Category: Travel

I Know What I Like

There’s been lots and lots of rain the last couple weeks.  I finished part two of project dirt on Saturday.  Too wet to do much else.  I’m up to 12 wheelbarrow loads.  Looks like maybe three or four to finish off.

Jeannie and went upstate on Sunday to visit Martin and the family.  Once we got there the weather turned unusually cold and there was even a snow flurry.  

Martin’s boys Charlie and Matthew are now playing sax, mainly an alto which they share.  It turns out they’re pretty good, particularly Charlie, who is a couple years older and has been playing longer.  Martin has been giving them lesson and plays a (very nice Selmer Mark VI) tenor.  There’s alot of duets with a Bb and Eb horn.  So I gave them my old (cheap Chinese, but still decent and playable) soprano sax so the boys could play together.  I brought up my (ancient classic Conn) bari sax, which used to belong to Martin, so we could play as a quartet and have some fun.  I wrote out a couple John Coltrane blues charts, Blue Trane and Equinox, as double duets so we could all jam together.

That night Martin, Jeannie and I went to see a concert in The Egg, a strange theater in the downtown Albany capital complex.  It was Steve Hackett, the guitarist from the classic lineup of Genesis in the 1970’s.  I had heard that Genesis was touring this year and was thinking of going to see them.  Genesis of course was one of the great prog rock bands of all time, and I was a big fan as a teenager.  But their last really good album was Abacab in 1981 or so.  So I didn’t really want to see them play songs like Invisible Touch, and figured there’s no way they’d do something like Supper’s Ready, so I passed on it. 

Then Martin told me Steve Hackett is touring this year and the tour is called Genesis Revisited. I think Genesis was Martin’s favorite prog band of that era and he got particularly into the 12-string guitar and Hackett’s whole bag, just as mine was Emerson Lake and Palmer and I got heavy into synthesizers and Keith Emerson’s thing.

And it turned out the be a great show.  The Egg is a unique venue, all modernist curved concrete and vertical hardwoods, very sci-fi, with outstanding acoustics.  The fist set was drawn from Hacket’s solo work, and reminded me of guys like Alan Holdsworth and Jeff Beck.  His sound is actually very diverse and often quite subtle.  The second set he basically recreated the classic Genesis live album Seconds Out, which was all their best stuff from that era.  The musicianship was outstanding and the band knew every part.  They augmented the usual five-piece lineup with a sax player, who was excellent.  

I’d always wondered how they got their sound live, so some things were a revelation.  One is the bass player had a doubleneck combo bass and 12-string guitar.  I’d seen Geddy play one on Xanadu, but the Genesis sound leaned on it pretty heavily.  The other was Taurus pedals.  This was a funny little foot-operated analog bass synthesizer by Moog in the 1970’s, played like the pedals of an organ.  They appeared to be the genuine article (the Mellotrons were all recreated using samplers) and it must have been hooked up some very powerful subwoofers.  The tone was huge and so low as to be on the edge of subsonic. Sometimes it didn’t even sound like tones in the chord, just massive low frequency energy.  Definitely something you can’t get from listening to a record.

Today it finally got of to seventy degrees in the afternoon, once the rain stopped.

It’s the Time of the Season

So last weekend we went skiing for the third weekend in a row, back up at Catamount in the Berkshires. We were able to catch up with our friends Seth and Cathy, whom we haven’t seen much since before the pandemic started. The conditions were good, and I’m getting more comfortable with my new skis every outing. And once again it was really cold.

Then we had a few warm and mild days, to the point where Saturday it was close to sixty degrees and full of sunshine, and most of the snow had melted. I took the Mustang out for a rare February ride, and after that got on my bike and cruised around the neighborhood. Then Saturday night it turned cold and snowy, and Sunday there was a fresh layer of snow over everything.

I recently read a biography of tenor sax legend Michael Brecker, who used to live one town over in Hastings, and passed away fifteen years ago. He was of course one of my biggest influences in the 80’s and 90’s, with his great big sound, killer chops and boundless imagination, depth and soul in his playing. Among many other things, Mike provided an example of how to apply John Coltrane’s ideas in a contemporary setting and in a rock and funk idiom and then go beyond. His first solo album from 1987 remains one of my all-time favorites. Unlike most biographies of famous musicians, this one gets pretty deep into his actual music, his approach to practicing, improvising and writing, and insights into how he achieved his monstrous technique and applied it in all kinds of different musical situations.

Meanwhile, in my home studio I’m in the middle of tracking three short, singer-songwriter style songs written on guitar. I’ve been be practicing to get my guitar chops up, and experimenting with sounds, phrasing, tone and effects. I think I have two of the three guitar parts in the can. I hope to have full arrangements sometime this spring.

And now that Bluezebub is finished, I’ve been bringing new material into my jazz group. I’ve been listening alot to jazz-adjacent jam bands like Snarky Puppy, Galactic, and Butcher Brown, and hoping to bring some of that kind of thing into our group. We’ve been experimenting with free-from open jams, which is promising and alot of fun, but not very efficient in terms of greeting material. One thing we did was to learn an old song of mine called (I Miss My) Baby in Bb, which has a sort of open funk jam in the beginning and end, framing a funky blues as the main part of the tune. Then Ken listened to Bluezebub, and told me really likes it and would like to play Sun of the Sun off that record. Like Baby in Bb, I wrote Son of the Sun for my 80’s fusion band Event Horizon. It’s a much more advanced song, largely in 5/8 and 7/8, with a long sinuous solo section in the middle.

So now we have this old-school fusion energy in the group. I guess to be fair it was there from the beginning, as one facet of our set is songs by The Brecker Brothers, Weather Report, Grover Washington Jr., and that kind of thing, as well as jazz interpretations of rock song by groups like Steely Dan, Joe Jackson and The Police. And a good chunk of it is pre-fusion modern jazz. About half the songs are originals, mostly of mine, but they come from songs I’ve written for my last few groups and have adapted to this group.

But now I’ve written my first song specifically for this group. It’s called Dr. Pluto, and is a loping funk jam with some Monk-inspired changes and rhythm motifs. The lead on the head is designed for Ken to play on the bass with this auto-wah pedal he’s been fooling around with. It sounds pretty cool and deservers a showcase. Meanwhile I can explore a sort of contrapuntal role on the sax, something I rarely get to do. The arrangement is kept loose on purpose, to give the band a chance to stretch out on it and let it evolve and go somewhere. I’ll bring it to rehearsal this week, and we’ll see how it goes.

Winter Wonderland

It’s been a fun few weeks. A week ago we went skiing, me Jeannie and Michelle, at Catamount up in the Berkshires. It was a great time and we got in ten runs, most of them on Walther’s Way, a nice curvy blue trail with a long, strait run out at the bottom. Last year we hadn’t been skiing in seven years or so, and it was great to get back into it. We went once and it was amazing. Definitely a blessing to still be skiing in our 50’s.

Last season I bought new boots and demoed new skis. This year Jeannie got new boots too, and we both did a full-season demo/rental, where we can keep our skis if we like them instead of getting back our deposit. Skis have changed since we got our last generation of gear, getting on twenty years ago. The fashion now is for shorter, wider skis with a narrow waist. They’re better for carving, and better with some powder on the mountain, but don’t seem to hold a strait line as well, and don’t have much control on ice or scraped-off slope. I got used to mine and like them pretty well, although I can’t seem to go as fast. This fits okay with my current skiing style, which is more about cruising than hot-dogging. Jeannie isn’t digging her new slats. I’m still not sure if I’m gonna keep mine or try something else. I like the ones I demoed last year better than the ones I have now.

We went for the late session, starting in the afternoon and going into the night. On the was home we stopped by a restaurant called Four Brothers Pizza. They actually have four locations between our home and the ski slope, this was the third one. I must say it was great, better than I expected. The food was great, hot cappuccino and soup most welcome. Deep-dish Chicago style pizza; I guess we’re far enough out of the New York City Area. The decor was murals of ancient Greek and Roman temples, landmarks, seascapes and scenes out of mythology, very well done, over-the-top but nevertheless appropriate to the ambience.

During the week we went to Hades Town, a Broadway show. It was the first Broadway show for me in many years, although Lizzy and Michelle have been to a few the last several years. We met Jeannie at her office, a major book publisher, and they had some of their all-time best books on display in the lobby, including The Call of Cthulhu, and D’Aulaires Book of Greek Myths. We went to dinner and went to Yum Yum, a Thai food place in Hell’s Kitchen, one of our favorite lunch places back in the day when Jeannie and I both used to work in midtown. Good to know they’re still there and the food is as good as ever.

One thing that struck me about walking around midtown is how empty the place was. I’ve been in that neighborhood when it was wall-to-wall pedestrians and you had to practically elbow your way thru the crowd to move at all. This night you could move around with ease. Maybe five percent or less of the usual level of foot traffic.

The show itself was great. Hades Town is a retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, set to the music of old time Appalachian folk, blues, country and jazz. The songs were great, clever and moving, and the performers were fantastic too, especially the actor who played Hades, but the trombone player stole the show.

Then this last weekend we went up to Buffalo to take Michelle back to school for her next semester, and we brought our skis with us. In the past we’ve been up there around Xmastime and brought our skis, but it’s early in the season and there’s a good chance it’ll be too warm or there won’t be enough show. I haven’t been to Buffalo at the end of January for many years, and I gotta tell you, neither of those things were a problem. There were two feet of snow on the ground all around, and the temperature was below 20 degrees the whole time. I grew up in Buffalo, but I’ve almost forgotten what a real winter feels like. Nevertheless, I was quick to adapt.

We went to Holiday Valley, which is the mountain where I learned to ski. Lizzy joined us as well as Michelle. It’s not particularly high compared to the Catskills, let alone Vermont or the Sierras, but it’s enough to be fun. I haven’t been there in thirty years. They’ve made some improvements with more and faster lifts and more lodges. The day we went the high was 12 degrees, so we were hoping the cold would keep people away, but no such luck. We had to circle the parking lot three times to find a spot, and when we got to the base lodge the lift lines were pretty long. But once we got up on the mountain it was fine. Our friend Larry joined us, and he’s been skiing there alot and knew his way around. We went to the back side, to a lift called Tamarack or Tannenbaum. The trails there were beautiful, winding and woodsy with lots of good powder. Perfect soul skiing. We did run after run and went in for hot cocoa after a couple hours. Then we did one more session, up and down the Mardi Gras lift and trail, which was long and strait, mainly going for all-out speed. I think we did twelve or thrirteen runs in all. By the time we got off the mountain it was twelve degrees below zero.

Afterwards we went out to dinner at Ellicotville Brew Club, one of a growing number of craft beer places in the Buffalo area. While we were gone, there was a major snowstorm back at home. Jeannie set up a a little web cam so we could watch our yard fill up with snow. To our surprise, our neighbor Kevin across the street came over and cleared our driveway. He has a giant snowblower and I guess he doesn’t have a chance to use it that often. He’s done a bunch other kind things for us (remember project dirt last year), and the bar happened to be selling variety packs of their beers, so we picked one up for him as a thank-you.

New Year State of Mind

It’s been a little while since I last posted. Took some time off for the Christmas holidays. Both kids came home the week before Christmas for a whole week, which very nice. Lots of baking and gaming and listening to music and watching movies, and of course visiting with family. Lizzy’s boyfriend Tim came down too and spent a couple days with us. Mary’s came over on Christmas day and we had a great big feast. On boxing day we went up to Buffalo and visited with my parents and Martin for a few days. It’s been a while since I’ve seen them, and Martin’s kids are getting big fast. Charlie is thirteen now. Martin and I stayed up late talking, alot about music and software and things, but there’s never enough time to get into everything there is to say. We saw our friends Steve and Scott up there. Haven’t seen Steve in some time, so it was good to catch up. Both have been going thru difficult times. We did not see my friend John due to the the threat of heavy weather, nor Larry and Jackie due to the threat of covid. Nor did we see any of the extended family from Canada. Ah well, we’ll be back in a month, hopefully with our skis.

Over the break I read C. S. Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet and the rest of his planet trilogy, regarded as one of the groundbreaking classics of science fiction. (Earlier in the pandemic I tried to read Jack Vance’s Dying Earth saga, but I had to put it down because, you know, dying Earth and all that.) The planet trilogy is fascinating and very well written, but not what I expected. The first book is about a journey to Mars, in which the protagonist meets some wise aliens, including ones made of energy. The second takes place on Venus, and goes deeper into similar themes. The third book takes a sharp left turn and is set on Earth, in postwar England, and involves sinister research institutes, strange conspiracies, Arthurian legends, the Numinor, reanimated talking heads, and a pet bear, among other things. A surprisingly well executed combination of science, mysticism, philosophy, mythology, action and adventure and even terror. Still mulling it over.

Before the kids came home I wound down and wrapped up the year’s work. The last half of November into the first half of December was super busy. There was a big push of new work for the Global Jukebox, to support a talk Anna gave at a conference. Improved playlist and lots of other stuff.

I’ve also been looking for other consulting and software gigs, with an eye toward getting into web 3D, three.js, and Unity, with the long term goal of developing my own independent games. I’ve been working on my own but there’s alot to learn, so I’d like someone to pay me to get deeper into it while leveraging my existing skill set.

A while back I applied to a place that makes casual card and board games, looking to get into the online gaming space via Steam and Jackbox. It seemed like a perfect gig for me. However, between the time I made first contact and the time they set up the main interview, the job morphed from full stack engineer to Unity dev. The company wanted me to do an all-day Unity coding challenge. Normally I’d tell them to get lost, but this looked like a good opportunity to get up the learning curve faster than I otherwise would. In the end they didn’t want me for the Unity role, but the full stack role is still in the offing.

Meanwhile I’ve been working on my own little game, called Rock-Tac-Toe, so I plan to finish that up, both as a Unity application and as a web/mobile app, so I can compare the pros and cons of each approach.

Another area I’ve been trying to get deeper into is music software. Out of the blue I got a call from these guys from Switzerland. They’re academic researchers in computational musicology, and fans of the Global Jukebox. They have a database of 20,000 classical music compositions as midi files, and some kind of software tool to do statistical analysis on the corpus, and they’re looking to build a web application to publicly showcase their work. They seemed really eager to work together. I submitted a scope of work proposal, but unfortunately they were not clear about their budget, so it came in high. I submitted another, scaled back proposal, and am waiting to hear back.

In music, I finished my fourth Buzzy Tonic studio album. Unlike previous records, this one is all jazz instrumentals. I titled the record Bluezebub [Pandimensional Jazz Tesseract], after the song Bluezebub, the Devil You Don’t Know. It should be on Spotify, iTunes and Amazon any day now. I even got a small batch of CD’s printed up.

Now it’s on to the new rock record. More on that soon. For the moment I’ll remind you that I had three songs in the can before I switched my focus to the Jazz Tesseract, and several more in various stages of writing and recording. I started by dusting off the completed songs, and decided to add some new overdubs to two of them.

One of my goals for 2021 was to increase the amount of weight I lift when I work out. For bench press I went up 15 lbs., and am back up above 200 lbs. for the first time since six years ago, when I suffered a rather severe injury to my left shoulder and pec. For curls and most everything else that uses dumbbells I went up a similar amount, from 100 lbs. to 115, and from 50 lbs. to 90 for the light weight exercises. For 2022 I aim to add another ten pounds to every set.

The global pandemic looks to be entering its third year, with still no end in sight. We keep making and cancelling plans. We were supposed to go out to California last fall, then were thinking of going to Arizona this winter break. Now we’re thinking of going on a ski trip instead, somewhere more local were we can drive instead of fly, and spend most of our time outdoors.

And lastly, Go Bills!

And as We Wind On Down the Road

Been doing some traveling lately. This was the week we were supposed to go to San Francisco for the Pacific Coast Origami Convention, but that got cancelled due to the pandemic, and so we took some local trips instead.

A week ago Jeannie and I went out to Pennsylvania for a wedding. It was Wiccan/Halloween themed, and alot of fun. Good to catch up with that side of the family. We stayed overnight and had planned on doing some hiking around the Delaware Water Gap the next day, but it was pouring rain, so we had to punt.

One day last week went to visit the Bronx Zoo. We hadn’t been to in a while and of course it’s a world famous zoo. It was a perfect fall day, good for walking around, and the zoo wasn’t crowded at all, so we got to see everything and linger at attractions like the tigers, gorillas, and rhinos. Lots of birds and reptiles too, and of course the elephant (it seems they’re down to just one now) out standing in its field, viewable from the monorail ride.

Then this last weekend we went up to Buffalo to visit the kids as well as my parents. That was a good time. We went out to celebrate Lizzy birthday on Friday, and the next day my mum had everyone over for a big family dinner, with wine and storytelling. Sunday we out to bar in Lizzy’s neighborhood (remember Buffalo is trendy again) to catch the Bills game and try and get some of that energy now that the Bills are hot again too. It was a good time, but unfortunately the Bills weren’t really on their game and lost narrowly in the 4th quarter.

Funny thing, most of the music playing at the places we went was from the 1980’s, even some from the 70’s. My kids seem to know and like alot of that stuff. Lizzy says she listens to 97 Rock alot these days. It’s kinda strange to me that they don’t think of it as oldies. I mean when I was a teenager I wasn’t listening to music from the 1940’s. Well okay I listened to Charlie Parker and Dexter Gordon, and maybe some Duke and Ella, but none of my friends did, and I didn’t listen to pop from that era like Frank Sinatra or Bing Crosby.

While I was up there, my dad gave me a young peach tree which sprouted from a seed in his garden after a peach fell from the main tree. I planted in the back yard this morning. Hopefully it will take root and prosper.

At home I’ve been busy with the Global Jukebox, adding routes and SEO. Also diving into web and mobile 3-D, with three.js and unity. And my song Bluezebub is almost done, down to mixing, which means soon it’ll be on to finishing off the album, mastering, sequencing the tracks, doing the cover art, and publishing it.

Fun fact: Led Zeppelin’s famous fourth album, a.k.a. Zoso, is 50 years old today.

Got a Drink in my Hand, Got my Toes in the Sand

We finished out our summer vacay this year with a trip to Ocean City, MD. We used to go there pretty much every year when the kids were little, but there’s been lots of other stuff to do the last few years, so it’s been a while. This is first time Jeannie and I went by ourselves. It was fun and relaxing, very mellow. We know the place pretty well and have a few favorites, also explored some new stuff. The weather was great the whole time and we were able to eat outdoors.

We drove up Friday afternoon. The drive was pretty relaxing, even though there was a good deal of traffic. We walked around Friday evening, dipped our toes in the ocean, and went to dinner at Mackie’s on the bay, one of our perennial favorites. Yummy frozen drinks and seafood dishes. Stopped by Anthony’s deli on the way back to the hotel. Saturday was a beautiful day and we lounged on the balcony taking in the ocean view over our morning coffee, then went swimming in the ocean for a good long while. In the late afternoon we walked down the boardwalk toward the amusement pier, stopping at Shenanigans, another favorite hangout, for drinks and snacks. The evening we went on a cruise around the harbor and out into the ocean along the beach and back, giving us wonderful views of the sunset. Afterwards was ate at Anglers place on the bay right downtown, very nice. Sunday we went out to Assateague Island and did a bunch of hikes, including the swamp walk and a dunes walk. We wanted to rent a canoe but it was too windy. We came back in the afternoon and went for a swim in the ocean, but it was too rough to stay out a long time. Ate dinner on the boardwalk at a place called the Taphouse, that had many kinds of beer. I had a huge burger with the works and an egg on top. Drove home Monday after breakfast at the Marlin Moon, in our old favorite hotel, just a couple blocks from our new hotel.

Now it’s back to school time, but there’s no kids to go back to school, so it’s more like getting our heads in gear to get stuff in the fall and to the end of the year. I’m looking forward to working more on music and origami, finishing my current computer jazz record and my third origami book, and possibly some new music and origami software development, in addition to the Global Jukebox and other consulting gigs. Also doing more hiking as the weather gets cool.

She’s Leaving Home

We just got back from another road trip. This one was up to Buffalo to drop Michelle off at college. Yep, she’s a freshman at SUNY at Buffalo, majoring in aerospace engineering. Jeannie and I are officially empty nesters.

The week before was a hectic one, full of Michelle packing and getting organized, and getting ready mentally for a big change in her life. She was mostly looking forward to it, but a little bit nervous too. Lizzy, on the other hand, was psyched to have her sister coming to town. Last Saturday and Sunday it rained all day, so we didn’t have a change to pre-load the car. Monday morning we got up early and the rain stopped just as we started to load in, so it all went pretty smoothly and everything fit.

Monday night Lizzy invited us to join her and her friends for trivia night at a local bar where they have a regular team, because I know all kinds of useless facts. I used to wonder about whether we’re turning into our parents, but she’s already turning into us. I recently asked her what new music I should listen to, and she said she’s listening to alot of classic rock these day cuz it’s always a topic for trivia. Anyway, it was a fun night and downtown Buffalo continues to be hip and trendy. We came in 3rd place, which is much better than they usually do, because I knew things like Alice Cooper’s real name, who the programming language PASCAL was named after, and the height of Mount Everest. We would have done better if they’d listened to Michelle when she correctly identified the Australian flag, instead of guessing New Zealand.

Tuesday we moved Michelle in. It went smoothly enough, except it was unusually hot the whole week we were up there, and her dorm does not have air conditioning. Her rooms is on the third floor, so it was alot of trips up and down the stairs. As we were moving in we met Michelle’s roommate and her family, who are from Long Island, and like Jeannie and me are UB graduates. After we unloaded everything we took Michelle shopping for all the stuff that we didn’t bring up with us. After that we went up to North Tonawanda to meet Lizzy at her work because Michelle was inheriting the fridge we bought for Lizzy when she lived in the dorms. Later that evening we all went out for dinner a burger place on Maple Road.

Wednesday Jeannie and I mostly hung around my parents’ house. We went for an epic walk in the morning, but by the time we returned it was already pretty hot. We had BLT sandwiches for lunch, with fresh tomatoes from their garden. It’s tomato and peaches season right now, and they’re having a bumper crop this year, so we ate lots of both every day. Brought some home too. Yum!

It seems like every time I go on vacation it aligns with a mini-crisis on the Global Jukebox, and this trip was no exception. There was a deadline with lots of last-minute design changes, so I ended up working that day and evening and doing a push to the live site the next morning. I had a chance to practice guitar too, and learned the Beatles song She’s Leaving Home, which Jeannie found very annoying for some reason.

Thursday I went rollerblading in the morning. My parents’ neighborhood is nice and flat, with smooth streets and very little traffic, so it’s perfect. I did two whole laps of the neighborhood, and found one street that was unusually smooth, so I went back and forth on it three times. In the afternoon we visited the Buffalo Museum of Science, which I had not been to for at least thirty years, and had been heavily remodeled. It made a big impression on me as a kid, and I was happy that my three favorite artifacts were still around: the skeletons of a triceratops and and allosaurus, and a giant globe with the ocean floors shown in relief, although they’d all been moved to different halls. There was also a hall of taxidemified animals and anthological stuff, like a mini version of the New York Museum of Natural History. Some of the upper floors were filled with newer, interactive learning exhibits, but it’s really the artifacts that interest me. Oh, and a Mastodon skeleton that I’d forgotten all about. Western New York is one of the world’s premiere sites for mastodon fossils, and, unlike Wooly Mammoths, they’ve never found a preserved specimen with its skin, so they don’t know if it was furry like a mammoth or bare like an elephant. They also had a pretty cool exhibit about the history of guitars, with lots of historic examples including centuries-old proto-guitars of various kinds, and lots of modern acoustic and electric examples.

That evening Jeannie and I took my parents, Lizzy, and Michelle to the Buffalo Hofbrau Haus, a big new biergarten right downtown, brought to you by the Munich Hofbrau brewing company. Lizzy had been there a few times before and thought my parents might enjoy it, since they were members of the local German club for years before it closed. Michelle was beginning to settle into her new situation, doing orientation stuff, making friends and all, although the weather was still unusually hot. The Hofbrau Haus was a good time, and pretty authentic, with live music featuring accordion, clarinet, cowbells, and lots of polkas. The food was Wiener schnitzel and bratwurst, and of course beer. It was alot of fun. Apparently the place gets pretty packed and raucous on the weekends.

