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TEN MINUTES DRIVING AROUND PALO ALTO IN MY DAD’S OLD LEXUS LISTENING AS IF FOR THE FIRST TIME TO THE BAD PLUS ONE
2. Or “Woman with Dog Wearing Backpack near Stanford Gate” (Anthem for the earnest)
3.Let our Garden Grow or “white knuckles green light”
4. The Empire Strikes Backward or i hope the truck does not hit the pedestrian
5. backhanded compliment >> chariots of fire
Few people realize that John Venn Neumann, the inventor of the Venn diagram, lived here in Palo Alto. He used to play poker with other notable geniuses like Dr Richter, the inventor of the Richter scale, Nathan Oliveira, who invented the nude or if not the nude the idea of Xeroxing your a** on a copy machine, and Hewlett and Packard, in fact they used to play strip poker and do a life drawing session — or was it a collage bee? – -in that famous garage on Addison Street (which is now the world’s most expensive piece of property, or after the Japanese Imperial Palace, if you excuse the digression).
Anyhow, as part of our heritage, staff is required to use a Venn diagram in every report.
For example, here is one from tonite.
Although to the average reader, or citizen, this looks like 4 ideas and a bunch of overlapping ovals, it is actually 10 or 11 separate ideas. That’s the geniousof of it.Tune back in later as I break down ideas, 4 thru 11.
(Note: people think Plastic Alto is about music, but before that I was an English major at Dartmouth; but before that I was the highest scoring student in the honors math lane at Terman Junior High, which was named for the guy who invented the Theremin. Before he left to join the Beech Boys.
Backed with so to speak: Ed “Sharkey” Shikado announced to mixed reaction that we are disbanding the Public Art commission but hiring conceptual artist and my Gunn classmate John Beech to succeed Pasco Sam as head of Utilities:
One said we have a republic, if we cnn keep it.
The other said it’s got a back beat you can’t lose it.
Something like that.
@Adobe abode, in terms of my concert series at Cubberley, I did have an artist from Africa, Femi Kuti, from Nigeria, although he was based mostly in France at the time of our show. His father was beaten by soldiers at the direction of the dictator, who didn’t like being upstaged.
The song “You Get What You Give” perfomed somewhere during the inaugural I’m told by the re-formed one-night-only The New Radicals, was co-written by a guy from Los Altos. Rick Nowels (actually, come to think of it, New Radicals’ thru their agent asked to play the Cubberley Sessions, but I was already booked up, with Train…)
The Republic if we can keep it, has to have a Democratic back beat you can’t lose it any old way you choose it
I said below that I was going to turn out 500 sax players.
Amber Navran of Moonchild, sings, sax — this is a clarinet though. No, sax.
In a previous life I had a blue spiral notebooks with the names of 1,000 sax players, culled from three different jazz references.
There’s a lot of scraps, drafts, and general sloppiness, literal chaos, here at Plastic Alto — did I mention the blog is named after an axe?
I noticed the band is managed by the same people who work with Ledisi.
I noticed the band is booked by ICM, the former assistant to Marsha Vlasic.
Also: Dave Douglas podcast has an interview with Melissa Aldana — Greenleaf — inspired by Frida Kahlo.
Dave also spoke recently to Jaleel Shaw and Anna Webber.
In 1993, because my parents were supporters of Anna Eshoo, I was able to use a ticket to go to DC and watch Clinton being sworn in. I went with a college roommate, whose father worked in the Kennedy administration, who knew which tunnels would get us to the best places on the lawn in front of the US Capitol.
I remember being impressed with Maya Angelou’s speech. I thought “mark, the mastodon” was addressed to me.
I was an English major and later, and for the ensuing 26 years, and currently, work in the arts, so I think poetry can have magic powers, like Prospero putting a spell on Ariel.
Even I admit, however, that Democracy requires more work than just the right words at a ceremony – -I’m paraphrasing George Packer and referencing his 2012 book “The Unwinding”.
Yet as a concert promoter I felt a connection to the artists who were part of this recent big day: Jennifer Lopez, Katie Perry, Garth Brooks, Lady Gaga. I noted that all of them have been at this less time than I have (although on the other hand, we still do not have a Gen X president, or someone born, like me, post-Kennedy).
My dream of America will be realized when Molly Tuttle of Palo Alto sings at an inaugural her version of Jerry Garcia’s “Standing on The Moon”…
(put to Diana Diamond column on PAW — note, they habitually censor and delete me; Diane called a previous post of mine “bombast”
edit to add: I posted a version of this on Molly’s youtube plus “work that, America”
Somehow I am watching NFL football and listening to Dick Gregory in January 1972 at UCLA, but was dictating to my handheld Hunter S. Thompson about the Washington football team and Richard Nixon, Edward Muskie, Edward Bennett Williams, Dave Gurgin, pp 38-41 of Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, 2010, Bill Kilmer, Dick Gregory;
Those poor bastards could not have known what they were doing when they croaked a Doctor of Journalism out of the press box.
Gregory eerily says some of the same things: even by 1972 the press was run by a bunch of crackers and Nazi-sympathizers.
What was the thing about an ex-Army PhD from Stanford causing a ruckus at bands, allegedly put on the case by the FBI?
Bw one more for the road
This was a reiteration of a previous post that was about Keith Jarrett but digressed to a query about an unknown artist out of San Jose, Joy Dawn Hackett, who is doing a livestream for the San Jose Museum next week, Thursday, January 28. I had decided I liked her just by glancing at her muted posts. Here she does an original “bubble” take on an Esperanza Spalding song. I juxtaposed it to something from my cell phone thread, a conversation with my nephew Ben Davis, himself a Bellarmine grad in terms of his 408 bona fides, talking about Julian Lage guitar and Dayna Stephens arrangments of a Brubeck tribute to Ellington. And then to complete the progression, from me ripping someone to a hybrid content-conversation to a clip from a recent concert I produced, with Sullivan Tuttle and A.J. Lee doing two originals, at Mitchell Park Community Center, by Earthwise Productions. Recent meaning March, 2020, before the Covid shutdown.
While this was loading I was checking out the original versions: reminds me of early Stew and The Negro Problem which became “Passing Strange” plus Enorchestra Brian Eno “Taking Tiger Mountain” plus Nicole Mitchell / Lisa Harris “Earth Seed” based on Octavia Butler; the lyrics called to mind Ariel and Prospero from “The Tempest” plus the Sylvia Plath version about horses plus Emily Dickinson plus I want to see Ma Rainey story on Netflix.
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Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss 