Terry Acebo Davis, Mark Weiss, Bruce Beasley, ‘Percent For Art’, Mitchell Park Library (3 — i.e. short version of the story)

Posted on March 11, 2021 by markweiss86
(Dartmouth College)

We met in 2009 at Bruce’s Oakland studio, when the commissioners were touring and I was a proxy, then married in fall, 2017 in San Francisco
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Stacy and Linda expelled from Ridgemont

Posted on March 5, 2021 by markweiss86
Jefferson claims he was ‘catfished’
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Lions With Wings…

Posted on February 28, 2021 by markweiss86

is both a symbol of the arbitrary cultural detritus that fifth-gear capitalism expels into the world and also an effortless, obvious merger of the roots-rock then and the arena post-rap now that suggests the conditions for this song to succeed have always been with us, and will never go away.
i’m doing my best. Roaaaaaaaar.

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Notable jazz releases in a year that seemed to have stopped for a few months

Posted on February 27, 2021 by markweiss86

The Nels Cline Singers, Share the Wealth (Blue Note)
Lafayette Gilchrist, Now (Lafayette Gilchrist Music)
Maria Schneider Orchestra, Data Lords (ArtistShare)
Rudresh Mahanthappa, Hero Trio (Whirlwind)
Fred Hersch, Songs From Home (Palmetto)
Jeff Parker, Suite for Max Brown (International Anthem)
Chicago Underground Quartet, Good Days (Astral Spirits)
Ron Miles, Rainbow Sign (Blue Note)
Lakecia Benjamin, Pursuance: The Coltranes (Ropeadope)
Thelonious Monk, Palo Alto (1968, Impulse)
Thana Alexa, ONA (self-released)
Nubya Garcia, Source (Concord)
Ambrose Akinmusire, On the Tender Spot of Every Calloused Moment (Blue Note)
Lisa Mezzacappa Six, Cosmicomics (Queen Bee)
Jeremy Pelt, The Art of Intimacy, Vol. 1 (HighNote)
Nina Simone, Fodder on My Wings (1982, Verve)
Dayna Stephens Trio, Liberty (Contagious Music)
Dayna Stephens, Right Now! Live at the Village Vanguard (Contagious Music)
Sara Serpa, Recognition (Biophilia)
Matana Roberts & Pat Thomas, The Truth (Otoroku)
Charles Lloyd, 8: Kindred Spirits (Live From the Lobero) (Blue Note)
Mary Halvorson’s Code Girl, Artlessly Falling (Firehouse 12)
Charles Mingus, @ Bremen 1964 & 1975 (Sunnyside)
Keith Jarrett, Budapest Concert (ECM)
Artemis, Artemis (Blue Note)
Joshua Redman-Brad Mehldau-Christian McBride-Brian Blade, Round Again (Nonesuch)
Matthew Shipp Trio, The Unidentifiable (ESP-Disk)
Norah Jones, Pick Me Up Off the Floor (Blue Note)
Connie Han, Iron Starlet (Mack Avenue)
The John Santos Sextet, Art of the Descarga (Smithsonian Folkways)
James Carney Sextet, Pure Heart (Sunnyside)
Bill Frisell, Valentine (Blue Note)
Tyshawn Sorey, Unfiltered (self-released)
Jennifer Curtis & Tyshawn Sorey, Invisible Ritual (New Focus)
Heroes Are Gang Leaders, Artificial Happiness Button (Ropeadope)
Jeff Cosgrove-John Medeski-Jeff Lederer, History Gets Ahead of the Story (Grizzley Music)
Dezron Douglas & Brandee Younger, Force Majeure (International Anthem)
Pat Metheny, From This Place (Nonesuch)
Sonny Rollins, Rollins in Holland (1967, Resonance)
Sun Ra Arkestra, Swirling (Strut)
The Claire Daly Band, Rah! Rah! (2008, Ride Symbol)
Gregory Tardy, If Time Could Stand Still (WJ3)
Kurt Elling, Secrets Are the Best Stories (Edition)
Jeremy Pelt, The Art of Intimacy, Vol. 1 (HighNote)
Dafnis Prieto Sextet, Transparency (Dafnison Music)
Matt Wilson Quartet, Hug! (Palmetto)
Liberty Ellman, Last Desert (Pi)
Dave Douglas, Dizzy Atmosphere: Dizzy Gillespie at Zero Gravity (Greenleaf Music)
Webber/Morris Big Band, Both Are True (Greenleaf Music)
Anne Mette Iversen Quartet + 1, Racing a Butterfly (BJU)
Christian McBride, The Movement Revisited: A Musical Portrait of Four Icons (Mack Avenue)
Nicole Mitchell & Lisa E. Harris, EarthSeed (FPE)
Fay Victor’s SoundNoiseFunk, We’ve Had Enough! (ESP-Disk)
Larry Ochs-Aram Shelton Quartet, Continental Drift (Clean Feed)
Jon Irabagon, I Don’t Hear Nothin’ but the Blues: Volume 3: Anatomical Snuffbox (Irabbagast)
Brad Mehldau, Suite: April 2020 (Nonesuch)
Thundercat, It Is What It Is (Brainfeeder)
Thumbscrew, The Anthony Braxton Project (Cuneiform)
Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah, Axiom (Ropeadope)
Sam Gendel, Satin Doll (Nonesuch)
Dan Weiss Starebaby, Natural Selection (Pi)
Joel Harrison + 18, America at War (Sunnyside)
Dave Rempis-Jeff Parker-Ingebrigt Håker Flaten-Jeremy Cunningham, Stringers and Struts (Aerophonic)
Dave Douglas, Marching Music (Greenleaf Music)
Wayne Escoffery, The Humble Warrior (Smoke Sessions)
Edward Simon, 25 Years (1995-2018, Ridgeway)
Allegra Levy, Lose My Number (SteepleChase)
Anna Webber, Untamed . . . Rectangles (Out of Your Head)
Camila Meza & the Nectar Orchestra, Ambar (Sony Masterworks)
Chris Potter, There Is a Tide (Edition)
Aaron Parks, Little Big II: Dreams of a Mechanical Man (Ropeadope)
Luciana Souza, Storytellers (Sunnyside)
Jacob Garchik, Clear Line (Yestereve)
Jon Jang, The Pledge of Black Asian Allegiance (Asian Improv)
Aubrey Johnson, Unraveled (Outside In)

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Oakland A’s swing for homers times 3,000

Posted on February 26, 2021 by markweiss86

Call it Superduperstar Cuty


The A’s announced a plan with a baseball park, 3,000 homes and some shops.
I haven’t swung a bat in about 10 years but have sat through 3,000 hours of development proposals here in Palo Alto. I should bone up on this project. I think its near Yoshis not the airport.
Maybe we’ll move there.

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NEW CD RELEASE: HEROES ARE GANG LEADERS ON ROPEADOPE RECORDS

Posted on February 25, 2021 by markweiss86

I found this on a top ten list, and I used to follow RAD closely

Heroes Are Gang Leaders's avatarHeroes Are Gang Leaders Music

View original post 344 more words

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325 Lytton, $20m; their tenant you’ve never heard of, $1.3b

Posted on February 23, 2021 by markweiss86
Random nobody’s pose in front of the building at 325 Lytton, built by Vance Brown, designed by Tony Carrasco, stones by Haussmann in 2009; the Biz Journal reports that a new tenant there Plume is now worth $1.3b aka a unicorn.

Smart-home technology provider Plume Design Inc. joined the Bay Area’s unicorns Tuesday with a $270 million funding round.

The Palo Alto company, which has largely flown under the radar despite its technology being used in some 22 millions homes, saw its valuation more than double to $1.35 billion as a result of the financing. The sole investor in the round — Plume’s Series E — was New York-based Insight Partners.

 

Plume plans to use the new funds to develop its technology and to invest in sales, marketing and partnerships, CEO Fahri Diner told the Business Journal in an interview this week. That will mean growing aggressively its workforce of 300, about half of which is based in the U.S. — mostly in Palo Alto. 

“We had about 180 people at this time last year, and I expect that we will be able to grow to around 600 by the end of this year,” Diner said.

“Before the pandemic, I spent about half my time here (in Switzerland) and half in Palo Alto,” he said. “Now it has been mostly here, but our global headquarters is back there, where we leased beautiful new offices on Lytton Avenue at the end of 2019 that most of us have never been to yet. We were supposed to move into them last spring, but the pandemic changed those plans.”

 

Apropos of the assertion, variations of which I’ve proferred since running for council (getting a mere 800 votes) 2009, that the flipside of our success is a challenge to our ability to self-govern as a Democracy: did we cede to special interests?

How do we run our $450m civic budget for 60,000 citizens while the billion per year ($50B on the tax rolls) real estate industry feeds its greed? And what is the effect of sharing the commons with the billionaires, those who ride or create in their labs Unicorns?

Valid questions — no one in leadership dares asking a follow up, let alone try to answer. 

Grand Jury Report?

Or, read Plastic Alto.

mbw

Maybe we need a Corton Beige or Moca Creme Counter Revolution. Is this stuff good for kitchens?

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With the new Palo alto Art commission temporary mural installation it’s a tossup on whether it’s better to seek them out through the handy map or be surprised when you stumble upon them, so to speak

Posted on February 21, 2021 by markweiss86
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Lions With Wings endorsed by Chico

Posted on February 21, 2021 by markweiss86

Speaking of guitar noise

I recently had that most wonderful of experiences of having my hair blown back by an exhilarating burst of fuzzed-out guitar licks. The furious cluster of notes came out of nowhere to punctuate the first verse in “Cantor’s Mind Was Rocking,” a new song by Barbara Manning. That’s right, a brand-new song by Chico’s favorite musical daughter—released free of charge on Valentine’s Day.

Barbara Manning

It’s one of three tracks recorded for the Lions With Wings Bandcamp page, part of an initiative by Earthwise Productions of Palo Alto that’s brought together sheltering-in-place artists who’ve agreed to create “covid-protocol, social-distance bubble projects” and share the fruits. Manning’s three cuts include covers of Elliott Smith’s “Twilight” and Edgar Winter’s “Dying to Live,” plus her rockin’ tribute to mathematician Georg Ferdinand Ludwig Philipp Cantor, featuring that amazing guitar lead (by Tony “Fingers” Naranjo—of L.A. punks Thee Undertakers fame) and my favorite lyrics of the year so far:

Cantor loved a good debate
 / His data did the talking / 
Ripping math almost in half
 / Cantor’s mind was rocking

Manning has also put out a few other tunes during the pandemic—three more covers released in December on her own Bandcamp page, including a gorgeous version of one of my all time favorite songs, “So Much Wine,” by The Handsome Family. It’s just the sort of sad story set in winter that makes for a great Christmas song:

Listen to me, Butterfly / There’s only so much wine you can drink in one life / And it will never be enough to save you from the bottom of your glass

In addition to all of that fun, the local music legend is returning Butte County this month to help wildfire victims. Manning will be performing a live-streamed show from Jen’s Place in Paradise, next Friday, Feb. 26, at 8 p.m., and will be seeking donations during the set for Concow residents impacted by fires. Visit Manning’s Facebook page to find out how to watch.

Jason Cassidy, Chico News and Record

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Ethan Iverson, Downbeat VS Megan Theestallion, Bazaar

Posted on February 20, 2021 by markweiss86
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