I snagged a copy of “California Slim: The Music, the Magic, and the Madness” a memoir by Andrew Bernstein, who knew Bill Kreutzman and Gregg Rolie growing up in Palo Alto, and also toured as part of Willie Nelson’s gang.
But what sold me the book is the stories and archival materials — flyers — about Homer’s Warehouse, 79 Homer in Palo Alto. He also did shows at Stanford Theatre, which they called Stanford Music Hall.
He spoke to Palo Alto History Association recently; I will have to dig the video archive of that talk.
(A huge part of my work, especially as a concert promoter turned policy watchdog, is to examine and influence the issue of why is there no live music in Palo Alto and or is there anything We The People or the public sector can or should do to remedy that?)
Eric Hanson, who appears most often in Plastic Alto as the baseball poet and Cleveland Indians fan, is now an agent with Baylin Artist Management in Philadelphia, an agency whose clients include Matt Haimovitz, Christopher Riley, Kaki King and Rani Arbo’s Daisy Mayhem.
The above video is part of the library of performances amassed by Randy Lutge when his family owned and ran the beloved and historic Varsity Theatre in Palo Alto. The list of guitar players who played there included: Alex De Grassi, Will Ackerman, Stanley Jordan, Michael Hedges — those were all local guys. Hershel Yatovitz, who has been Chris Isaak’s axe man for 10 years tells me that H used to play at Gaylord’s Ice Cream all night for tips, that meet up with Hedges in the alley behind the Varsity to exchange deep philosophies and yucks.
“A trickle of strangers were all that were left alive Panic in Detroit” – “Panic in Detroit” from David Bowie’s Aladdin Sane (1973)
Some said this was year’s best game Should be in some hall of fame Not because it showed teams’ best But since it was such a test
Started as a Tigers rout Zach Mac once more gave us doubt Could not survive inning two Moments later, Tribe came through
Hitting like we’ve done of late Cleveland batters owned the plate One more Cy Young tossed aside Just beginning this wild ride
Even Swisher drove in one And Max Scherzer we would stun Stubbornly, he would remain As his stats would feel the pain
See-saw shootout ’til frame eight When two runs Detroit would plate Playing without their big bat Early on, Miguel had sat
Argued calls and then was heaved All Tribe hurlers were relieved As this day game got near night Tribe, in nine, would make things right
Two run shot off Murphy’s stick Tied this marathon real quick Tomlin called on for assistance Thursday’s starter went the distance
Fell behind with one big crack Once more, though, the Tribe came back Small ball tied it, we smelled blood Albuquerque – one big dud
Bases-loaded balk, a gift To a sweep that move would lift Cleveland with a balk-off win Big win on that pitcher’s sin.
I would skip the Bowie and move on to Vladimir Nabokov here (“na BALK OFF”), and especially “Pale Fire” which I’ve never read, although my friend Laura Jacobson recommends it, and I liked this little couplet, as the Plastic Alto lagniappe to today’s Tribelines.
I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure in the window pane
1) This is a bit of a departure, but I flipped thru this at Keplers and was very tempted:
2) This is my pedantic show-offy little slurve:
3) But whoever would know baseball would know this:
4) or this (and maybe this has become “Balk Off Book Off”)
5) Here is how the Times and AP left it (what, a dog ate their rhyming dictionary?)
Asdrubal Cabrera scored on a bases-loaded balk by Al Alburquerque in the 13th inning to give the Cleveland Indians an 11-10 victory over the visitingDetroit Tigers on Wednesday.
Alex Avila’s solo homer in the top of the inning put Detroit ahead, but the Indians won in their final at-bat for the second time in a three-game sweep.
After Cleveland scored one run, Alburquerque came in, and pinch-hitter Yan Gomes was walked intentionally to load the bases. On his second pitch to Ryan Raburn, Alburquerque went into his stretch, appeared to move his leg and then stop, and was called for the balk.
6) and back to the primary text, Hanson is right in suggesting that all cultured people (and perhaps even Yankee and BoSox fans) would benefit from revisiting this 1974 Bowie classic album, which to my ears, informed a lot of subsequent sounds and stories, and by the way, Rod Carew hit a mean .364 that year:
7) And, before Giants and Rockies take the park in about an hour, you want to follow me down into the dugout that is Russian lit, with our bench coach Elif Batuman, (a former Stanford master’s student), ponder her on VN:
He plays to the fantasies of artsy people with the chess, the butterflies, the Russianness, but he’s the ultimate crossover artist. He gets all the role-playing fans with Zembla; he gets all the aesthetes with nostalgia and Rimbaud; and he gets the creative-writing types with the incredibly vivid pictures of Americana. I think he tried to be everything to all people, like Shakespeare.”
I think that’s from “the Possessed” which I will get to eventually: (and BAT-uman is not the worst name for a lit scholar watching a baseball post thru a knothole)
It’s precisely because Adam Duritz and Counting Crows epitomize my scene, my generation, my hopes and aspirations for this world, and everything after, that I am gonna bust his chops a little here in Plastic Alto.
And not that he needs me for consiglieri or in his posse; last time I checked he was rolling with Gary Gersh, former President of Capitol, who married Anne Cook’s roommate, as P.M. so what do I know?
Plains Indians buffalo dancer. The character in Coen Brother’s “True Grit” selling snake oil. A pharaoh. Groucho Marx. He talked for a while and then the band played “Round Here” and “Hanging Around” which are almost in my DNA, but I was kinda distracted by the hair. In 2003, when I was tour manager (and P.M.) for Stew as Adam so kindly invited my clients along on tour, I got a tiny bit of interaction with the guy, who was then and still is now A TOTAL BOSS (I think that’s how kids talk today, he is “boss” or “a boss”, more so, in my opinion, than Bruce, in my world, way out west); I definitely noted that close up, like at the breakfast table, maybe at Great Woods, in line for food that is, I noted that those were definitely extensions, a weave, and not natural dreadlocks — my girlfriend at the time Anthea C., who is West Indian, and had or has dreads, would also scold me if I confused braids with dreads or something, and she said that when they were both at Cal (she after a year at Wesleyand, he after some time at UC Davis) he would say “hey” and check out her here. To me, even in 2003, A.D. (who I practically worship, despite the fact that I am kinda slagging the guy here), had grayish and thinning hair attached to the more rockstar, reggae, trustafarian ‘do. And Adam was a total stud then; there was a bigger stud in his posse, who at first I mistook for a musician or management but was also like their recreation director; the band brought along or had in their rider a half court basketball set up and the dude would rally up the guys to get some exercise, their guys, the Crows, not the openers, I don’t think — not the for five of the ten dates I was at, at least –and not John Mayer, who co-headlined and closed the show, but had an entire different set-up.
So I was kinda scrutinizing how he looks now, on TV, how the years have treated him. (And, honestly, it kinda made me feel good in that I hit the big 5-0 and do not feel like McGarret, but these guys, although they look like aging rock stars, do not look like kids in their twenties anymore either).
Besides the hair even the goatee or Van Dyken or what-not the facial styling, looked kinda phony or after-market.
I would think even going out with thinning hair and all that he would still rock people. I think he wants to look good or look like 1994 from the lawn seats of an amphitheater — I guess he would know his business.
Stew and Adam Duritz are starting to look more like each other.
When Stew (The Negro Problem, “Passing Strange”, actually Stew and Heidi and three sidemen) opened ten shed dates for Counting Crows in 2003 back East, Adam would come out and sit and the mixing station and watch every set. Kids would line up to get his autograph and after dutifully signing each t-shirt, cd or ticket stub, he would shout-whisper, over the music “Watch this guy!” or “Watch this act!”. Adam Duritz always had an eye or ear for other up-and-coming talent and would offer a hand-up where he could, like for Engine 88, or for the list of support acts when they did multi-dates to re-open the post-quake Fillmore.
Also reminds me of the conversation I had with another artist about the four phases of Papa Mali: Papa Mali, with dreads, Papa Mali without dreads, Malcolm Welbourne (his real name, which he uses as a sideman on Texas music, rather than the funk or reggae scenes which gave him his nom de guerre) with dreads, and Malcolm Welbourne without dreads.
MK of The Times likes the new Mona Simpson book, “Casebook.”
I found for $1 a fairly clean (or hardly soiled) first of her 2010 “My Hollywood” at Menlo Park library, around the corner.
The clerk misunderstood me about Mona being more popular anywhere but here (which I believe I kept when I did my epic and sad deaccessioning recently, but have not read).
Looks like a post.
(mow from Menlo Library 500 yards and three hours from Mona Simpson at Kepler’s tonight. I also have a photo of Terry posed near author Christopher Moore at Kepler’s last week. Terry works late so I can almost hang out until this event, which means putting off laundry for a day)
Back in the day the San Francisco Giants had a promotion wherein if you stayed to the end of an extra innings game, at often breezy and brisk Candlestick Park, you would receive a little prize, a pin called Croix de Candlestick, after some French sounding medal or award in the real world.
In Palo Alto, whether it is homage or not, as part of Our Palo Alto, a staff member handed me, and others a little pin, a reward for paying attention to what passes for democracy (in a breezy and brisk way) here. I sat thru two of these Our Palo Alto meetings and for the most part resisted letting myself be bribed by cheese and crackers, wine, cake, dips and chips and the like. (I had part of a bottle of mineral water, at Avenidas, and took the pin).
I noticed in Council Packet that we the people are actually spending $325,000 on this.
I would like it if staff could itemize this for me.
Here is my pin:
I’ve been pinned by Our Palo Alto
edit to add:
mark weiss
Today at 1:07 PM
To
ourpaloalto
XXX XXXXXXXX (I thought I had bcc’d a former council member but may have leaked his identity to Ms. Keith, who reports to City Manager Jim Keane as Director of Communications here, since about April, 2013
Claudia Keith or whoever:*
I read in council packet that Our Palo Alto has a budget of $325,000. Could you please itemize that figure and or provide a pro forma?
Thanks.
Mark Weiss
I’ve been to two dates, at Downtown Library and Avenidas
650.XXX-XXXX
I posted this to my blog, Plastic Alto:
The Croix de Palo Alto (this was a link in message to Keith)
* or edit to add: the reason I sound flippant here (“Claudia Keith or whoever”) is that the email address is “ourpaloalto at city of palo alto dot org” — I don’t like correspondence that does not use an actual name, especially in public sector. And “Claudia Keith” responded to a previous email to that address, I am pretty sure. I spoke with her at the two meetings, as well as Tim Wong, Amy French, Consuelo Hernandez and Stacy formerly of Santa Cruz Patch, a freelancer who reports to Keith. It is still confusing, even if you read the report in council packet, the relationship between Comp Plan, Housing Element, City Managers Office, Council and private sector and NGO’s.
Related question: why is public sector here a “dot org” and not a “dot gov”?
edit to add: I am babbling on here for about 1 minute (edited from about 5 minutes, with Shannon Burkey of City Staff, contract worker in pr) at 3:40 to 4:45 or so:
Helen Sung anthem for a new day, is a cd released in February on Concord, her major label debut, her sixth cd as a leader. She came thru the 650 in February, to Pete Douglas’ Beach House, and will be back in the Bay Area in October.
She describes being at a new beginning, a new chapter in her musical journey. That an anthem is a rallying cry, as she merges her classical training for most of her youth with the fact that jazz “found me”. “Play who you are” the masters say. (I think that’s an indirect quote of a famous Monk statement, that I quoted from Hentoff as TK, and that Ethan Iverson and Cedar Walton were referencing as “play your shit”).
Here is a video from a couple years back of Helen Sung with bassist Ron Carter. The gig was aided by Loren Schoenberg of the Harlem Jazz Museum. part of Jazz in the Himalayas campaign:
“In Walked Bud” a Monk tune. Helen Sung is also sponsored by the North Coast brewery that produces Thelonious Monk beer — to research this post I went to Whole Foods and bought a bottle. Terry, my girlfriend Terry Acebo Davis, did a series of residencies in Belgium, to print monotypes: I wonder if Helen Sung would benefit from a similar experience, emersion in a foreign culture — why not Belgium? — although that is a funny tangent from Monk to Belgian Ale to Belgium per se. Maybe an emersion in the North Coast, as distinct from Houston or New York or touring would also be a refreshing pause at some point in her journey. Or Montalvo or (that place in Woodside, funded by the guy who for Syntex developed the birth control pill, Djerassi), two local artist colonies — might be useful tactics in her continued evolution. I know that Wayne Horvitz, for example, made good use of his time at Montalvo (in Saratoga, founded by the former governor of California, Phelan), writing his through-composed “Joe Hill..” piece. As did my friend Beth Custer.
How would she sound playing the same piece today?
How would she sound playing the same piece, or something else, with Ron Carter today, or someone like him, heavy?
Has she recorded “In Walked Bud”? I mean in a studio and on one of her six releases?
Here’s an idea: Loren Schoenfeld I would presume is still in her camp — and he has some pull here at Stanford (although I write this from Menlo Park, “Menalto”, Zoe Cafe, about three miles from campus per se) based on a series of lectures he has done at Stanford, mostly about Mingus, and mostly due to the influence of Jenny Bilfield when she was director of Stanford Lively Arts: what if Stanford found a fund to get Helen Sung for a series of site-specific performances in alternative spaces here in October, maybe in conjunction with the opening of the Windhover Contemplative Space (built to display the giant “Windhover” paintings by Nathan Oliveira)? Could she bring something small and quiet, not a piano but maybe a thumb piano or a toy piano into the space, to perform for a relatively small audience or to make a document, a film, to be shown later? What if she also did something similar in one of the two echo chambers of “Sequence” by Richard Serra, installed behind Cantor Art Museum? Or she could perform a “smule” device developed by Stanford’s Ge Wang, a piano ap for “smart phone” device. Or just load a piano or keyboard into one of those spaces. But I mean below the radar of Bing or SLA per se, at this late date, while she is booking a tour into more normal places like Yoshi’s or SF Jazz. (And I ran into the bookstore of the museum and bought and then gifted Loren a copy of Peter Selz’s book about Oliveira, about the relationship between those innovative painters and their love of jazz; Oliveira and Getz, for instance. Maybe Connie Wolf of the Museum could take the lead here, in getting a Helen Sung play at Stanford on a short lead time, or reactive to art and architecture here?)
This is a fun self-promotional video, comprised on still photos, edited to match the bounce of the performance. It took me three tries to get that there are about 100 shots, of which about 60 feature images of Helen — and that’s not being self-centered or vain or anything considering that a career in the arts includes managing one’s image and is at least about marketing as much as chops, even in jazz and classical. The video also showcases Helen Sung’s considerably good photography and eye for detail and sense of humor. She likes cats, is a Virgo, has traveled to cool places, for fun and work, likes food, and more. There are archival family photos of her at piano, but also trying violin. She poses with a lot of jazz masters (few of whom I can pick out just by their face, although I bet I could I could match 80 percent of them their name to their instrument). It’s a fairly revealing video, and effective, if she is trying to reach out, using the media, to fans and potential collaborators — she might have used something like this to find a label or record deal. If you are super-curious, like a cat, you could freeze on frames showing her bookcase and cd stacks. (ok, youtube was messing with me and linked to the wrong video three times, but the remedy, and as Paracelsus says, the difference between a potion and a poison is the dose, gave me opportunity to note, cd’s — Hank Jones, “Tiptoe Tapdance”, Cedar Walton “Sweet Basil Trio”, Danilo Perez “Panamonk”, plus Curtis Mayfield “Superfly”, Bob Marley “Hot…”, Stevie Wonder “In Square Circle” — books — Richard Hofstadter, ” Godel Escher Bach”, Willa Cathers, four titles (!!!!), J.R.R. Tolkien, “Lord of the Rings” in pocket book editions, plus “Hobbit” and “The Silmarillion”, Eric Schlosser “Fast Food Nation” and H.G. Welles “War of the Worlds” — and these things always make me wonder about musical projects derivative of or transformative of a work of literature.
I could finish this off my transcribing the notes in my spiral booklet, with the hope of someday fleshing it out, but I also want to check out something about Sid Caesar and piano that is on Helen Sung’s Facebook –an oddity of me finally having a computer, as opposed to commandeering Terry’s laptop or using the public library is even after three months and TK posts — I keep writing TX for TK — is that I have yet to memorize my Apple codes or download any music and Youtube per se says I lack an Adobe install although if I cut and paste a video’s URL to wordpress here — and make this public — I can view. Weird meta-issue.
That my blog is public but relatively obscure it is like I am writing in a notebook and people can, for whatever reason, peep over my shoulder to hear my thinking out loud as it were. After three years and 600 plus posts, blogging for me is not like, for instance, being the summer reporter for the Worcester Telegram were I knew that 50,000 would see my mistakes.
And still not sure the distinction between actually doing things (as I did, say, between 1994 and 2001) and merely writing about them (as I do in recent years). I’d love it if my ideas prove useful to Helen Sung — if she or her team ever sees this — or prophetic, like if she does a piece based on her love of Tolkien — maybe she already has — but for now I would say “Plastic Alto” is a hypothetical world of ideas that most likely will not intersect with the common time-space agreed continuum. Which I guess is another difference between me and James Franco: the granddaughters of famous filmmakers and producers are not lining up to exploit my musings.
God bless Juliet Lee and her family; I’m not actually religious but my higher power and I have an arrangement in which I can vamp my way thru a pose of Faith. I’m suggesting Helen Fajardo for a girl and Thelonious Fajardo for a boy, or actually Thelonious Helen Yu-Nguyen (pronounced “YOU WIN!!!) Fajardo in all cases. Mazel tov. File under: chilombican.
edit to add, exactly six minutes later:
I actually had a hard time sitting thru six minutes of this, while my mind was wanting to wander to Christian Marclay music film at Stanford and or Marx Brother — Zeppo? — playing piano, which I saw at Stanford Theatre — off campus — recently with Steve and Eric Cohen (whose father is in “Godel Escher Bach”, for his work on the continuum hypothesis and I sometimes wonder if a musician, like a Helen Sung, could write something that is a reaction to the work of Paul J. Cohen, which reminds me of hearing tell of the Motema tribute to her father at Stanford, I wrote about earlier).
And to the extent that anyone sees this in this form, who could possible interpret the following mere list: Marian McPartland, Mary Lou Williams (March 5, Harlem), Connie Crothers, Jessica Williams, Uri Caine, Don Byron, Wayne Horvitz, Fred Ho, Ai Wei Wei, Dionysus, Patricia Barber, Jen Shyu, Joyce Yu-Jean Lee, Trisha Brown, Dave Douglass, Gerhard Richter, Bill Frisell, Monk and or Mingus, Mathew Pierce “Pecos Bill”, Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Texas Swing, Bob Willis, Rick Koster, Marcia Ball, Dave Douglass “Witness”, Taylor Eigsti,
新年快樂! ok, well my notebook actually says “chinese characters feb 1” but it would take me awhile to learn to actually write
新年快樂!
but I’d like to try, and can edit to add,
Jenny Scheinman, Ethan Iverson, Darcy James Argue, Ingrid Jensen, Marcia Schneider, W.Royal Stokes (“conversations”), Nat Hentoff, Herb Wong, Anton Schwartz, Donny McCaslin, Cedar Walton “an important bebop accompanist”, Nels Cline on TX ANDREW HILL, Vijay Iyer, I wrote in “Edvard Grieg” next to where I had Sid Caesar but neither belong here, like “Jazz Standard”, or “WNYC” Sound Check, nor “Blue Whale Joon Lee – LA”, Orochon Ramen Hall of Fame, my former clients Stew, JAE, Walrath and HB, Ron Carter, Guo Gan erhu, April, Women’s Jazz Festival in Palm Springs, kudos, Ron Miles while in Denver, Red Garland, Bret Primak, APAP Showcase (a long list of relatively unknown performers), Matt Merewitz (who I’ve never met but I recall taking a bus from Center City Philadelphia to Don Lucoff’s office and then stopping at local library on way back and buying from their discard section books on Lionel Hampton and Richard Hart; I’ve known Andres Fajardo, who is Helen Sung’s cousin-in-law, for 38 years but wonder if I would still be even this deep into his circle if we both didn’t overlap in Philadelphia in 2004/2005 and he called out to me as I drove up Arch Street and he spied me?!
The only other things on my list are: she kinda reminds me of Vienna Teng (Cynthia Shih) if that is not too superficial; I wonder what, from the Ted Gioia book, which I might have to go buy RIGHT NOW, from nearby Kepler’s Books in Menlo Park, even on my bicycle, are the preferred versions of “In Walked Bud”; I think I wrote “Mitzi’ no “Mimi web design” and “Dan Nimmer” who plays piano with LCJO.
And that’s my anthem for this a.m., a place to start my afternoon, a journey, putting one foot, or one wheel in front of the other.
I will be at Kepler’s before you finish this:
edit to add, a year and six months later: not sure why this suddenly spiked, but thanks for reading (or skimming: don’t kid myself)
andand, five minutes after that: in terms of gigs that hypothetically could exist at Stanford, it’s now true that the Estate of Paul J. Cohen donated the family piano to the four floor of the math department and we did have, via another Steve Cohen, having Vijay Iyer penciled in to break it in but that fell through and maybe Helen Sung can play there someday, especially since as of yesterday I think of Connie Wolf the museum director as a lapsed-math-major. Dig?
The Gunn High Titans athletic department recently hired an internationally-known German cross country skier, Denise Herrmann, to help narrow the gap between them and the cross-town Vikings. In addition to the current 20 sports, Gunn will be adding cross country skiing and biathlon to the lineup.
Palo Alto Sport and Toy (managed by former Oracle cartoonist Eric Hager) will offer a barely legal sweetheart deal to connect the school with some of the leading manufacturers of off-snow ski-gear (essentially, roller blades). “Barely legal” in this case means a good deal but not breaking any laws or rules, something we in South Palo Alto try to do on general principal.
Ms. Herrmann is a hottie, especially if you have a weakness (in a platonic and professional sense) for athletic, Germanic types.
In a related development, the school tried to woo Sue Sylvester for some type of leadership role, but alas, no glee in Titan-ville on that front. (trying to fill void apropos of Katy Villalobos traded to Paly for a set of glass pumpkins.
THE STREAK
In South Palo Alto, that refers to the seven years that Gunn boys won CCS tennis and 200 straight matches. (And what made you picture blonde woman wearing nothing but fake Indian headdresses? speaking of barely legal). Menlo, I hear tell, is closing in on Gunn’s legacy. Hah-hah, made you look.
Herr is Frau Herrmann:
New Gunn hire, from out of the area, Ms. Denise Herrmann
edit to add: School Board names former Packer Great Max McGee to lead PAUSD
Posted by Mark Weiss, a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood
5 minutes ago
Is it a coincidence that the school board hires a principal who shares a name with an World Cup Nordic skier then a Supe who shares a name — even given ironically — with a Super Bowl hero?
We have been working closing with an outside contractor to map the process and begin the conversion of our old microfiche blueprint plans to a digital format. This will be a multi-year effort to convert all of the 125,000 fiche records to the new format. This upgrade will result in improved access to the records by the public and City staff.
(The City of Palo Alto’s Development Office email blast, May, 2014)
Meanwhile, in a related matter, I hear tell that musicians individually collaboratively and professionally known as The Baby Sitters Club (Matt Sussman, Rachel Metz and Jessie Oppenheimer) want me to send them the two demo tapes they sent me leading up to their appearance with Spoon and Van Gogh’s Daughter at Cubberley in 1998. It seems they sent me master tapes of two rehearsals. (On actual tape cassettes).
Speaking of which: I am waiting for the Earthwise Productions media vendor to report back on backing-up or copying to digital the first of what will eventually be a neat little archive of about 40 performances at the Cub, including my Medeski Martin and Wood, Dar Williams, Mother Hips and Imogene Heap. Somewhere I posted to the web some digital files of the Elephant Six Olivia Tremor Control…
Jared arrived home from Boston on May 12, and the band immediately hit the studio for two-a-day rehearsals before leaving on their Hear the Waves Tour on Friday May 12. Drummer Pete Johnston is still at UCSC, so they are borrowing DJ Marko from Mystic Roots for the tour.
It’s actually Jared Solomon, son of my former neighbor, classmate and Beth Am congregant Aaron Solomon, who is also a Berklee School of Music student, and Aaron’s big sister Debbie used to date Jon from Camper Van Beethoven.
Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss 