Wednesday, May 27, 2020

Creezy Rube Goldberg contraptions


Tuesday, May 26, 2020

Jimmy Cobb, drummer on Miles Davis's Kind of Blue, dies aged 91 | Music | The Guardian

Drummer Jimmy Cobb performing on stage.

Jimmy Cobb, drummer on Miles Davis's Kind of Blue, dies aged 91 | Music | The Guardian

by Edward Helmore

Jimmy Cobb, the jazz drummer and last surviving player on Miles Davis’s seminal 1959 album Kind of Blue has died from lung cancer at age 91.
Cobb was key in helping to achieve the cool disposition of a handful of Davis’s masterworks, including 1959’s Porgy and Bess, 1960’s Sketches of Spain, 1961’s Someday My Prince Will Come, the 1962 live set Miles Davis at Carnegie Hall and Live at the Black Hawk sessions.
But it was his cymbal work and light pulse on Kind of Blue, the album that cemented Davis’s reputation as the coolest of jazz cats and cited as the best-selling jazz record ever released, for which he will be best remembered.
“Miles would tell us all little things to do and then have us work off his idea,” Cobb told Billboard in 2019.
“He trusted all of us because he knew we were all good musicians. He didn’t really have to do anything else but say what he wanted done.”

Monday, May 25, 2020

Is Baptism by supersoaker next?


Quarrying ledge rock - Jake Barbour, Inc. Friendship, Maine


Ledge rock, split and pulverized mainly makes its way into foundations.. Jake Barbour, Inc. , a local earthworks contractor is the operator of this deep quarry which was begun maybe five years ago. To see their collection of toys and projects click through to their website above.




Sunday, May 24, 2020

Dr. Craig Spencer - ER - NY Presbyterian video

Craig Spencer lives in our neighborhood, works at Columbia Presbyterian.  In the ER.  Also heads a Global Health Project at the School of Public Health.  This video explains what his days have been like in the ER.  On 168 Street.  He was famous when he got Ebola and was med evac'd from Africa.  Trump tweeted about it ten years ago.  Trashing Obama.
Powerful video.

Sunday, May 17, 2020

Covarantining - Friendship 2020

It's hard not being able to make my usual rounds: the lobstermen and other extras like me drawn to the boats and ambiance of Brian's Wharf on Hatchet Cove where my mooring is; Wallace's Market for a cup of coffee and a muffin and small talk about the Red Sox and reading the Portland paper at the common table, a stop at Jeff's Marine on the river in Thomaston, haddock chowder at Home Kitchen, and checking out the progress on the wooden boats being built across the street at the Apprenticeshop.  All Verboten.  But there are Marilyn's chocolate chip cookies.  And her company.



















Thursday, May 14, 2020

Little Richard | ‘Tutti frutti, good booty’ ·Alex Abramovich LRB 12 May 2020

Obituary: Little Richard founding father of rock & roll dies at 87 ...
Alex Abramovich | ‘Tutti frutti, good booty’ · LRB 12 May 2020

I never met Little Richard, but I did spend some time with Dewey Terry, who played in his band. We sat in front of Dewey’s bungalow on Johnny Otis’s estate in Pasadena, drinking Mickey’s Malt Liquor while Dewey played guitar and talked about studio sessions and orgies. At some point, he picked up the phone and said: ‘Let’s go see Richard!’ I was young – 26, 27 years old – but I knew who Little Richard was and what he meant to the world, and was relieved when no one answered the phone. Why would you want to meet Little Richard? What would you say?
‘He did it so good. He give it all to you, and that’s what you want. You want it all or none.’ That’s what Little Richard said about Jimi Hendrix – who toured and recorded with Richard before striking out on his own – but it’s also a perfect description of Little Richard’s appeal and aesthetic. ‘Don’t be ashamed to do whatever you feel,’ he told Hendrix. ‘The people can tell if you’re phony. They can feel it out in the audience. I don’t care if you’re wild. I don’t care if you’re quiet. They’ll know if you’re putting yourself into it, whatever it is.’
Hendrix wasn’t the only musician Little Richard took under his wing. Otis Redding, James Brown, Joe Tex, the Beatles, the Stones and others apprenticed with his band or opened for him. When Richard called himself ‘the originator, the emancipator, the architect of rock’n’roll’, he wasn’t exactly right but also not remotely wrong. ‘He was my shining star and guiding light back when I was only a little boy,’ Bob Dylan said the other day. ‘Little Richard came screaming into my life when I was a teenager,’ Paul McCartney said. ‘I owe a lot of what I do to Little Richard and his style; and he knew it. He would say: “I taught Paul everything he knows.”’

Monday, May 11, 2020

Little Richard - Flamboyant Wild Man of Rock n Roll dies at 87 NY Times

Delving deeply into the wellsprings of gospel music and the blues, and screaming as if for his very life, he created something new, thrilling and dangerous.


Friday, May 8, 2020

Exercises to try during quarantine


Thursday, May 7, 2020

Jean Erdman, Dancer Moved by Myth, Wife of Joseph Campbell Is Dead at 104

The dancer and choreographer Jean Erdman performing her piece “Ophelia” in 1972. She was among the first choreographers to exploit the inherent theatricality of dance, melding it with drama, poetry, music and visual art.

Lacking physical grace myself dancers are not in my usual circle.  But some decades ago I spent a week with Jean Erdman, the wife of 49 years of Joseph Campbell, a Joyce scholar whose recounting of myths inspired epics like Star Wars and a nearly religious contemplative movement,  A week of TaiJiQuan and Thought of Joseph Campbell at Esalen Institute was led in part by his widow Jean.  For me it was a quest to replicate Elliott Porter's iconic photograph from the spot at Big Sur, and an opportunity to do it all with herbal aids to consciousness. - GWC

Eliot Porter Prices - 62 Auction Price Results



Jean Erdman, Dancer Moved by Myth, Wife of Joseph Campbell Is Dead at 104



Her death, in a nursing facility, was announced by Nola Hague, a friend.

A former principal dancer for Martha Graham, Ms. Erdman first came to wide notice as a choreographer in the 1940s, and she remained in the vanguard of the field for decades. She later created performance pieces for the Theater of the Open Eye, an avant-garde New York stage she founded in 1972 with her husband, Joseph Campbell, the scholar of literature and myth.

Ms. Erdman was among the first choreographers to exploit the inherent theatricality of dance, melding it with drama, poetry, music and visual art to form a seamless whole, or “total theater,” as it was known then. Today it might be described as performance art.

Her dances, among them “The Transformations of Medusa” and “Ophelia,” often focused on the inner lives of women — unorthodox fare at midcentury.

Robert Nighthawk - Blues Man born 1909

Jeffrey Wright @jfreewright 
Found this when working on Cadillac Records. Robert Nighthawk, born in Helena, Arkansas, 1909. Played at Muddy Waters', um, first wedding. From the doc 'And This is Free' - 1964, Maxwell St in Chicago. Rough song. Top 5 blues recordings everrrrrrr.

Monday, May 4, 2020

Whitbread 1997 -1998 Official Film

I was obsessed with the Whitbread in 1997 - 1998.  It was early in ocean sailing  coverage on the web.
Email reports and GPS tracking were the keys. But when they came in to port on each leg they published photographs.  Those were the days of film so the photographers were crew members.
The effort was enormous - 4,000 to 5,000 calories a day.
I was in awe of the round the buoys intensity across oceans.  The leg from Capetown to Fremantle saw all eight boats finish within 20 miles of each other.  Then came the ice.
I rooted for the Dutch team Brunel Sunergy (after all my earliest known forebear arrived in Nieuw Amsterdam in their own ship in 1612).  And they had a great photographer ....(damn can't remember his last name) whose photo of the boat on a screaming reach I look at every time I sit at our dining table.  
A high point for me was taking the helm of my law partner Eileen's friend Avis's boat to escort the fleet as thousands of us escorted the fleet out of Baltimore.
The round the world race was won by EF Language skippered by the great American sailor Paul Cayard.  A champion in the 21 foot Olympic class Star and America's Cup challenger, this was his first ocean race where miles and hours, not seconds mattered. 
Among the highlights was the third place leg finish by the all female drew of EF Education skippered for the leg by the great French solo sailor Isabel Autissier
- gwc

These girls can dance!