Friday we had lunch with Larry and Jackie at a pub in Hamburg, and just talked for hours. What’s going on with all the kids, camping and bear stories, drumming, music, everything. Everyone is encouraging me to move back to Buffalo now, but Larry says the jazz scene is pretty small and there aren’t alot of really good players. It got me thinking about my old musician friends from the area, if any of them are still around and into prog rock.

Friday night was the King Crimson concert, the reason we stuck around a couple extra days. They’d played SPAC in Saratoga near Albany on Monday. Martin saw them there, and so did Mark from the Adirondacks. They played Bethel Woods near Yasgur’s farm on Wednesday, but at the time we were planning our trip we expected Wednesday to be move-in day for Michelle, so that wouldn’t have worked either. Anyway it turned out be a the right move. The venue was Artpark, which is semi-open theatre with lawn seating behind it, right on the shores of the Niagara River, between the Falls and Lake Ontario. I think the last show I saw there was Monsters of Jazz featuring Herbie Hancock, Pat Metheny, Jack DeJohnnette and (I think) Dave Holland in 1991 or so.

Unbeknownst to us until the day of the show, they’d closed the theater for the pandemic and built a new, smaller, all-outdoor venue on a hillside next to it, so we had to borrow some lawn chairs from my parents. It turned out to be a beautiful scene, a perfect summer evening with a view of the river, and idyllic ambient music of gamalan-like chimes and tones and the sweet smell of reefer wafting in the air as the venue filled up. We found a spot and Jeannie mentioned that there may well be someone we know was at the concert. A minute or so later I heard someone calling my name out of the blue.

It was my old friend Joe Q. At first I didn’t recognize him; it’s been twenty-nine years since I’d last seen Joe and he doesn’t look the same. But then I heard his laugh and it all came back to me. Joe was the bass player in the Cheshire Cat, probably the best band back in the late 80’s and early 90’s, when there was an incredible amount of talent on the local music scene. I fist met Joe when I was in tenth or eleventh grade, as part of the combined Kenmore East and West High Schools marching band, formed for the purpose of playing Buffalo Bills halftime shows, where we were both in the sax section. After high school, Joe and I were in a couple of bands together including Tafari, a mostly-reggae-with-some-Steely-Dan band with a horn section. I played the solo for Home at Last on the EWI. That band had half of Kenmore in it. Amazingly Joe is still playing music for a living. Rock on!

A few other people from Kenmore were three too. One was Mike M., the guitarist from Cheshire Cat. Apparently he got a bunch of free tickets because he and the drummer from the opening band were friends from Berklee School of Music. Another was Pete D., who was guitarist for the Automatic Man. Automatic Man were a jazz fusion band with Mike, Pat O. on drums, Jim W. on bass and myself on sax. We played every Monday night at Broadway Joe’s for about two years, unless there was a Bills game, and this group begat The Purple Connection which played every Sunday at the Inn on the River in North Tonawanda in the summertime. We did alot Mike Stern and Jeff Beck type stuff, plus the entire second side of the Abbey Road as an instrumental, although often the crowd would sing along to Carry That Weight.

Anyway, Pete was an excellent guitarist, one of the best in Buffalo. About halfway thru our stint he left the band and moved to New York City to try and make it on the music scene here. I moved to to NYC less than a year after that, and tried to find him but never connected. He told me he eventually returned to Bflo and hasn’t played guitar in many years. I thought that was too bad, since he was so good, so I told him about how I took a bunch of years of playing when my kids were little, but I’m really glad I returned to music. Then the show started, so our conversation was cut short.

The opening act was The Zappa Band. I’m not sure what connection they have to FZ, but they were at the least a flawless tribute band, possibly with some alumni from his groups. I thought I knew alot of Zappa songs, but I only recognized about a third of what they played.

King Crimson themselves were amazing. It’s the seven-headed monster lineup with three drummers in the front line, and back row consisting of Mel Collins on saxes, Tony Levin on bass and stick, Jacko on vocals and guitar, and Fripp on guitar and mellotron. It was pretty much the same act as four of five years ago when I last saw them: three songs off the first album, three off of Red, and smattering of songs from all the records in between, plus some later stuff too, and some epic drum solos. All very well done of course, often going well beyond what was on the original record, especially the stuff from the interregnum period. There were moments when the complexity of the various interlocking polyrhythms was just staggering. And I think the best Tony Levin is when he’s channeling Greg Lake.

Afterwards we went up the falls and walked around. Now we’re back home, making plans in our empty nest, hoping Michelle is doing well.

Life in a Northern Town

We just got back from a fun road trip, another mini-vacation. This time we went north instead of south, to the town of Saranac Lake, to visit our friends Mark and Kelly. Although we’ve been up to the Adirondacks plenty of times, we haven’t been up since before the pandemic, so it was great to see our friends and catch up. This trip was also a first in that Michelle stayed home cuz she had to work.

We drove up Friday night after work. It was a pretty easy and mellow drive, although the number of blatantly reckless drivers, as well as obnoxiously blaring extra-bright headlights, has definitely increased over the last few years. Still, that all tapered off as we got away from New York City. Once we arrived, we all stayed up late into the night talking.

Saturday we went hiking. In the morning we went up Mt. Baker, and in the afternoon some mellow walking around some ponds and lakes. Later got some local soft-serve ice cream, went out to dinner, then back to Mark’s place to build a fire and more hanging out. It’s interesting to see how the town has changed since last time we were up there. Some places have gone out of business, and some new ones have opened up.

Sunday we went for an epic canoe ride. Jeannie and I rented a canoe from a place right on the waterfront, a really nice kevlar boat, very light and fast. Mark has his own one-man canoe. The trip was about six hours, through a series of lakes and channels, and even a lock. It was a perfect day, warm and sunny, but not too hot, with very little wind. The journey was very scenic, with some shores dotted with cottages, others full of woods or swamps, all with the mountains in the background. We saw a couple of loons close up – surprisingly large birds – as well as a great blue heron, a bald eagle, and lots of other wildlife.

On the way, Jeannie accidentally capsized our canoe. We were crossing thru the wake of a motorboat, and as we rocked back and forth, she leaned too far the wrong way. When the boat rocked back the other way she was off balance and fell out, tipping the whole thing. We got wet, but it was a warm day, and our stuff was in a dry pack, so no real problem. We pushed the boat to a shallow spot near the shore, poured out the water in the bottom and were on our way. Believe or not, this is first time in 30 years of canoeing together that either one of us has tipped a boat.

Our destination was an island with a picnic area, where we had our lunch. The whole lake (and the greater area) is full of campsites and day use spots. We sunned ourselves on a rock and dried out or stuff for a while, then headed back. The way back was easier cuz it was downstream, but we were starting to get tired, and it didn’t help that a headwind came up as we were crossing a couple long expanses of deep, open water. That night we all went to bed early cuz we were tired from rowing all day.

Monday we drove home, stopping for lunch at Lake George, where they have some restaurants with patios looking over the lake, and watched the scene. Very nice. I bought some new sunglasses, since I lost my old ones when our canue capsized. When we got home, Michelle was waiting to greet us with freshly baked cupcakes.

Let’s Go to the Mall

Just got back from a mini-vacation down to Washington, D.C. At one point we were planning on going to Ohio for the Centerfold origami convention, but those plans fell thru. Last time we were out in Ohio, six years ago, we stopped by the National Air Force Museum in Dayton, which is pretty cool to see. Michelle asked if we could we go see the Air and Space Museum instead, since we haven’t been there in even longer. Seeing as she’s going off to college for aerospace engineering in a few weeks, and this kind of trip is what inspired her in the first place, we all thought it was a good idea.

Of course with the resurgence of the pandemic things aren’t quite back to normal yet. The Smithsonian is just opening back up, and large parts are under renovation, and they’re only letting in a limited number of people at at time, and of course you have to wear a mask. And yet again we struck out trying to get tickets to go up into the Washington Monument.

Our first stop was the Udvar-Hazy annex to the Air and Space Museum, out at Dulles Airport. This is fact much larger than the main Air and Space Museum and features some of the most famous aircraft and spacecraft of all time, including a Space Shuttle, a Blackbird, a Concorde, and the Enola Gay. There’s tons of other stuff too, from all eras of flight going back over 100 years, balloon craft, gliders, commercial, military and experimental aircraft, paraphernalia, engines, etc.

Since we drove out that morning, that was the only stop for the day. In the evening we met up with my friend John M., who lives nearby and had dinner. John is an origami artist, so it was a little like having our own min-convention. Our hotel was in Silver Springs, which is cute little urban dot in the middle of the suburbs, kinda like White Plains but with friendlier architecture and street life.

Next day we took the train into the Mall. It was a beautiful day for walking around, and we did plenty of it. Our first stop was the American History Museum. A good chunk of it was closed for renovation, particularly the cultural stuff, but there was a gallery of inaugural gowns from all the first ladies, and a collection of jazz musical instruments. We spent most of our time in the transportation section, which goes from sailing ships and horse-drawn wagons thru steam locomotives and of course automobiles.

The line for the Natural History Museum was around the block, so we skipped that and went on the National Art Gallery. Spent most of our time looking at sculptures, and paintings by Rembrandt, El Greco, and others. The last stop was the National Air and Space Museum in the mall. This of course has the Apollo 11 command module, a Lunar Lander, the Spirit of St. Louis, among others. The hall had just reopened, and more than half of it is under renovation, so it was a pretty quick visit. I was reminiscing about the first time I visited that museum as a kid, with my parents and brothers, only a month or so after it first opened in the summer of 1976. We all thought it was to coolest thing ever; I’d never imagined anything like it. Now space exploration seems to have largely fallen out of fashion, even as private space travel is becoming a real thing. Strange.

That evening we met up with John again, at a Mexican restaurant near or hotel with a large patio area like a beer garden. The food was great and after dinner John and I stayed talking late into the night. As always, he has alot of fascinating new origami stuff. He has some really innovative snakes with strips and some new polyhedra. John has gotten into making books styles as “symphonies”, with four movements, each a set or related models on a theme. This latest one, his Fifth Symphony, has tropical fish, tropical birds, some tetrahedron- and octahedron-based single-sheet polyhedra, and the last movement is complex sea creatures such as a crab, squid and nautilus. John is also to music and playing piano, so we had alot to catch up on.

The Man with the Horn

I had to put my old horn in the shop. It got knocked over at a gig a while back and the main tube was bent. It’s an old Selmer Mark VII tenor from the early 1970’s, a pure classic and in excellent shape, the damage notwithstanding. Around that time I acquired a used (but much, much newer) Selmer Reference 54, and that became my main horn. But the time had come to get the old horn back in shape.

My new repair guy is Chuck Pomeroy and he’s out in New Milford, Connecticut, famous for it’s new milfs. Chuck was recommended to me by Rich, the alto player in my Wednesday group, and Charlie Lagond, the owner of the studio where we rehearse. Charlie has on old Selmer Balanced Action tenor from the 1930’s, the first modern designed horn, almost ninety years old, virtually priceless. He got it completely rebuilt, and Chuck did the work. New silver plating and everything. It’s totally beautiful, totally amazing. So I was inspired to get off my lazy ass and get my own vintage Selmer fixed up.

Chuck, as it turns out, is a really nice guy, and not too surprisingly really into saxophones. He’s also an excellent guitar player in the Joe Pass style. We, uh, talked shop for a little while, after I told him used to work repairing saxes and other band instruments when I was a teenager. I learned the basics and turned around the school rentals at my local music store. I can spot a leak, replace a pad or cork or piece of felt, and that kind of thing, and have generally maintained my own horns. But there’s lots more advanced work I never touched. Like, for example, straightening out a bent body.

So Chuck showed me some amazing vintage horns he was working on, including a very old curved soprano. And he had pics of Charlie’s horn all taken apart. He told me an amazing thing, that this is the second time he’s rebuilt that horn. The first time was in the 1970’s almost 50 years ago!

Anyway, a few days went by and I drove back to New Milford to pick up my horn. In addition to straightening it out, he put new pads and corks on pretty much the whole upper stack, and replaced a few choice pads on the big low notes around the bow too. I gave the horn a quick toot, thanked him and was on my way. I must say, he gave me a great price for all that work. In fact, it was so low he asked me not the tell anyone how much he charged me!

After that I drove upstate to visit my brother Martin. I hadn’t been up to his place in almost a year, and it was great to see him. He has a new pool but right around the time we started talking about taking a swim, the weather turned cloudy and soon it was pouring rain. Anyway it was a great hang. We talked music and played a really fun board game called Labyrinth. His kids are all very smart and good-natured, with a sharp sense of humor. Lots of fun. Drove home in a rainstorm, which was … let’s say it was an adventure.

So this week I played my horn at the rehearsal band Wednesday and with my own group on Thursday. And, wow! Not only did Chuck fix it, but it plays better than ever. The action is adjusted, and everything is tight, and it’s literally faster. You can blow softly and easily and get a huge sound, and especially on the low notes. And the tone! The sound is a bit less edgy than my 54, especially in the upper register, but overall more focused, with a particular warmth in the lower register. One of the songs we did Wednesday was ‘Round Midnight, and well, let’s just say I’m gonna use this as my main horn for a little while.

Now that I have two excellent working tenor saxes, I think I should get a second mouthpiece so I can have one for each horn. My current main mouthpiece is a Dukoff D9, a big bore metal for a huge, edgy tone good for rock or jazz. Think Clarence Clemons meets John Coltrane. I’ve also played am Otto Link, Berg Larson and some others. I wonder what the cool kids are playing these days. Someone at my studio mentioned a Jodi Jazz. Might check that one out.

Meanwhile my Thursday quartet continues to improve, both expanding and focusing our sound. I’ve started to reach out to some local jazz joints to try and get a gig, although we’re probably too late for the summer, and once the weather gets cold it’s not clear if these places will be able to continue doing music indoors. In any event, we’re working up some of our set to the point where we can record a rehearsal and have a really good performance. Tonight I was fooling around on some blues riffs between songs, and this led to a spontaneous rendition of Led Zeppelin’s Moby Dick, played in a funk jazz style reminiscent of The Dream of the Blue Turtles. It was really cool, and instantly became part of our repertoire.