Hark

Posted on June 21, 2021 by markweiss86

Despite the fact that i both taped the game and bought the morning paper, it was my trainer James Ward who told me that the A’s lost to the Yankees on a triple play to end the game.

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Jules at 33

Posted on June 17, 2021 by markweiss86
I first heard about Julian Lage, Blue Note recording artist on the cover of Downbeat, in 1996 when he was the subject of a film by Stanford’s Mark Becker
“Jules at 8”.
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Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, Pacaso

Posted on June 17, 2021 by markweiss86

J.K. Dineen of the Chron has a story about a unicorn billion dollar start up buying vacation property in Napa and Sonoma but claiming to be PLUR.

He wrote me back a four word exegesis: diversity in the workforce ie if P- targets gays.

My reply:

1) the name of the company falsely trades on the name of an unrelated great artist, other than if they are saying Cubism or collage are like fractional interests;

2) fractional interests tend to devalue property not increase it;
3) LLCs and limited partnerships are longtime tactics in buying commercial property, although you yield control to the GP. The GP as a venture-backed or publicly traded company would worsen the effect. Its a bad investment of $600,000. 
4) inherent to any start up is the lie regarding creation of wealth; there is nothing about this idea that rationalizes the valuation; 
5) its a pyramid scheme on two levels, stupid people bailing out smart money;
6) the private life or sexual orientation of Austin Allison is irrelevant. 

 

 

 

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I bought a book and three songs popped out

Posted on June 15, 2021 by markweiss86


I bought Bruce Iglauer’s memoir about Alligator Records from the window of Books, Inc. of Palo Alto, near the Stanford football stadium.
I noticed in the index a section about Gaye Adegbalola, a founder of Saffire – the Uppity Blues Women, whose work I admired. She’s a retired school teacher, an activist, mother, scientist and all-around force of nature in Fredericksburg, Virginia, near our nation’s capital.
I rang Gaye out of the blue(s), and then sent this letter:


Ms. Gaye:
Nice speaking with you.
I’m offering you $XXX (xxxx dollars) to make a recorded performance for my internet initiative (that I call Lions With Wings). I’m a concert promoter (sometimes also artist management) but due to the Covid pandemic I started an internet project for performers arrangers and writers where people perform in their home studio or collaborate electronically and send me the result as a sound file. If Ms Queen can find a tape recorder function on your smart phone, I think that would suffice. I’m posting all the outcomes on Bandcamp as a free stream. And in many cases I will later offer you a performance in my series at Mitchell Park Center here in Palo Alto. (It actually got started because some artists I had already paid their deposit for cancelled spring 2020 shows and the recordings are a “make good”).
The $xxxx would be $500 now and the balance on demand. If you keep track of your time, I think of it as $xx/ hour for 46 hours. That is, I am offering to underwrite 46 hours towards preparing, creating, researching rehearsing and or performing something I can post to the internet. (You can also farm out or assign any of those hours at same rate to collaborators or parts or crafts or consultants). I would say that I am anticipating that people turn in some thing between one song — five minutes —but it took them that long to figure out— or maybe like an EP 30 minutes five songs. It ideally would be something that was initiated or got started specifically for this project.
If you deliver by June 30, 2021 that would be fine. Hopefully by then we could also realistically figure out when live shows resume — in some ways this “label” project is like research towards a live show.
Mark Weiss
Earthwise Productions
PO Box 60786
Palo Alto, CA 94306
(my phone)
Lions With Wings

I have specific ideas I could suggest based on things that you said or did in the four or five videos you posted on your social media page. But really whatever you wanna do is fine.
I’d be honored.


One-hundred-seventy-one email messages later, plus some texts and a few phone conversations, and these three tracks arrived:
1) “Keep the Faith”


2) “John Lewis”


3) “Tell Mamala”



Lickety-split, we hope to post them to my Bandcamp account for download. Look for Gaye popping eyes and raising spirits on the West Coast soon enough, lord willing and the creek don’t rise.

Cheers,
Mark Weiss
Earthwise of Palo Alto
Plastic Alto blog
Lions with Wings label

 

I like her line about Kamala Harris – -who was elected Vice President of the U.S. during our correspondence: sassy, classy stank eye. Doesn’t really go here but I met Kamala at Jim Newton’s book party in Menlo Park. Good luck to Maya Wiley my classmate running for mayor of NYC. EQUALITY DIVERSITY TRANSPARENCY HONESTY LEGITIMACY BRAVERY (She’s speaking)..

 

Updated three weeks later: good news, a label is negotiating with Gaye to distribute these songs as an EP; bad news, they asked Lions With Wings and Plastic Alto to take down the free streaming until the ink dries on that deal. Go, Gaye!!

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Quick take on Ventura

Posted on June 15, 2021 by markweiss86

A shot of Jack with your planning

I like a musicians’ village with subsidized housing for artists from Palo Alto taking serious steps towards careers in music, that don’t have to move to Nashville or Austin to live while they develop their audience. Molly Tuttle, whose father Jack Tutle works at Gryphon could be a stakeholder or consultant. ie. Gryphon is near the site.
The other thought is that Matt Sonsini CEO of Sobrato, went to Gunn High and lived part of his high school years in Evergreen Park, somewhat near NVAC. Maybe he could walk the site. There’s another good guy now at Sobrato named D. Valentine sic.

The worst part of this deal is either that developers bought up a bunch of contingent sites and or pushed thru the larger upzone (14 acres >>>>60 acres) or the money wasted on the consultants and dog-and-pony shows.

outro:

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O, beware, my lord, of jealousy; it is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on

Posted on June 14, 2021 by markweiss86

Susan Slusser* in today’s Chron describes baseball pitcher Joe Ross of the Washingtons as a “tarter”. Ross, a Bay Area native who led Bishop O’Dowd to the CIF North Coast sectional quarterfinals held the Giants my favorite team to five hits and no runs over eight innings.
I know that “tater” can be baseball jargon; home run. Lord knows why; the batter got the whole russet, eyes, skin and all?
The first thing I did after Duffy and I got done with our morning rounds was to fire up the laptop and tap the word “tarter” into an online dictionary (My trusty Webster’s Ninth is upstairs, with its protegee and successor, Webster’s Eleventh).
I noticed that “tartar sauce” is spelled differently.
There is no noun form of “tart”. Tart can mean strong — is she saying that Joe Ross shut down Yaz and Crawf by being a thing sharper than chedder?
My mind leaped to something vaguely Shakespearish? Her writing is strong sauce, or strong meat?

No, it’s a typo. Ross was the starter, the starting pitcher and not a reliever. He was just the second starter to throw seven or more innings against the good guys this year, and it was the best outing of his career. He also K’d nine and walked none.

I quote from Othello above, using “meat” and a concordance (big word for list of Shakespeare’s words). “Green” in this case and my headline can refer to both the name of the Chronicle’s sporting pages and its hue. It also vaguely references the outfield at Boston’s Fenway Park, The  Green Monster, which is vaguely a pitcher amenity.

Sour dough bread requires a starter, if you excuse the Steve Dalkowsky.

In the big inning, there was darkness. And God said “humm baby”.
Remlinger, Remlinger, Remlinger. My finger for a horse. Rollie?


*Slusser is the successor to if not the protegee of Henry Schulman who I once berated for confusing or conflating Jeff Tesreau for Jack Chesbro. Like myself, Mike Remlinger and Kyle Hendricks of the Cubs, Tesreau was a Dartmouth man. Forsooth. (Henry VI, Part 1, IV:1:25)

 

and1: I want to caution readers and writers (catchers and pitchers, of idears) about the distinction between tartars (they of the sauce) and tartans (they of the kilts — Scottish people wore such, more a MacBeth thing than a Hamlet; I went thru a similar mind trip yesterday watching the North Macedonians in the Euro 2020). 

andand: At Jack Hirschman’s 80th birthday event at City Lights they handed out a broadside of his in which the former SF Poet Laureate mentioned a “Prince Hal” and I wonder if that was a baseball reference (Newhouser of the Tigers) or the Bard.

 

andandand: I’m still here, because the Giants and Dbacks don’t start for another seven hours — we are going with Matt Peacock who is from Southern Alabama, close to Mobile, where Hank Aaron, his brother, Willie McCovey and jazz bow Billy Bangs hail from, as compared to Westfield Alabama where Willie Mays was get or got four hours north, really Birmingham — but I forget my actual point. Not Mudcat Grant, from Florida not Mississipi actually, though we note his passing, but now I know: I was sussing about the fact that “iron sharpens iron” from the Bible, according to Robert Alter of Cal, really means, if you check your Hebrew, something more like increasing the magnetic quality. Stay tuned, y’all. 

 

edit to adle: If Ross “K’d nine”, did the Giants have a “dog day afternoon”?

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Art Hero Award to Jessica Roth for creating wheat paste street art homage to Susan O’Malley, poppies and text on Cali Ave from Middlefield to El Camino

Posted on June 13, 2021 by markweiss86
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Best of day: Midtown Dreamers

Posted on June 13, 2021 by markweiss86

Featuring Leo Hochberg the former Library Commissioner

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I cannot read this

Posted on June 13, 2021 by markweiss86
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Small world Palo Alto style

Posted on June 12, 2021 by markweiss86

Nothing says “world music” like 20 white people singing doo-wop

I agree with @Watson that the Palo Alto music scene, including events co-sponsored by or produced by The City of Palo Alto and using City facilities, featured more music from Africa, Brazil, sung in Spanish or Portuguese, using interesting poly-rhythyms or broadening our world view, but in this case, as @MA Midtown points out, we use “World Music” only in the sense that we are loosely following a model of a French event “Make Music Day” which in many countries is doing something similar, especially on The Solstice.

 

It would be nice if the ‘world music’ of Africa could also be performed and heard throughout the weekend festival.

The primitive tribal dances and rhythms of the Mandinka and Bantu tribes are intoxicating and send out the haunting global message that we all originally came from the saharas and jungles of Africa. 

Cecilia Watson, of Stanford

 

@CatherineMcMillan, Palo Alto World Music Day has been in existence for over a decade, started by Claude Ezran, you can read all about this history and larger context here (link)

Due to COVID this year we had to re-imagine how we could still bring 40+ performances to Palo Alto. Spreading it out over a month and situating musicians close to dining and shopping is what we decide to go with this year! Hope you’ll come enjoy the music sometime this month!

(Karla Kane article in Weekly about music series on Sat and Sun downtown and Cali Ave, from 5 to 7 and 12-2 replacing World Music Day, comments — and mine was automatically deleted)

 

I took some vines of the chorus singing “Sh-Boom” and then my dog barking at other dogs as I strolled looking for the second stage.

 

and1: It is sort of on my schedule that a young woman named Ryann Barnes from Menlo Park will perform under this banner at Cali Ave, tommorow aft. She is the daughter of a former UCLA football hero and quarterback named John Barnes. Maybe someday he will be known as Ryann Barnes’ father. 

 

andand: In a related matter, Delbert Anderson a Navajo trumpet player in New Mexico, wrote to say he will be in the Festival of New Trumpet, curated by Dave Douglas — he and Dave are both part of my Lions With Wings online new music project. Here is a partial list of FONT 2021 players:

Rounding out the exciting program is a workshop with British-Bahraini trumpet player Yazz Ahmed, which will be shared with Seattle JazzEd, El Paso Jazz Girls, Jazz St. Louis and other educational institutions from around the nation.

The final program will be announced on July 1st, 2021 and includes Axel Doerner (Germany), Verneri Pohjola (Finland), Suzan Veneman (Netherlands), Lukas Frei (Switzerland), Sheila Maurice-Grey (UK), Balkan Paradise Orchestra (Spain), Hermon Mehari (France/USA), Delbert Anderson and Indigenous Contemporary Arts Group (New Mexico), Lina Allemano (Canada), Mary Elizabeth Bowden (USA), Adam Cuthbert (USA), Emily Kuhn (USA)

 

andandand: A story on Delbert Anderson on Grammy Dot Com juxtaposes a story on Stanford grad Jen Shyu who is a singer, bandleader, composer and musician. Jen would fit in a world music series. I also just read that in lieu of the canceled Chili Cook off, city of Palo Alto is producing a free concert featuring a cover band called Radio City All Stars — they are people of color, if that figured into the booking, but it is far from inspired. “World Music Day” in Palo Alto, especially this years model, is a hackneyed attempt to use music to help the local economy, but it also exploits the musicians – -who are unpaid — and it potentially displaces Palo Alto’s actual buskers. It’s hard to tell if lack of a draw was a reason, a twisted type of “split-the-baby” thinking, which follows from the whole “Make Fake Fate World Wide Music Day Series Festival” saga. If we taxed Tesla we could earmark $100,000 per year for music in the parks, on the stages, that people would like. In 2022, after Covid goes away. At least some of the Peninsual Harmony Chorus were wearing masks. 

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