The Mummers and Covid

There was an article in Philadelphia Magazine describing the efforts of some members of the Philadelphia Mummers Association to hold the annual New Years Day Mummers Parade despite the city prohibiting the parade. I head about this controversy from the Germantown Facebook group where people were giving their pro and con opinions on the matter. A lot of the conversation was racists and pathetic as usual. A bunch of clowns indeed.

There has always been some crazy fringe members of the mummers organizations. I spent several hears as a member of the Uptown String Band and I marched in a few Mummers parades as a young person. Back then the mummers were often criticized for not allowing blacks and women to me members of their organizations or march in their parades. I remember sitting in the band's clubhouse and hearing some of those people use the first amendment to justify their racism and misogyny.  Those are probably the same folks crying about covid now.

According to the article there would just be some unofficial groupings of mummers organization members parading around their neighborhoods and there would be no official city sanctioned parade. No regular bands, no prizes, no TV cameras, no crowds. Just a bunch of crazies risking their lives and the lives of other crazies.

When I came back from the Navy I briefly thought about joining back up with a mummers string band and get back to playing my saxophone but I'd change too much in the military. I could never have gone back to that racists organization. The mummers was just a memory now and forever.

Random Albums

I'm not really much of a random music person. I've always leaned toward planning out my listening. That is why I've been so obsessed over the years making mixes. I want to control the flow of music. I like planning it and making sure everything sounds good one song after another. I have occasionally put a mix on shuffle but all of those songs have already been selected in some way. The mega mixes I've recently made were put together with the random shuffle button in mind. Every song should sound good playing next to any other song in the mix at any time. That keeps things interesting.

I've never put my iTunes on random shuffle for songs or albums. I have also never played Spotify on shuffle. I'm too much of a control freak. However, I have started doing something different and a little random for me.

I have my iTunes sorted by album title. I pick an album I want to listen to and then let it play a few more albums. It's not completely random but sort of by album title. It does give me some interesting sequences of music. I usually do this in the afternoon and evening after I have played a few hours of my morning kitchen listening selections and I usually play three or four albums depending on length.

Here are some examples of artists from the past few days of the random album selections.

• Miles Davis
• The Flamin' Groovies
• Wilson Pickett

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

• Aaron Neville
• Eli 'Paperboy' Reed
• Angel Olsen
• Lee Fields & The Expressions

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

• R.E.M
• Chet Baker
• Grant Green
• Splitsville

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

• The Beatles
• Hall & Oates
• Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
• Kylie Minogue

I'll keep doing this for awhile.  

The Replacements at The Pastime Lounge

The show was December 4th 1984. That would be 36 years ago today. I had been working at the Pastime Lounge spinning records as a DJ for a couple of years and we had been booking local bands to play on some Saturday nights which I was arranging. I was approached by a couple of guys who worked at the Buff State college radio station WBNY. They had been in the bar a few times and I'd talk with them about music and bands. They proposed having the Replacements play at the Pastime.

Apparently they had been having a hard time finding a place for them to play because of their rowdy reputation. I knew they were a wild band but wasn't aware how bad they could be. I had also recently been in the back room of the bar behind the false wall and had seen the unused space that could potentially be used to showcase bands. The Pastime Lounge had previously a movie theater with a large stage but now only the old lobby was used to house the bar. The other space was walled off. It was huge and could probably hold another hundred or so people. 

So I talked the owner into having the Replacements play in his bar.

We had the show and the band members were complete childish jerks, assholes and drunk buffoons. I was embarrassed to be associated with them and they certainly embarrassed themselves and that radio station but I doubt they cared. They trashed the backroom where they had been waiting for the show to start and they also trashed the owner's office. Later in their drunken stupor they tried to argue for more money than had been agreed upon. A very unpleasant experience and they really killed it for any other touring band to ever play the Pastime. The owner was just never interested in any other acts unless they were local. He also never spoke again about expanding into the way back theater area of the building.

That all being said... The Replacements put on a great show.

Here is a link to the setlist that night at Color Me Impressed: The Replacements Live Archive Project.

Time for a Celebration

Today we learned that our new grandchild due in the spring is a boy and knowing the gender of a baby seems to make everything so much more real. So tonight I have a Celebration Ale from Sierra Nevada.

I always look forward to having a Celebration Dry Hopped IPA each year. They arrive in November and by Thanksgiving I've usually had a few. This year was a little different because I haven't been out in the stores and seeing it on the shelf. Becky did pick up a 6 pack for me recently. 

So when we heard from Sean and Ashley today I was able to drink one of the Celebrations. I just wish I could share one in person with Sean. Last year we had my birthday dinner with Sean and Ashley at Trattoria Aroma and Sean and I shared some grappa at the end of the night.

So Becky and I are very excited about this new baby boy coming into the family. The fire engine in the photo belonged to Sean and was one of his favorite toys. Now it is also one of Henry's favorite toys when he comes to visit us. He knows we keep it on a shelf in the closet and he will ask to see it while doing a video chat call. Now Clara is starting to ask to see it too. 

The kids also like to play with Gumby too.

Gilead

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, 2004. I finished this about two weeks ago and needed some time to digest this novel. I almost gave up on it several times but soldiered on. I had heard a lot about the 2005 Pulitzer Prize author over the past few years and had wanted to read her novels about a historical family in the rural Midwest. I had no idea that she was also a Calvinist minister in addition to her career as an English professor at the University of Iowa.

So the novel was a serious reflection of her Calvinists faith and the story is about a family of Calvinists preachers. Everything was about faith in God. Every incident, every conversation, every everything circled back to their godie faith. I got really tired of it.

She is a wonderful writer. No doubt. Unfortunately in my view her storyline was a one trick pony about the spiritual battles of the male members of the family. Now that being said there were some fascinating aspects of this novel like the way the narrator is facing inevitable death using the letters to his young son as the vehicle. I also liked some of the historical aspects of the town and the Civil War. Unfortunately one had to get overwhelming deluge of religion. Now I understand that this is what some people in the rural Midwest were like at the time and it may reflect on that faith culture but it's something that I am interested in whatsoever. I will avoid her other books in the Gilead series like the plague.

Coincidentally Becky watched a movie the other night titles Homecoming based on the Robinson novel of the same name she wrote in 1980. The movie was released in 1987. I watched a little bit here and there but I couldn't get involved with the grim story of a couple  abandoned young girls and the struggles of their life in rural Idaho.

The Things I Carry Around

These are the things I carry around the house as I move from one special place to another. The special places are where I sit and do things. The things I do with the things I carry are reading, writing and listening to music. The things I carry include a notebook with pen, a tablet, a book, a phone and sometimes an iPod.

The special places have been the front porch and the backyard which are now not in use because of the change of season. I sit at the kitchen table with a comfortable chair with my laptop and the other things nearby. I sit in the chair in the living room with my things on the table next to me. We just got a new reading lamp for that special place. We recently set up a new special place for me to sit on the second floor in a chair overlooking the front windows. There is a reading lamp next to the chair and it almost feels like I'm sitting on the porch with a nice view of the neighborhood up and down the street. I also recently set up the sunroom in the backyard to be used this winter. I sealed the windows, rearranged the furniture and stored most of the usual stuff in the shed. I took the chairs from the front porch and put them in the sunroom along with a table to work with the laptop. We have a heater in the room and the stereo is staying in it's place. I've used it a few times lately and is quite comfortable when the sun is shining regardless of how cold it's been so far. We'll see.  So I take my things and move around to different places in the house to mostly read, write and listen to music.

This is one of the ways I'm surviving the pandemic.

Tim Buckley - Kitchen Listening

Morning kitchen listening... craving live music. Tim Buckley Live at the Troubadour 1969.

He had a unique voice who died too soon. I saw him perform live many times. Perhaps more than any other artists during my early years attending concerts. Watched him play in Philly at small folk clubs like The Main Point and The 2nd Fret, at loud rock clubs like The Trauma, Kaleidoscope and The Electric Factory when he opened for bigger acts, at large festivals like The Philadelphia Folk Festival and the Atlantic City Pop Festival, at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago, and surprisingly at a high school gym opening for Badfinger. 

Sadly Tim Buckley died of a heroin overdose in 1975 at the age of 28. His son Jeff Buckley drowned in the Mississippi River in 1997 at the age of 30. He was in Memphis recording his second album. Jeff Buckley's only album Grace released in 1994 is spectacular.

I have a lot of Tim Buckley in my collection.

• Tim Buckley, 1966
• Goodbye and Hello, 1967
• Happy Sad, 1969
• Blue Afternoon, 1969
• Lorca, 1970
• Starsailor, 1970
• Greetings From LA, 1972
• Sefronia, 1973
• Look At The Fool, 1974
• Best of Tim Buckley, 1983
• Dream Letter: Live in London 1968, 1990
• Live at the Troubadour 1969, 1994
• Honeyman: Recorded Live in 1973, 1995
• Works in Progress, 1999
• The Dreams Belong To Me: Rare and Unreleased 1968-1973, 2001
• Live at the Folklore Center 1967, 2009
• Lady Give Me Your Key: The Unreleased 1967 Solo Acoustic Sessions, 2016

Winter is Here

Yesterday we had some snow and this morning we woke up to more snow. Fortunately not a lot of snow but just enough to let us know that winter is here. It also became a beautifully sunny day today but cold and windy. Becky and I went for a walk through the neighborhood and we were bundled up and masked.

Pandemically speaking this is also the time of great consternation and the most dangerous time with the continuous uncontrolled spread of the virus throughout the country. This is the third wave or second or whatever depending on who is saying what and where they are located. All we know is it is bad.

It's been almost a week since Thanksgiving and the hospitals are getting full everywhere. People are getting sick. People are dying. The president is ignoring everything except his fundraising off the lies about the election he keeps spreading. It's amazing how much those people believe him and send money to him. The grifter knows his suckers. Pathetic. 

It's December so I put up the birdfeeder. The first one. Mark also put up the feeder next door. We very much enjoy watching the birds at the feeders throughout the winter months. We'll enjoy it even more so this winter of staying at home.

Today I sat in our backyard sunroom. In previous years I've always shut down the room for the winter after taking out the screens and closing all the windows. I would fill the room up with yard tables, chairs, wheel barrels, planters and lots of stuff. This year I systematically stored everything more carefully in the shed and actually got most everything in there. I have easy access to things that we may need including the snow blower.

The sunroom has lots of space now. I put the porch chairs in there and that is where I sat today doing some reading and writing. I've been going in there all summer and fall. I still have a table and chair set up for using my laptop. It's very comfortable in there now.

The sun was out this afternoon and it actually felt warm in that room with the sun beating down on the windows. I also had the stereo on too. Nice. I thought it would be nice to have that space available for us throughout the winter since we would not be going anywhere. It was another place to be and where we could enjoy the outdoors while staying warm. We also have a heater that can be used in that space if it is really cold and the sun isn't out. We can see Mark's birdfeeder from the sunroom.

I'm hoping to spend some time there this winter. Even Christmas Day. It will be a strange Christmas this year. We've already all discussed the family not getting together for the holidays. It will be tough. Becky and I decided to get a small Christmas tree in a pot this year and then plant it in the backyard in the spring. A pandemic tree.

Miles Davis Live Albums 3 Sets - Kitchen Listening

I started my morning kitchen listening with Miles Davis: In Person at the Blackhawk Complete Shows which is a 4 CD set that include the two original albums Vol. and Vol. 2 that were recorded and released in 1961. It was time for a long day of live Miles Davis on the stereo. 

I let iTunes randomly pick the next couple of live albums from my Miles Davis collection. I counted 14 live albums and many of them are multiple disc box sets. I could just play live Miles for a long time but today I played three sets from different time periods.

After the Blackhawk albums I listened to Miles and Quincy Live at Montreux Jazz Festival which was recorded in 1991 and released in 1993. It was Quincy Jones conducting the Gil Evans Orchestra with Miles Davis as the featured performer. A very different big band style after hearing the small group combo of the previous album I'd been listening to today. I also recently saw that Davis was seriously ill when he recorded this concert and died three months later.

The third set of live music from Miles Davis today was Live at the Fillmore East 1970: It's About That Time. This was part of the Bootleg Series. It was recorded in March 1970 and was released in 2001. This was also the last show with Wayne Shorter in the band which included Chick Corea, Dave Holland, Airto Moreira and Jack DeJohnette. This set of music was much different than the two previous shows I listened to today and he was playing a lot of music from Bitches Brew. I saw him a few months earlier on this tour where he was opening up for Neil Young and Crazy Horse.

One of the things I've liked about Miles Davis' music is how it has evolved and transformed over the years and decades and albums but has always retained his very distinctive sound and style.

I have a lot of Miles Davis in my collection including many live albums.

Sam Cooke - Morning Listening

Listening to the Sam Cooke 4 CD box set compilation Sam Cooke: The Man Who Invented Soul. This album is nearly four and half hours of music. I have always loved the smooth singing voice sound of Sam Cooke. 

So many great songs that are embedded in my radio memory as a young person discovering music in the late 50's and early 60's. A lot of my early music memories were driven by our Aunt Dot our teenaged babysitter when we were little kids. She was always listening to music.

Later I discovered Sam Cooke for myself and realized how many of his biggest hits he had written himself.

I liked that he could do the crossover thing and have a huge white audience but he could also do the black R&B soul music like no other artists. The two live albums really put that into

focus. Live at the Copa from 1964 was Cooke singing well but the music was the lamest kind of soul, soulless actually while playing to a rich supper-club crowd of white people. Then there is the awesome and arguably one of the best live albums ever Live at the Harlem Square Club released in 1985.

Great music.

Sadly his tragic death has been shrouded in speculation, misinformation, conspiracy theories and of course Southern racism.