Philadelphia #2 - Eastern State Penitentiary

Philadelphia is not just a crush of people and gastronomic treats at Reading Terminal Market. It also has an inviting penitentiary right near downtown. Really.

From 1829 up until 1971, if you turned to a life of crime, you might have found yourself at Eastern State Penitentiary.

After 1971, it was abandoned for twenty years. Full of crumbling cells, peeling lead paint, and in the winter, drifting snow, it reopened to the public as a historical ruin in 1994. Decrepit and creepy, it has an eerie beauty.

Cellblock hallway.  Note the high ceiling and
natural light.

Snow in a cell.

Originally designed for absolute solitary confinement so that, the theory went, inmates would be inspired to reach toward God and find true penitence, ESP only briefly functioned as it was first envisioned.  Early prisoners spent their sentences in complete isolation in their individual cells. Private exercise yards were attached to each cell with walls high enough between them to prohibit contact. Anonymity was enforced as prisoners wore hoods covering their faces when guards escorted them through the complex. 

The prison had running water before the White House, as the solitary confinement approach required a toilet in every cell.  Suffering the woes of early plumbing models, however, the heating pipes were laid next to the plumbing, so the stink of sewage pervaded the complex year round. 

In short order, overcrowding left solitary an impractical approach. Given the heavy tie now acknowledged between solitary confinement and psychological problems, the switch to operation as a congregate prison, official as of 1913, but with strict solitary eroding well before, was good news.

The original hub-and-spoke design by John Haviland, with cellblocks fanning off a central hub, was an innovation in prison design, allowing surveillance from the center. By the time of its closing, 15 cellbocks jammed every available space, and surveillance had a great many blind spots.

At Eastern State's opening in 1829, the city was a long two miles away. Soon enough, the prison was swallowed up by urban expansion, with the city right up against its doorway, precluding the possibility of prison expansion. ESP wasn't always seen as a good neighbor --particularly when prisoners escaped, building ladders to put up against the wall or digging tunnels underneath it.

Al Capone's stay at the prison, however, lent a celebrity glamour to the place during the year he was there.  He and his bodyguard, arrested for carrying concealed weapons, had cells not off one of the long cellblocks, but in the safe zone by the guard station in the hub center.  Capone's cell was significantly more comfortable, as he brought his own furniture and rugs, and he had phone privileges, allowing him to keep tabs on business.

 His experience was not typical.

Walking down the long hallways or standing in a cell, little imagination is required to feel the residual human despair peeling off the walls along with the paint. During its abandonment, an entire urban forest grew up through the site, loosening the stones, shattering the skylights, breaking the plaster into dust. Before Eastern State opened as a maintained ruin, the trees were cut down and dragged away, but evidence of its harsh conditions as a prison and continuing decay remain haunting.

Roots and vines hanging in a cell.

Philadelphia #1 - Reading Market

Playing with the camera

Sometimes, when you say, "I've got itchy feet," someone else says, me too! and in short order, you find yourself unexpectedly awake at 7 am on a Saturday morning zipping up the highway to collect said friend and head north.

That was me on Saturday morning. Camera at the ready, and alarming other motorists by playing with mirrors and angles at stoplights, I arrived at my friend's house to find her by the door, packed and ready to go.
 
Art and travel: both are creative ventures where you push yourself to see new things in new ways, to expand experience and vision.

With brief comment to her kids and husband ("I'm stealing your mother/wife.") we were on 95 North, destination: Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love.
 
Given that so much of my travel has been solo, having real, live conversation made the brief drive go quickly (although it did cut into my off-key radio singing). 

Sparkly chandelier, Warwick Hotel

Philly welcomed us with traffic.  Because of some creative navigating on my part (gps only works if you follow its advice), we took the long way to the hotel.  But oh, what a lovely hotel.

The Radisson Plaza-Warwick Hotel.  Check out the chandelier:
 
Can you imagine how many strange ugly mobiles and suncatchers I could make if I disassembled that?  Happily, I don't think they'll let me near it. 
 
Best way to see a city is to start walking. If you're smarter than I am, you'll bring your hat on a winter day. 
 


In front of the courthouse

Downtown

Our first stop was lunch at Reading Terminal Market, an indoor market at 12th and Arch St.  The farmer's market has been running since 1893 and is a Philadelphia institution. 

According to their Web site, "One hundred thousand Philadelphians and tourists pass through the Reading Terminal Market every week." Once amid the hubbub, that was easy to believe. 

We got the best sandwiches of our lives at a Pennsylvania Dutch place called The Grill @ Smuckers. Mild Italian sausage with peppers and pot roast with horseradish gave us strength enough to get to the pretzel stand for fresh-baked butter-soaked delights. Yum.

Note that if you want to get lunch at any of the Pennsylvania Dutch places, you best do it on Saturday, as their shops aren't open on Sunday. 

Next stop: Eastern State Penitentiary.

Sparkly

Another suncatcher, extra-sparkly. The lack of light in the wintertime has left me even more obsessed with shiny things. Eventually, I'll run out of chandelier parts and winter will end. 

In the meantime, I have rather cool shadows on the blinds.    

 

Chris Pureka with Vandaveer and Nicole Reynolds

Another great show at the Iota, with a big crowd, great opening bands, and polished musicians all around. Chris Pureka has a loyal following for good reason. 

A clip from Chris Pureka's encore, "Wagon Wheel," below.  Apologies on jumpiness.  For whatever reason, I thought it would be a good idea to turn the angle of my camera, so to undo that, I had to edit the clip. (I have basic video editing software on my computer - who knew?).  Video doesn't really do justice to the show. 

Great quotes from the evening include:
Nicole Reynolds, when referencing going through a box of old grade school items at her mother's house, including a paper that asked if she could have any parents in the world, who would she select: "I chose Dolly Parton and Mel Gibson."

Mark Charles Heidinger of Vandaveer, "It's the name of the album, you'd think we'd get it right," during some pretty hilarious song confusion.

Chris Pureka, "What have I gotten myself into?" when starting to tell a story, and then changing her mind, and then soldiering on when the audience coaxed her to continue. 

Check them all out:

Chris Pureka
http://www.chrispureka.com/newhome.htm
http://www.myspace.com/chrispureka/music

Vandaveer
http://www.vandaveer.net/
http://www.myspace.com/vandaveer/music

Nicole Reynolds
http://www.nicolereynoldsmusic.com/
http://www.myspace.com/nicolereynoldsmusic/music

Cats in Antlers

I spent an hour or two today writing still another piece about grief. With the shootings in Arizona; the death of Ashley Turton from a freak car fire in her Capitol Hill garage; the arrival of my brother's birthday tomorrow, the second since his death; and, a friend's continuing quest to get a marker placed on her mother's grave, I didn't and don't lack material. The longer you live, the more you brush up against death and other losses.

I waxed philosophical about the merits of grief, of how it lends perspective, pulls us out of ruminating on social faux pas (ours) and traffic misdeeds (others) and brings out our instinct to comfort those in pain, friends and strangers alike. I talked about how grief builds community and pushes change, encourages compassion, particularly once the fury and blame-seeking fades.

All this remains true, and I'm happy to have written and, artfully or not, pulled some thoughts together, however simplistic. As always, writing is a useful process for me, and I am grateful for it.

But that's not what I want to talk about here.

What I mean to say is: I am worn out with grief.

I am sick and tired of it, tired of the tragic beauty that I try to give it to make it more manageable. I fully acknowledge how it is a necessary process, but, again: I am worn out.

2010 was a difficult year for many of my friends and family, for a variety of reasons that aren't any less painful despite their lack of originality: death, under- and un-employment, strained finances, love affairs gone wrong, health struggles, losses personal, financial, emotional, physical. Life can be hard; 2010 contained too many examples for too many people I care about.

I and others rang in 2011 with relief, wanting the clean slate, however arbitrary a date on the calendar might be.

And here we are, back at death, grief, a world bursting out of control on the national scale and sad, private moments in less publicized worlds.

And so we grieve some more. A friend of mine mentioned today that she couldn't remember the last time she really laughed.

And that reminded me how much we need to remember that we also can and do dwell elsewhere.

I'm not suggesting burying my head in the sand and going, oh dear, I can't handle the pain in the world and so will just ignore it, sanitize reality into some happy little la-la land. Horrible things have happened and will continue to do so, and January has certainly provided ample proof of that already. We do what we can to lessen risks and impacts, but the act of living is necessarily dangerous.

But is it also joyful. And goofy. And silly. And gleeful.

There are big, big reasons for the world to be wondrous and amazing, to strike awe in the minds of us mortals, faith, love, fellowship, etc. But the big concepts are hard to catch, and today, I need the concrete.

And so, a counterbalance. Below, I list goofy moments in my life, silly laughter moments, most of which (helpless laughter being what it is) won't make any sense. So forgive me for temporarily abandoning you audience, but this list is for me. In these moments, you had to be there, and I'm glad I was:

• Snickering under a cot in a dorm room in 10th grade at the end of a carbon paper tickle fight
• Swimming in a pool with my sister at Fenwick Island trading stories about old boyfriends (which I won't reveal in a public forum)
• Discovering that if I said the word “chicken” in a business meeting in a certain way, my coworker would dissolve in laughter
• Shushing a drunken friend in the wee hours of the morning when all he could say was “Hoot! Hoot!”
• Attempting to get Leo the cat to wear the antlers at Christmas
• Singing along, a half beat behind, to a friend's irreverent new lyrics of Auld Lang Syne on New Year's Eve
• Riding in a wheelbarrow borrowed from a marina
• Cruising down a highway in Kansas swerving to avoid a road hazard and managing to hit it instead
• Testing the aerodynamics of Barbies and homemade parachutes by throwing them out the bedroom window
• Using a towel to create a nun's habit upon exiting the the shower in Key West
• Reading MadLibs created with terms from 50s pulp porn novels
• Wearing flowers in my hair (I'm such a hippie)
• Twirling and puddle-jumping in the pouring rain in Minneapolis
• Teaching my friend to skip, a crucial skill he somehow didn't acquire until he was over 30.
• Skipping down the street with other friends singing “We're off to See the Wizard”
• Misunderstanding a friend on a road trip and so being puzzled by why she kept asking about the “cheese door.”
• Writing “Ode to New York” on the back of a beer label after playing pinball
• Dancing in many living rooms, hips swinging, arms flailing
• Wearing balloons to celebrate a birthday
• Attempting headstands in the living room with a friend's kids
• Opening the door wearing my mother's bell-bottomed floral print halter-top pantsuit.
• Spending the day speaking in an Irish accent
• Climbing to the top of a Midwest sand dune in the wintertime and rolling down in the freezing sand.
• Sliding in socks on hardwood floors

What I want to do is add to this list. Yes, the death and despair of the world will continue on, but so will the silly. Today, I needed to remember the ridiculous. I encourage you to make your own list, to remember your own silly soul.  A cartwheel or a somersault might not hurt either.

 

Art Letter by Ellen Marie Hinchcliffe

Great video made by my friend Ellen in Minneapolis...Note that first 50 seconds are black before it starts.



For more on Ellen and her work as a poet, filmmaker, and performer, check out:
http://sites.google.com/site/ellenhinch/.

Sale!

I thought it was only legal to sell your Hoohah in Las Vegas. 

Perhaps the Purple Haze in the Hookah Cafe limited their proofreading skill.

Fast, Fresh, Cheap

Fast, Fresh, Cheap = Smoking Bulldog. Sure, that makes sense, at least it does in the airport in Charlotte, North Carolina. Oddly, this isn't the first time I've taken a picture of a smoking dog. There's a cafe in Paris called Au Chien Qui Fume. 

I missed a couple of great signs here today in Florida, in the interest of actually getting where I was supposed to be.  I hope to catch them tomorrow though, assuming I can get lost in the same general vicinity. Quirky tends to flourish in sunshine under palm trees.

New Year's photos, Takoma Park

As many people know, I'm fond of the town in which I live, Takoma Park, MD.  Here are some photographic reasons as to why (please forgive gray lighting - twas overcast today):
  

This truck, often parked in my neighborhood, makes me
want to Eat More Kale.  I don't even like kale. 

 


The Lawn Art House

 

Because what says Christmas more
than a kangaroo with a child in its
pouch wearing a Santa hat?

 

Polar bear with faces.  Does that
mean he ate the people?

 

Floating baby heads

 




 

A few houses down, a pink rhino grazes.



The porch mannequins down the street are
festooned with lights for the season. Their
garb changes for every holiday.

Someone took a cart most,
but not all of the way home. 

Why do I fit in Takoma Park?  Why, because I spent a portion of New Year's eve afternoon making these:
 

Psycho Smile Suncatcher

Fetch! Camel Dog Suncatcher

So far, I'm only happy with the fact that the copper circle on the second one is more seamlessly connected.  Less hideous versions are being considered as I experiment with my materials further. 




Finally, a gratuitous experiment in posting video.  The happy babbling of Sligo Creek:

dualism

Pointless play explication of the Meaning of Art in a photograph:

Daffron's newest work exemplifies a continuing interest in dualism.  The bridge divides shore from shore, a common symbol of the River Styx limbo of the voyage between the here and the hereafter, or perhaps a reference to the scales of good and evil, and the hope of keeping them in balance, the inherent connection between those two extreme shores.  After all the fairy tales of trolls under bridges, we would be wise to consider the dangers of bridges.

But the simplicity of a standard religious doctrine is undercut by the shadowy reflection of the limbo bridge in the water underneath.  The suggestion of a false world hints that either reality, or the religion of our consensus reality or philosophical judgements, is in fact just an illusion, a dream, a pale shimmering reflection of something not clearly seen and not touchable or 3-dimensional, but merely wet, a sad, 2-dimensional recipe for drowning in the icy shallows. 

So Daffron's play with the idea of dualism include not just the division into two, but the idea that divisions of two necessarily include Lewis Carroll's through-the-looking-glass flip side, and so inverts the notion of dualism.  That everything is reduced to two is thereby meaningless, as the two always includes the two sides of reflection, and so are reduced to not less than four, perhaps advocating pluralism, or perhaps monoism, that we are all part of one larger whole, the full printed picture inclusive of opposite but identical mirror images.

Material and mental, good and evil, the sides of reflection merge together to create meaning beyond the seemingly simple work.

OK, enough faulty logic, destruction of philosophy, and pompous crap.  It's amazing how easy it is to go on and on and say absolutely nothing, so long as it sounds important.

The real story: I was walking around on Christmas day with my camera, and there were some ducks swimming in the creek.  I took a LOT of duck pictures, but it turns out, I thought this one was kind of pretty, even though it doesn't have ducks. I do tend to like reflections, slightly off symmetry and water.  Who knows what the deep meaning is for that. 


Dualism, the actual definition:

du·al·ism   /ˈduəˌlɪzəm, ˈdyu-/ [doo-uh-liz-uhm, dyoo-]

–noun
1.the state of being dual or consisting of two parts; division into two.
2.Philosophy.
a.the view that there are just two mutually irreducible substances. Compare monism, pluralism.
b.the view that substances are either material or mental.
3.Theology.
a.the doctrine that there are two independent divine beings or eternal principles, one good and the other evil.
b.the belief that a human being embodies two parts, as body and soul.

Home is where the art is...

I drove through my childhood neighborhood today, on the way to catch up with a friend I've known since kindergarten.  Just beyond Western Market -- the first store I was allow to walk to on my own, and where I first purchased a gift for my mother (Reese's peanut butter cups) -- I turned off onto the street with a favorite area landmark: the Mushroom House.

All swooping lines and precious few right angles, the Mushroom House suggests a hobbit home or burrow entrance to some magical land. 

I love it. 

Underneath that stucco is a traditional 1940s colonial.  The remodel happened some time in the avant-garde 70s, shortly before my family moved into the otherwise traditional neighborhood and after the gas lines started getting long, inspiring a wave of energy conservation remodeling.  Stucco insulates phenomenally well. 

That stucco has changed color over the years.  I remember a beige tan, its original, decidedly mushroom-y color.  For a while, it was a slightly awful pinkish hue (although that was better than the aged beige, which briefly looked as it was molting).  Now the stucco has a smooth blueish tinge. 

In junior high school, I became passing friends with the owners' daughter, a reserved girl with whom I remember playing badminton in gym class.  I have to say, it took a minute for me to think of her as someone other than The Girl Who Lives in a Mushroom.  Not only was she a year older, but she had Mushroom House glamour; who wouldn't be starstruck? The family was interviewed on TV discussing the renovation (there's an indoor pond and lots of wood paneling).  That was before everyone and their cat was on television.  The association with fame (beyond the usual DC madness of too many politicians - they hardly counted, especially given that one of them was my father's boss) thrilled me.  This was before a local TV anchor moved in down the street in high school. 

The Mushroom House was my first taste of functional, fun and flamboyant art.  All these years later, it still makes me smile, and I thank those neighbors for that. 

A quick googling of the daughter suggests that she may have become an actor.  I have, of course, no idea how her life was influenced by the arty remodeling choice of her arty parents; probably neither does she.  Your house is your house.  But in a small neighborhood way, I suspect she enjoyed the advantages and pitfalls of fame.  As she went on to pursue acting and art, there is an implied validation of the value in bold art.  Go big or go home, as they say.  Or in this case, go big in your home.  Some neighbors may grumble (as they did then) about property values and insufficient "blending" with the neighborhood aesthetic.  Me, I couldn't be happier that they chose my street to make something that people still slow down to see.  That people actually see, don't just breeze on by. 

Even today, 30+ years after the remodel, when I got out of my car to take a picture, I looked over to see a guy in an SUV, mouth hanging slightly open in surprise, focusing his camera at the Mushroom House as well.

Recommended: Golden Boy by Clifford Odets at Church Street Theater

I saw Golden Boy by Clifford Odets, presented by Keegan Theatre, at the Church Street Theater last night.  And I loved it.  I haven't seen much live theater recently, and was reminded how much the energy and emotion of the players make a scene come alive.  Live theater is more visceral, living and breathing, particularly (as was the case last night) when the acting is good.   

The play was not what I was expecting in some ways. From a brief review/synopsis read before the show, I was thinking it was going to be more of a period piece, late 30s sensibility, and an uncomplicated good/evil story. The story centers around Joe Bonaparte, a young violinist who embarks on a boxing career, thereby endangering his relationship with music given the high risk of hand injury from the sport.

The 1930s were present, in language, sets and costumes.  You don't hear a lot of people refer to women as dames in 2010, or to the golden year of 1928 before the crash. The sets, wonderful contraptions were rolled around in a rush of NYC activity to create another sets, included the quintessential wooden private detective desk chair, among other classic pieces.  Heels were wide, dresses long, hats mandatory for men out on the town. 

But beyond that period atmosphere, a much more complicated story unfolded as the protaganist, Joe Bonaparte, fought to find a place where he felt he fit, and the people around him sought to influence his choices for their own reasons.  I'm not going to go into a whole analysis of the themes, but suffice it to say, ambition, idealism, love, marriage, art v. business, fame, comfort, money, competition, despair, health and the finality of some choices are all wound into those 2 hours and 45 minutes.  While the ending is inevitable, the path there is rich with complexities.  

The play only runs through Dec 19th, so go see it quickly.

Artful Mistakes Mascot

You're morose without a new infusion of ugly mobile art, aren't you? You need a lift on this rainy day, just a little weird to get you through the day. I have the answer for you...

Introducing wild & wiry Wilhelmina, the new Artful Mistakes mascot.

Not unlike her creator, her head is a bit transparent, her hair unruly, and her innards colorful and disorganized. Occasionally, she falls apart, but she's relatively easy to reassemble, although it's never ends up being quite the same configuration.

criticism and art

In graduate school, during my "closing conversation" (thesis defense), one professor who had not once commented on any of the drafts of my novella suggested there, on my last day in graduate school, that I delete the first 100 pages of the book. 

That's about when, embarrassingly enough, I started to cry. To this day, that remains one of the more humiliating experiences of my life so far (and there have been many), sitting with my throat closing up in a small room with four professors, two of them, after that, desperately trying to shore up my sad, deflated little ego. 

Art is freeing, liberating, wondrous, expansive, simply fun.  It also, like any interaction with the world, makes you vulnerable when you let the world in on it.  You pour your soul out, and someone, off the cuff, says, eh, not my thing, she could do better, boring, yawn, bleh, pedestrian, unoriginal, poorly executed, off-key, too light, too dark, too rigid, too unstructured, too serious, too abstract, too little or too much whatever.  Or they move on to grandiose commentaries your character and moral fiber (for a zippy example of that, check out Not Fan Mail).  Even minor comments can feel very, very major when people are sticking pins in your baby.

The thing is: it's easy.  I've been the executioner as well.  To this day, I feel bad about telling someone in a workshop ten years ago to make his character "less of an asshole."  To me, his character was aggressively an asshole - he hated women with a disturbing venom and kicked a cat in the story.  But what I didn't know was that there was this whole back history to that character that the author knew (and hadn't included) that made him infinitely more palatable and sympathetic.  Rejection of a character can feel much like rejection of self, a hard place to go.  And sometimes, simply trying to identify your own tastes can lead you into uninformed criticism of other people's work.

When I think about my closing conversation in graduate school, I think sometimes maybe it was karma, that my thoughtlessly worded comment years before was coming back to haunt me.  I hope that guy kept on writing, but I know he missed a lot more classes in that workshop after that piece.  I know that my writing stalled for many years after graduate school and that I still haven't finished the book that evolved from that novella.  I can't and don't blame that one one day or one comment, anymore than I think my one comment could completely kill off a desire to write, but when I hear critical voices in my head, the nasty kind that cramp your creativity, that professor's voice is certainly there among the others. 

This part of art, of putting yourself out there, is something all artists struggle with, some of us more than others.  A lot of life is, essentially, confidence, and confidence (oddly) has little relationship with talent. There are fantastic artists hidden out there because they crumble in the face of comparatively mild comments.  There are others who plug onward in the face of harsh criticism that dissuades them not one bit.  Any press is good press, they say, and move on. The Goldilocks path is to perhaps be able to select the useful information that echos what you already know about the strengths and weaknesses of your work and clarifies it.  Most criticism is not constructive, but even random comments have kernels of usefulness if we can get over the pinpricks of discomfort.

The rule of thumb they tell you in graduate school is you need to send a story out 100 times before publication.  Like looking for work, there is an element that is strictly a numbers game, that your story or resume lands on someone's desk at the right time.  If you're writing about baseball the day he gets tickets to the World Series, well then, you're more interesting. If you're writing about a conflicted drug dealer with a heart of gold the day his son gets shot by Captain Cocaine, your reviewer's reading will likely be less sympathetic. 

In the end, it's a crap shoot.  You put things out, you edit, you repaint, you redesign, and eventually you let go and say, well, it's good enough for right now.  The painting gets signed and goes on the wall, the story goes in the mail, you say, go ahead, accept me, reject me, flay me out whatever way you want.  Or at least, that is what I am trying to tell myself, as I go back to old work and say, huh, having only sent out a handful of stories a handful of times, maybe it's time to invest in the editing, invest in the stamps, start working the numbers and seeing what I can make happen.  I'll stall out again, I'm sure.  But I'm also sure I'll get up and get moving again.  Color me Goldilocks.

Victoria Vox at Iota

Victoria Vox, ah, I have to say, you were my favorite.  She plays the ukulele.  Really.  Fine, I'll put in a bad picture:

And she pairs it with a cello.  And then she sings with this lovely whole full voice and is bizarrely successful in also singing the sound of a trumpet player.  No electronics, no loops, just singing like a trumpet - as my friend asked, "How do you figure out you have that skill?" 

And Vox writes songs about (this makes me ridiculously happy just writing it) sexually frustrated tugboats that want to get it on with an ocean liner.  I'm not making it up:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JADDnGNW_g&feature=related.  And yes, the video features the trumpet singing.

She also has her own holiday songs, including "Surfing Santa," because she got tired of hearing the same things over and over and over again.  I admire the sentiment, although my grinch tendencies limit my enthusiasm for holiday music. 

Victoria Vox is a member of 1% for the Planet and donates 1% of all sales to non-profits for the Earth, so you can feel extra socially conscious and virtuous if you buy her album and listen to "Mother Nature." 

Of course, you might have also have fun if you order the "Uke Can Squeeze This" Vox panties. 

Despite the fact that by the tail end of the evening, I was clearly not all there (woohoo! fever setting in! love those December colds!  And overuse of exclamation points!)(!), Victoria seemed extremely polished to me. Wish I had made it to the end of the show, but disease overtook me and I departed.

And now, me and my fistful of Kleenex are going to collapse. 

p.s. I want to learn to play the cello.  Such a beautiful instrument.

Dusk, Thanksgiving

Junip w/ Lost in the Trees at the Black Cat



Gonzalez & guitar

Junip, the trio (and for this show, 5-some; extra 2 unidentified) of Jose Gonzalez, Elias Araya and Tobias Winterkorn, played a solid, if oddly predictable show on Tuesday night at the Black Cat.  As the ten year old group has spent most of their time sidetracked from the group (Gonzalez with his solo work, Araya and Winterkorn with other art and life projects), they were working with one album of Junip music.  It featured Gonzalez' syncopated guitar work, as technically adept as you would expect.  "Black Refuge" added eerier tones.  "Always" was the crowd pleaser that everyone knew.  Crowds were happy and bopping, swaying to the trancey repetition inherent in the music. 

But here's my confession: I had more fun watching Lost in the Trees, the opening act.  With two cellos, a fiddle, a tuba, a French horn and an accordian, along with more traditional folk-y instruments like a guitar and a bass guitar, they were visually more arresting and musically more varied.  The symphonic strings added a depth to musical arrangement that soared for me.

Sometimes, going in blind is the way to go, the surprise can catch you open and unaware. And the enthusiasm of Lost in the Trees was contagious...the last song they played, they marched down into the audience and set up in the middle of us.  It's hard not to feel kinship with the band when the bongo player is sitting six inches away from you in socks, shoeless and jamming. 

Clearly, I have no clue how to use my new camera in a club setting yet.  I'll work on it...

Junip:
http://www.junip.net/
http://www.myspace.com/junip/music

Lost in the Trees:
http://www.lostinthetrees.com/
http://www.myspace.com/lostinthetrees

Church for Sale, Dump Closed on Thanksgiving

For those who want to live like Arlo Guthrie's Alice, Ray and Fasha there IS a church for sale on Capitol Hill.  Be sure to ask about pew removal...

"Now it all started two Thanksgivings ago, was on - two years ago on Thanksgiving, when my friend and I went up to visit Alice at the restaurant, but Alice doesn't live in the restaurant, she lives in the church nearby the restaurant, in the bell-tower, with her husband Ray and Fasha the dog. And livin' in the bell tower like that, they got a lot of room downstairs where the pews used to be in. Havin' all that room, seein' as how they took out all the pews, they decided that they didn't have to take out their garbage for a long time.

We got up there, we found all the garbage in there, and we decided it'd be a friendly gesture for us to take the garbage down to the city dump. So we took the half a ton of garbage, put it in the back of a red VW microbus, took shovels and rakes and implements of destruction and headed on toward the city dump.

Well we got there and there was a big sign and a chain across across the dump saying, 'Closed on Thanksgiving.' And we had never heard of a dump closed on Thanksgiving before, and with tears in our eyes we drove off into the sunset looking for another place to put the garbage."

Excerpted from "Alice's Restaurant" by Arlo Guthrie.  Complete lyrics available at http://www.arlo.net/resources/lyrics/alices.shtml. 

Remember, you can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant (excepting Alice).  Happy Thanksgiving!

Silver Spring Thanksgiving Parade

Some shots (using new camera, Nikon S570) of the parade...


Dancer

"You've dressed me up and
dragged me to a parade.
You are no longer my master."

Cheerleaders rockin' it.





Tilting penguin

Joy in motion

Weightless!



I'd run too if I were being followed by that large a toy soldier.

The beauty queens couldn't be more thrilled
to be involved in the parade.

 

 The Great Pyrenees and their
devoted people.















Marching bands abound...

Happy dancers and (lower-right) the not-so-happy family.

Yes, the big man is in Maryland now.



Heading home, single-file, following the lovely girls.

Shannon McNally & Hot Sauce and Scrapomatic at Iota

I returned to the Iota for Shannon McNally & Hot Sauce, a band of Mississippi folks (natives and transplants) and one Arkansas boy.  We stayed on for Scrapomatic, a duo +1 from Minneapolis with some groovy vocal hops, skips, jumps and harmonies.  Great show, only slightly marred by annoying drunk guy at the end of Scrapomatic (note to drunks: if you're grooving on the music, feel free to sway, but please don't yell. Their music rocks. Your silence is golden.). 

Shannon McNally was one of many female vocalists on a music compilation CD provided to me by a friend for a road trip, and was one (of many on that CD) that I picked out as a particular favorite.  McNally's voice is husky and twangy, somewhere between blues and country, full, not thin or wispy.  She's got some grit to her.  And she can, as my friend pointed out, "really wail on that guitar."  Yup.  Backing her up, the uber talented Hot Sauce, Jake Fussell on the bass (in my mind, "the groovin' guy in the hat"), Eric Deaton on guitar ("long-haired dude with crazy fast fingers"), Wallace Lester on drums ("dude who makes weird expressions, including rolling his eyes") and someone who may remain The Nameless Guy from Arkansas on the guitar/mandolin/fiddle/everything ("earnest and multitalented young-un with a great head bob").  They played, I am pleased to say, a couple of songs I actualy knew, since I'd listened to the CD and done a little poking around before the show, including "The Worst Part of  Broken Heart" and "Jack B Nimble."  "My True Possession" and "High" (which she introduced as "not about smoking pot, no matter what you might have heard") gave a taste of the new album out in January, Western Ballad. But there played some wayback songs too, including ending with "Bolder than Paradise" off the first album, Jukebox Sparrows. 

The song I'm most obsessed with that the moment though is "I Don't Wanna Know," a cover of the Bobby Charles song.  A great heartbreaker: "Please don't make me go/to New Orleans no more/ Because I am so afraid/ I might see his face/ and that I couldn't take." She nailed the longing right on.  Bobby Charles passed away last January.  You may know him as the songwriter who penned, "See You Later, Alligator."

And then Scrapomatic, who immediately won my favor by announcing that they were the "most polite band," which, given the Minnesota influence, is not surprising.  After the next song, they thought perhaps they might storm a record producer's office, which was perhaps less polite, but funny.  Mike Mattison has a voice that just grabs you, totally original, breathy to scat, unexpected up and down ranges, clapping and inviting you in. Paul Olsen zips around that voice with his own tenor and guitar, fluid and fun.  Hip-swinging blues tunes that will make you smile or cry or both.  Can't say you hear a lot of songs about a double murderer either

Of other minor note, we inadvertently managed to sit in the musicians section (oops).  Nobody kicked us off the bench, but we kept getting smiling looks from Shannon as The Next Band Up.  I think she was amused.

So.  The quest into music, and into the art world at large, continues.  Rock on.  More music on tap for next week, assuming I get myself organized on details like tickets, etc.  I'm unlikely to ever be able to provide great insight into musical talents and trends, musical theory, etc., but it feels good to be out in the world, sucking in some art, basking in melody and passion. 

http://shannonmcnally.com/
http://www.scrapomatic.com/