Patch Palo Alto, and commenting where applicable on other sites. I was on Fox 2 morning news.
I am having fun with this. And I enjoy flipping through various media and texts for insight and inspiration. Not sure what the story of “Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai” does for me here, but I wanted to print this still-capture of the pigeon-training sequence to link to my discussion of “bird omenology” on Patch.
In a previous post there, I suggested citizens address council on this topic during oral communications. (The Varsity, not birds :).
Obscure movies, acronyms, numerology — 4 5 6 is a reference to Chinese dominoes — I think there is still some method to my madness. Or as Brian Eno would say, as part of his famous “Oblique Strategies:” Be extravagant. I’ve got my mojo working, as Muddy would say. (Plus I laid a Teddy Ruxpin medal on Edgar Allen Poe’s grave in Baltimore, and a Satchmo coin in New Orleans, at Marie Laveau’s alter: I’m calling in some favors from 12 Galaxies, you could say.)
– – – – – – – – – – – – –
*Here is the link to Fehrenbach’s preliminary report on the topic which one local paper paraphrased as saying the theatre proposal was a non-starter. In my meeting with him, he seemed to have changed his mind and vowed to look into this properly. I think the entire matter is a fascinating case study on the nature of power, property and community.
Somebody made this short film of Bob Pritchett singing and playing the blues harp, in the foyer of the Varsity Theatre. (In its heyday, that courtyard featured regular concerts by Tuck and Patti, Michael Hedges and more. See Randy Lutge’s archive of about 400 shows, there and in the main room). Pritchett was in the Gunn High School Hall of Fame, played college football and had a tryout with the Dallas Cowboys. He was my coach for Frosh-Soph basketball at Gunn in 1978-1979. You can maybe hear him here still lamenting getting edged out of the league championship that last game at Paly.
andandand031715: under the Merc’s AP Brandon Bailey version of this I go:
Better would have been to buy the venue and partner either Goldenvoice (the Warfield) or Live Nation (the Fillmore) to present nationally touring music acts here and let the would-be Zuckerbergs shmooze backstage while the rest of us pay retail and just gawk. Meanwhile Bob Pritchett my old coach is dead.
Let’s get this straight: I am a small time operative in the music biz, as Earthwise Productions of Palo Alto, since 1994 and I am about 300 miles from LA, 35 miles from SF even, and about $500 from New York, where I have not been since about 2008. I also ran for City Council, three times, got about 9,000 votes all time, am up for a commission again (fifth time) but feel to a small extent I was “jew-baited” meaning I felt the local press described me in such a way that Anti-semites and White Supremcists and what used to be known as John Birchers would not just not vote for me, but maybe discuss how to work against me. To the extent I put even an hour or two, during my 100-day campaign — it’s a short season — I felt I was somewhere between thorough and paranoid, I admit. (And Chief of Police Dennis Burns, who met with me on this topic, said I was fine).
Meanwhile there is, down south, of here, but still West Coast, Best Coast, Dan Adler, a very successful guy from my field, about my age. I don’t know him. I don’t think I’d heard of him, an hour ago. But I know his wife slightly, Jenna Adler, a Creative Artists Agency mainstay, who did sell me some small acts for the Cubberley Series. For instance: Ozomatli. She also called me once and asked if I would put on a free show with John Mayer at Stanford, for $500, and I declined. I met her once, in her office (designed, I think, my I.M. Pei), and met her then-assistant Renat. Her Rolodex probably has 50 times more names than mine so it would be understandable if I tried to ring her and she did not recall me at first. I got to this meanwhile because I just wrote about Third Eye Blind, and they are booked by CAA. But I am re-routing thru a discussion of Dan Adler and this video as part and parcel.
Let’s just add for sake of argument I spent $1,000 on my recent campaign, got 2,000 votes spent less than 50 cents per vote. I will edit to add, but let’s just assume Mr. Adler spent $1m for his campaign, got thousands plural of votes, lost in the Democratic primary however, but spent, not to get too far off topic, upwards of $3 per vote. But I would say he in his arena versus me here, people sometimes argue that I am not really a politician or significant one, even here. Fair enough. We shall see.
