Saw Margo Cilker in the Palo Alto Weekly online by Karla Kane (herself of Corner Laughers) but had forgotten meeting her summer 2022 Lytton Plaza at the Mary Gauthier show, which included Gaby Castro a Casti grad, feel me? (And yes I did troll a duo of Black antisemites and say something about Huey Lewis, Lew Welch, Grape apes and “peel me?”
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”.
Robert Arneson, Portrait of George (Moscone), 1981; glazed ceramic; 94 x 31 1/2 x 31 1/2 in.; Collection SFMOMA, Phyllis C. Wattis Fund for Major Accessions. Acquisition made in memory of Jay Cooper. © Estate of Robert Arneson / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY; photo: courtesy Estate of Robert Arneson
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 mean no disrespect but only that this is the most current TT:
I was at an amazing Abdullah Ibrahim show at SF Jazz and was thinking ahead to catching your set there next spring.
Have you considered ending your show with a barely audible singing portion a cappella?
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.
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