A 30th Birthday Party

Got a birthday coming up and it's hard to believe that his "Birthday Dance Party" was 44 years ago. I guess that means I'm 74 this week. 

So I came across this flyer for this party in that old box of "stuff" on the 3rd floor I've been going through recently.

I remember that 30th birthday party very well. We had a very large crowd show up at the Pastime Lounge on Grant Street for it on December 5th 1981. It was a Saturday night. The music for the party came through the bar's sound system from the sound booth where I was playing some mixes I made for the event. 

We wanted to have a party in a bar somewhere I we went around and talked with the folks at a few of them. We didn't want to rent a special event space somewhere because we really didn't have the money for it. Those rental spaces were expensive. We just wanted to go to a regular bar somewhere but we wanted to be able to control the music.

We also didn't want some fancy bar. A dive bar was preferrable. I did talk with a few places on Elmwood but that wasn't going to work. We also really wanted to do it on a Saturday night. I remember checking out a few bars on Grant street. They definitely fit the dive bar description.

I would end up working at the Pastime Lounge for five years.1982 to 1986. I had a lot of fun spinning records there and booking local bands. I even bartended a little bit... a very little bit.

The owner at the time was Bobby's father and mother. Bob worked there spinning records on Friday nights. That was their busy night and Bob's mother cooked a popular fish fry that night. Saturday night was always a slow night which is why Bob's father gave me the OK to come in with a party and play the music too.

Becky and I would have a few more parties at the bar including our annual 60's party and a couple of after art opening parties. I played the music for those parties and we had a good crowd. It was soon after that the family hired me for every Saturday night and eventually I also worked some other nights too.

In that old box of "stuff" on the 3rd floor I found lots of flyers for the Pastime Lounge that I made to promote the local bands playing on our stage and for the nights that I was the DJ playing music.

My Fall of Troy

When going through that old box of "stuff" on the 3rd floor I came across the old rolled up drawing I did in 2nd grade depicting the Trojan War and the Fall of Troy. I was really obsessed with ancient history like this at a very early age. Seven years old!!

I do remember making this drawing on that long piece of paper and rolling it up when I was done. I guess it was part of some class. Maybe a Friday afternoon art project at our school... St. Francis of Assissi in Germantown and located down the street from our house. So Mom kept that drawing for decades and it got passed to me somewhere along the way. 

I think this drawing was probably made toward the end of the academic year when we were allowed to do a lot of art projects so that would make it the late spring of 1958 and I was seven years old. I was trying to think back on who my 2nd grade teacher but I'm just not sure.

I do remember making this drawing on that long piece of paper and rolling it up when I was done. I guess it was part of some Friday afternoon art project at our school. Somehow over the decades that rolled paper made it from my mom's attic to my box of old "stuff".

I would go on to read many books on the Trojan War over the years and obsessed over Homer's Iliad and the Odyssey. I must have seen some movie that got me going with it.

I broke up the picture of the drawing into three parts to see it better. When I found the drawing it was rolled up into one little tube that was hard to know what it was. Then I unrolled it.

Escher Quartet

We had another wonderful evening in the Mary Seaton Room at Kleinhans Music Hall listening to the Escher Quartet along with flute player Carol Wincenc. We enjoyed the concert very much and especially the awesome sounding second piece Verde's Quartet in E Minor. The flute player was very good and with a distinctive sound.

The concert was very crowded too despite the potential bad weather which nicely stayed away. It turned out to be a very pleasant night to drive back and forth from Kleinhans on Elmwood Avenue. There was no expected snow. We also parked for the second time in a very good new location just across the street from the concert.

This was the last concert in the Buffalo Chamber Music series until late February. Then there are three more concerts in the series... February, March and April. But for now we have a winter and holiday break.

Glass of Beer - A Beer Named Duck

When Lizzie and Lewie were visiting us last Sunday while passing through Buffalo on their way to Cleveland for the holidays Lewie gave me a 4 pack pint cans of local beers from the Providence area. A finally got to try one tonight.

A Beer Named Duck. A New England Pale Ale from Mast Landing Brewing Co. out of Westbrook, Maine. A nicely hoppy crisp pale ale. Very good. Thank you Lewie and Lizzie. Looking forward to trying the others.