But I am pretty shocked in reviewing this two minute video, from three years. Yes, I recognize Jenna Adler; I had never seen Dan, or her two teen boys for that matter. I thought the video cute. I presume the strategy is to make Dan look like a regular guy and not an elite. He loves his wife and kids, he plays basketball in the driveway. (And it does flash thru my head, How are his moves? How are my moves? Am I, at 51 more or less of a driveway with kids baller than Mr. Adler at 52 –it’s only natural; I’ve made thousands of such shots on driveways such as these, against varieties of defenses, or not. I relate).
But of the 20 or so comments, the majority are incredibly insulting and attacking. And almost all of those on racist, white supremacist and Anti-semitic grounds. The video has been seen 3,000 (10,661) times so maybe the headline should me that 10, 648 people resisted attacking the man on these hateful ad hominem grounds, as 18 people did. A subgroup of those haters (in the traditional sense, not Taylor Swiftian, and not Swiftian per se) also attacked Jenna and the boys for being Asians.
Anyways, I wish this family well. Mazel. I hope Dan Adler stays in the game, politically.
I also saw in the Times, circa 2000 something about Hollywood cultivating contacts in Silicon Valley, Dan Adler traveling here with Matt Damon, and wonder how that game has changed in the ensuing 15 years. My argument is that the proliferation of computing technology does not actually do all it is hyped as doing, that it shifts wealth upwards as much as creates it and that at least coincident in the spread of computers and handhelds or mobile is this 1 percent versus 99 percent and that destabilizes Democracy. I may be wrong. The term oligarch gets batted around, about Russian, about Central Valley water and here. (I opposed the plan for 27 University, also known as Arrillaga Towers on “anti-oligarchical grounds”, in 2012; although as i finally read the Comp Plan, 1998-2010 I note that its been in the cards for a while to do something near there, between train and shopping center, between Palo Alto and Stanford, that park, I digress).
edit to add: I may have to re-tool this with a different metaphor: catnip connotes not just attraction but pacification. To the haters, he is more like crack or amphetamines, he riles them up. I wonder how the LA Times covered him, or did it note this phenomenon. I may be overplaying this. That I was looking at the thing because of Jenna, is an odd entry into the story.
A better LA story right now might be the discussion of police force and the shooting of an unarmed street person, known as “Africa”. My previous “Plastic Alto” LA-LA post was about wanting to get down there perhaps to catch Jamie Cullum at The Hollywood Bowl and Terry and I are still buzzing at a wonderful time downtown, at Ace Hotel, which is very near this shooting.
Kudos for Steve Jenkins, my Gunn and Terman schoolmate, for keeping his rock and roll fantasy alive to middle age.
I remember Dorothy Bradshaw, my 8th grade drama teacher looking out the window at Steve and a kid named J.T. Leroy, I mean John Leroy and saying (she not me) “Steve Jenkins and John Leroy think they are God’s gift to girls!”
Mr. Mel Froli meanwhile claims he does not remember Dorothy Dot Bradshaw but misses Mrs. Barbara Bateman a music teacher. He says that when Terman closed, in 1978, not only did we bury a time capsule but we moved a special Ginko tree, Mr. Terman’s favorite kind, from campus to Stanford Engineering building. He, now that Ms. Bateman is gone, wants to return the favor by planting a tree at the re-opened Terman in her honor. As he told me this tale, at a Gunn hoops game recently, I knew that Stanley Jordan, the second most successful Gunn/Terman musician, after Stephan, was touring through and thought about ambushing him on this. (Would Stanley help raise money for his old music teacher?)
Terman music teacher Barbara Bateman, r.i.p.
Maybe Steve Jenkins can dedicate “Jumper” to Mrs. Bateman the Terman music teacher and have a tip jar at the mercy table (merch, for merchandise, stupid spellchek) “Bateman Ginko Fund”.
I will pass this on to mgmt.
Steve’s brother George, although I thought he was a bully, is a successful rowing coach. George was “red neck” while Steve was “prep”.
Third Eye Blind please help Mel Froli and Terman alumni raise money to plant a ginkgo tree at our old school
and1: it’s actually about 40 dates co-bill with Dashboard Confessional and 2 nights in SF.
andand: here is the KFOG ad slick which omits the co-bill with Dashboard Confessional, because apparently they don’t play them. On the other hand, when 3EB broke it was on Live 105 and not KFOG, it’s only very recently that KFOG plays Nineties chestnuts and hits like 3EB and Cake and Green Day.
To put this back in context, Third Eye Blind played Cubberley in January, 1995, more than 20 years ago, it was my fourth or fifth show and most of the bands were people I’d known since high school (which was a mere 12 years prior to that), plus the Donnas, playing as Ragady Anne. Third Eye Blind was unsigned, I had seen maybe twice and was tracking unsigned buzz bands. They played with Heavy Into Jeff (who was more popular at the time, although in truth neither band was a draw in Palo Alto) plus the opening act, my friend, because he dated my college classmate and ex-girlfriend Charlotte Gerstein, Rob Lederer, or Rob Craig, of Number Nine. Steve actually played drums on the Number Nine demo. Stephen I mean. I actually had met Kevin Cadogan before he joined with Steve, in that his dad and I were both in a Berkeley rainforest group together and he helped me vet demo tapes of bands we were hiring for a Berkeley Borneo Project benefit at Starry Plough. Well, that’s an exaggeration: Kevin basically told me all the bands I liked sucked! And as everyone from my gen of fanboy-to-functionary SF indie and industry knows, Steve Jenkins and Kevin Cadogan partnered sort to get signed and release two great albums on Epic but parted ways, quite dramatically and neither has partnered as successfully since. And nobody who mentions Kevin in a correspondence with Steve ever gets a response or result.
You know you’ve had a long run when you go from paying hotties to toss their panties on stage to doing a benefit to keep the senior center affordable.
I’m still here: see also, Greg Camp of Smashmouth quitting the band because he was sick of playing to kids, 11 year olds who only knew one song, “All Star” because it was in “Shrek”. But then he re-joined the band. There is something Shakespearean about all this. Or at least Arthur Miller, Eugene O’Neill and that was pretty deep Brian Denehy and Nathan Lane on Charlie Rose last night.
andandand: I have to keep going here. Here is a link to on-sales, it’s a Live Nation, the former Bill Graham Presents in SF. Tickets are $55 to $70 but they tempt you with re-sales of people who beat you to the punch and are charging as much as $235 for specific seats, I guess Ticketmaster takes a cut. For comparison, we charged $6 all ages at our show and probably did not even pre-print tickets let alone pre-sale. Later we used about four different services including BASS and Virtuous and Tickets.com Andrew Hancock whoever. I thought I was being diligent and supportive to offer the link but they really don’t need my help.
4and: (that’s a new record, 4 ands) Their social media page mentions they have a friend with a severe medical problem, pediatric neurosurgery so in the big picture, beyond how much clutter there is or how many people ask them for favors, a tree planted for a music teacher sounds not that interesting, I admit. But I put it up here like a message in a bottle and a prayer. And my thoughts are with the family going thru the medical history.
A5d: the site lists two members, SJ and Brad Hargreaves. What people don’t know about Brad is that he is also an excellent jazz drummer and down with Liberty Ellman. I caught up with Brad not so long ago, always wanted to book him. Maybe the Varsity HanaHaus will be a venue after all.
(I was wearing a suit to atone for wearing pajamas to the County Supervisors hearing back in January, I described below. In case a casual Plasty reader does not match the svelte guy tossing a bowling ball in 2009 to the pudgier more-mature version of me, here is the visual clue:
)
edit to add, seconds later: which reminds, after five hours of this, sitting and typing, I need to sign off and take a walk…
Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss 