There is no love sincerer than the love of food.
~ George Bernard Shaw
I could politely be called an enthusiastic eater.
Partly that's because there's little that doesn't appeal to me and partly because I never succumbed to any sort of guilt about eating. I wake up hungry every single morning of my life, regardless of what I've eaten the night before.
I've been known to ask the driver of the car I'm riding in if we're going to stop for lunch barely 15 minutes after leaving home. If I get asked out at the last minute for lunch or dinner and I've already eaten, I keep quiet about it and go out for a second meal.
And sometimes when I look back at what I've been up to for the past couple of days, it feels like it's been non-stop eating. Oh, sure, I did some writing and bathing in between chowing down sessions, but not much else.
That's not embarrassment talking, that's simple fact.
Sometimes I find myself sitting at Metzger on a Sunday evening, mere hours after returning from brunch at Laura Lee's, inhaling pretzel rolls, lavash and spent grain sourdough with mustard butter and beer cheese, a completely unique squash salad with ribbons of carrots and a dark chocolate torte as if I hadn't eaten all day.
That vintage yet obscure soul music is, as usual, playing on the sound system only encourages us to linger and me to order yet another glass of Gruner Veltliner as the Sunday crowd gradually dwindles to the diehards on bar stools.
Not even a day later, I'll be happily ensconced on a stool at Dinamo, slurping up my cold weather go-to, also known as the pescatarian's delight: fish soup. Tomato based and muscular, the soup is loaded with rockfish, mussels, squid and couscous' Sardinian cousin, fregola, with just enough heat to keep you honest.
And for the record, I'm also using slices of Italian bread to sop up what my spoon is incapable of delivering to my mouth. Enthusiastic eaters leave no morsel behind.
But woman does not live by soup and wine alone, so we also share a salad and white pizza with red onions because the simplicity of a thin crust crowned with onions is about as satisfying as bread and cheese gets. The green salad is essential with pie. And the chocolate espresso torte? That's just my standard ending at Dinamo, even when I opt out of whipped cream and cherries.
There are only three things women need in life: food, water and compliments. ~ Chris Rock
Sorry, Chris, but some of us also need music.
Which means that by Tuesday night, I will lead Mr. Wright to Saison Market for wine and conversation surrounded by members of the Comedy Coalition working on being hilarious and loud. We sip until we're hungry before heading to Tarrant's Back Door for fish tacos, only three of which arrive at our table because the cashier has dropped the fourth one on the floor,
When I point out to him that we could go ahead and start on the three still safe inside their box, he looks at me with amazement since clearly this option has not occurred to him. Meanwhile, we dive into the tacos, each of which contains two enormous pieces of grilled tilapia the length of the tortilla and a fresh-tasting corn and cabbage slaw.
And notice I said grilled since fried fish tacos are not a personal favorite and the Back Door is one of the few places that knows this and gives me what I like. Eventually, the fourth taco shows up and is dispatched quickly.
Our final destination, since woman can not live by food, water and compliments alone (though I have come to revel in the latter becoming a daily part of my life after it being MIA for years) was Black Iris Gallery to see L.A.'s Lonesome Leash play for a small but appreciative crowd.
First of all, there's the setting: an intimate, wood-lined room with great acoustics. Then there's the vibe: dimly-lit, hushed, anticipatory. And the crowd who comes out on a chilly Tuesday night? They're a mix of music lovers, members of the LGBTQ community and those who've been tipped off that an amazing talent will be sharing their gift.
Witness how Mr. Wright's L.A. connection had alerted him to the show after I had already I had already made it my pick for the evening.
The one-man band that is Lonesome Leash (aka Walt) took his place in the corner of the room behind his arsenal: a bass drum, a snare drum and an accordion, with a keyboard to his right. Right off the bat, this is not someone who plays the accordion according to the tenets of Cajun, Alpine or Tejano but instead makes it pulse with an energy that sounds bigger than it should.
Although he began by singing in a hushed voice - delicately, beautifully, laying his life out for dissection - as he played gentle drums and winding accordion, it only took until the end of the first song before he was also playing trumpet. Folded into accordion and drums, the pure sound of the horn took the music into something positively soul-stirring.
With each song, it seemed as if he opened himself up further, skin, bones, heart and mind, inviting the listener to follow along as he mused on life, love and time spent alone driving. Sample lyric: "There is love in everyone I have known..." He switched to keyboards to play some of the poignant songs from his new album "Delicate Art" before returning to dazzling us as a one-man band.
Each song captured the audience, from the slow burners to the more overtly powerful tunes, and it was all we could do to clap loudly to show our appreciation for his talent each time he quietly folded his hands to signal the song ending.
When the show concluded, a friend walked over, stood between us and Walt and said, "Thank goodness there are delicate and emotionally fragile musicians willing to open themselves up and share their take on the world." Amen, girlfriend. I couldn't have said it better myself. It was as if a butterfly had landed on my arm and sat there for an hour, allowing me to savor up close the beauty of its wings and movement.
A musical memory of the highest order.
And no amount of eats can replace that feeling. So, sorry, Chris Rock, but it'll take more than food, water and compliments, though you can score a helluva lot of points with them.
You want to show me your sincerity, GB Shaw? Add music to the mix.
Showing posts with label black iris gallery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label black iris gallery. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 21, 2018
Tuesday, September 11, 2018
Everyday I (try to) Write the Book
As days turn to nights with zero time for blogging, it's probably best to think of these as postcards.
Greetings from First Fridays...
You know it's going to be a great evening when the owner of Chez Foushee asks how close you'd like to sit to the bossa nova band. We put just enough distance between the music and our conversation to enjoy both.
Meanwhile, we took our time with crab bisque, olives and Marcona almonds in herbed oil and a couple of Foushee market salads loaded with cannellini beans, craisins, toasted almonds and red onions over peppery arugula with green goddess dressing. The salad choice was a matter of necessity once I found out that their long-standard brussels sprouts salad (the one with bacon, red onions and bleu cheese) has been put out to pasture. I may never recover from the loss, though a dense dark chocolate mousse helped ease the pain somewhat.
Our art fix was taken at the main library with "Herald 4- Drawing from the Knew," an exhibit of seven regional artists working in vastly different styles. At 1708, we took in "Yo, Bruce: Gerald Donato + Bruce Wilhelm" because the playful nature of Donato's work never gets old. At Black Iris for the "Sink or Swim" show, my favorite was the drawing that incorporated Popeye, Olive Oil and Wimpy into one image (and probably unrecognizable to a younger viewer). Candela Gallery's group show, "Channels" of work by Willie Anne Wright, Courtney Johnson and Lisa Kokin was compelling, none more so than Kokin's mixed media sewn collages using old black and white photographs of people sewn together.
Because we're all connected, right?
Greetings from Peaches, home to 45s
Even if there had been no crate of surprises, the meal would have been memorable. Holmes, Beloved and I ventured out of their usual comfort zone for a meal taken at the corner of Nota Bene's bar. Holmes went in looking for the cauliflower that had changed his opinion about cauliflower, only to find it (like the brussels sprout salad at Chez Foushee) M.I.A. Where he scored points was in suggesting we get the brocaletti with red peppers and anchovy breadcrumbs instead.
Since when does Holmes suggest a vegetable he can't even pronounce? Or, more to the point, who was I with and what had he done with Holmes?
Bottles of Rosabella Rose (unfortunately, they were out of the Arianna Occhipinti Grillo we'd requested) accompanied the brocaletti, along with an arugula salad with red onion, fennel and sweety drops. One of the servers told us she'd been so enamored of the sweety drops that she'd ordered an entire jar for herself. I have to say, Holmes, Beloved and I were mighty taken with the teardrop-shaped cross between a cherry tomato and a jalapeno that managed to taste both sweet and tart at once.
Next we went on a fungi bender, first with a wild mushroom, roasted garlic, caramelized onion and Fontina pizza (with crust to die for) and then with a special of tagliarini with an array of mushrooms in a cream sauce. The tagliarini was so tender, it all but melted in your mouth.
Dessert was an extravaganza, with tiramisu (Beloved's first ever), lemon buttermilk zeppole with dark chocolate dipping sauce and the dessert du jour, a fig crostata. We paired the latter two with Barolo Chinato, as lovely an accompaniment to a sweet course as could be hoped for. And that rustic fig crostata, well, its thick, barely sweet crust was worthy of the figs and that's saying a lot coming from a fig fanatic.
The evening's soundtrack came courtesy of Holmes' buddy who'd been downsizing. Seems Holmes stopped by and scooped up an old Peaches crate filled with 45s. Granted, you have to be pretty seasoned to remember what Peaches was and that they sold crates for records, but none of us had any trouble.
There was loads of Elvis Costello, only a couple from the Beatles, plus the Jam, the Stranglers, B52s and a host of other '80s bands. We spent the evening working our way through the 45s, occasionally going to an album (can you ever hear too much Brass Ring, really?) for a side just to give Holmes a break on the turntable.
Greetings from the land of secession
When the day is spent driving to and from Norfolk, where signs with dire warnings of "High tide gate testing Tuesday 1 a.m." foreshadow the impending hurricane, it's best if the evening involves no car time. Fortunately, Conch Republic was no more than a brief stroll for a view of skulling boats, setting sun and a photo shoot for the restaurant at a nearby table.
In what was no doubt early preparation for Florence's arrival, all the umbrellas had been taken off the deck, unfortunate since the sun continues to shine until the weather system arrives. I made do by sitting with my back to the sun, but given that it's (sadly) nearly mid-September, it slid behind the trees before too long.
Broadbent Vino Verde washed down conch chowder, a wedge salad ("What kind of dressing do you want on that?" our young server asks. Um, bleu cheese because it wouldn't be a true wedge salad without it?) and a California Cobb. Over at the Boathouse, we saw tiki torches burning on their deck, although I can no longer think of them without thinking of last year's white supremacy march at UVA. Damn neo-Nazis spoil everything for the whole group. What's next, beach umbrellas?
I know, I know, I'm leaving out an awful lot for someone with lots to say who hasn't blogged in days, but you know what? It's going to get worse before it gets better. Depending on how Flo decides to behave, things could get even crazier next week. And the week after? Forget about it.
When you throw your lot in with a planner, there's bound to be too much adventure to document it all. All I can tell you is that my aim is true.
Greetings from First Fridays...
You know it's going to be a great evening when the owner of Chez Foushee asks how close you'd like to sit to the bossa nova band. We put just enough distance between the music and our conversation to enjoy both.
Meanwhile, we took our time with crab bisque, olives and Marcona almonds in herbed oil and a couple of Foushee market salads loaded with cannellini beans, craisins, toasted almonds and red onions over peppery arugula with green goddess dressing. The salad choice was a matter of necessity once I found out that their long-standard brussels sprouts salad (the one with bacon, red onions and bleu cheese) has been put out to pasture. I may never recover from the loss, though a dense dark chocolate mousse helped ease the pain somewhat.
Our art fix was taken at the main library with "Herald 4- Drawing from the Knew," an exhibit of seven regional artists working in vastly different styles. At 1708, we took in "Yo, Bruce: Gerald Donato + Bruce Wilhelm" because the playful nature of Donato's work never gets old. At Black Iris for the "Sink or Swim" show, my favorite was the drawing that incorporated Popeye, Olive Oil and Wimpy into one image (and probably unrecognizable to a younger viewer). Candela Gallery's group show, "Channels" of work by Willie Anne Wright, Courtney Johnson and Lisa Kokin was compelling, none more so than Kokin's mixed media sewn collages using old black and white photographs of people sewn together.
Because we're all connected, right?
Greetings from Peaches, home to 45s
Even if there had been no crate of surprises, the meal would have been memorable. Holmes, Beloved and I ventured out of their usual comfort zone for a meal taken at the corner of Nota Bene's bar. Holmes went in looking for the cauliflower that had changed his opinion about cauliflower, only to find it (like the brussels sprout salad at Chez Foushee) M.I.A. Where he scored points was in suggesting we get the brocaletti with red peppers and anchovy breadcrumbs instead.
Since when does Holmes suggest a vegetable he can't even pronounce? Or, more to the point, who was I with and what had he done with Holmes?
Bottles of Rosabella Rose (unfortunately, they were out of the Arianna Occhipinti Grillo we'd requested) accompanied the brocaletti, along with an arugula salad with red onion, fennel and sweety drops. One of the servers told us she'd been so enamored of the sweety drops that she'd ordered an entire jar for herself. I have to say, Holmes, Beloved and I were mighty taken with the teardrop-shaped cross between a cherry tomato and a jalapeno that managed to taste both sweet and tart at once.
Next we went on a fungi bender, first with a wild mushroom, roasted garlic, caramelized onion and Fontina pizza (with crust to die for) and then with a special of tagliarini with an array of mushrooms in a cream sauce. The tagliarini was so tender, it all but melted in your mouth.
Dessert was an extravaganza, with tiramisu (Beloved's first ever), lemon buttermilk zeppole with dark chocolate dipping sauce and the dessert du jour, a fig crostata. We paired the latter two with Barolo Chinato, as lovely an accompaniment to a sweet course as could be hoped for. And that rustic fig crostata, well, its thick, barely sweet crust was worthy of the figs and that's saying a lot coming from a fig fanatic.
The evening's soundtrack came courtesy of Holmes' buddy who'd been downsizing. Seems Holmes stopped by and scooped up an old Peaches crate filled with 45s. Granted, you have to be pretty seasoned to remember what Peaches was and that they sold crates for records, but none of us had any trouble.
There was loads of Elvis Costello, only a couple from the Beatles, plus the Jam, the Stranglers, B52s and a host of other '80s bands. We spent the evening working our way through the 45s, occasionally going to an album (can you ever hear too much Brass Ring, really?) for a side just to give Holmes a break on the turntable.
Greetings from the land of secession
When the day is spent driving to and from Norfolk, where signs with dire warnings of "High tide gate testing Tuesday 1 a.m." foreshadow the impending hurricane, it's best if the evening involves no car time. Fortunately, Conch Republic was no more than a brief stroll for a view of skulling boats, setting sun and a photo shoot for the restaurant at a nearby table.
In what was no doubt early preparation for Florence's arrival, all the umbrellas had been taken off the deck, unfortunate since the sun continues to shine until the weather system arrives. I made do by sitting with my back to the sun, but given that it's (sadly) nearly mid-September, it slid behind the trees before too long.
Broadbent Vino Verde washed down conch chowder, a wedge salad ("What kind of dressing do you want on that?" our young server asks. Um, bleu cheese because it wouldn't be a true wedge salad without it?) and a California Cobb. Over at the Boathouse, we saw tiki torches burning on their deck, although I can no longer think of them without thinking of last year's white supremacy march at UVA. Damn neo-Nazis spoil everything for the whole group. What's next, beach umbrellas?
I know, I know, I'm leaving out an awful lot for someone with lots to say who hasn't blogged in days, but you know what? It's going to get worse before it gets better. Depending on how Flo decides to behave, things could get even crazier next week. And the week after? Forget about it.
When you throw your lot in with a planner, there's bound to be too much adventure to document it all. All I can tell you is that my aim is true.
Tuesday, June 12, 2018
To Fall Down at Your Door
Language is power, life and the instrument of culture, the instrument of domination and liberation. ~Angela Carter
Let's call tonight an evening of deja-vu in the Ward.
When I saw there was a touring pop-up photo exhibit at Black Iris Gallery, I considered starting my evening there. When I saw that it was an exhibit of large-format black and white photographs by Bill Daniel, the deal was sealed. That's because back in the dark ages of 2010, I'd gone to Gallery 5 to watch Daniel show a trove of lost and found music acts filmed between 1965 and 1987 and it had been fascinating.
As much as I'd enjoyed that, why wouldn't I want to see his photographs of skateboarders, punk bands, graffiti and the like from the past 35 years?
That's a rhetorical question, by the way.
The photographs were such snapshots in time, from the airborne skater with a Circle Jerks sticker on the bottom of his board to the punk singer - Fender guitar slung to the side and guitar pick between his bad teeth - playing the cowbell. Or put another way: it was an era when so many punk musicians were wearing Black Flag t-shirts to prove their cred.
Daniel captured the punk ethos in photo after photo, never more so than in a shot of a dingy music club door with a handwritten "NO MOHAWKS!" sign on it, in front of which was a mohawked guy in mid-jump in front of it. Another showed an old VW van modified with three sails atop it, presumably to increase the van's infamously slow pace.
Gawking at a photo of two '80s show-goers (her shoulder pads and bangles, his eyeliner and piercings), I heard my name and turned to see my favorite artist/DJ couple. After chatting about the exhibit and her new baby chicks (one of which she said likes to ride on the back of a full-grown chicken like it's a pony or something), we reverted to our favorite topic: what we're reading.
After mentioning Roberto Bolano, she asked if I'd ever read the English novelist Angela Carter, a new favorite of hers. Negative, I said and we launched into one of our standard procedure book talks (like we do) that involved her recommending Carter highly for her feminist, magical realistic style of writing. Sounds right up my alley.
But it was when she asked what was new with me that I had that moment. Where do I start when I run into friends I haven't seen for a while? In this case, I may have mentioned the update to my relationship status and having just returned from a long weekend at the river.
"Ooh, I like a man with a house on the river," she enthused with a knowing smile, since they live in his house on the Chickahominy River, a charming place, complete with chickens, that I'd visited last year. So she knows.
When I departed Black Iris, it was for some theater at the Basement, where I immediately ran into Foto Boy and his betrothed, an actress/director who was looking fabulous and theatrical in a way I could never pull off. Our first stop was at the bar in search of alcohol for her, caffeine for him and sugar for me. Hey, whatever gets you through the play, right?
We were all there for the preview of TheatreLab's production of "Gruesome Playground Injuries," a play with which I had some familiarity, having seen a staged reading of it back in 2011. I said it was a night of deja-vu, after all.
Despite the intervening years. its poignant yet disturbing story had stayed with me. Imagine two kids who meet in the school infirmary at the tender age of eight; she's throwing up non-stop and he's ridden his bike off of the school's roof. Because boys are dumb.
The hook is that they immediately bond over shared maladies, touching each other's wounds and scars, while over the next thirty years, they continue to see each other periodically, always due to one or the other's sickness or injury. And to be clear, it's a story with many, many funny moments despite the gruesome injuries.
A dungeon is a place where people can go to languish.
They're both damaged souls and whether it's a fireworks accident that causes Doug to lose an eye or Kayleen's self-medicating and cutting, the two continue to share an increasing bond of personal pain throughout their friendship/love.
I don't want my first kiss to be with you. AND I just threw up.
When I'd first seen it, I kept hoping that they would acknowledge their feelings for each other, but there were always hospital beds and comas and psychiatric institutions keeping them distracted from their true feelings.
The top ten things anyone has ever done for me were all done by you.
As with any two-actor production, it's all about the chops and chemistry of the actors and Jeffrey Cole and Rachel Rose Gilmour nailed their characters in all their dysfunction and tragedy. Cole singing in a thick Scottish brogue while trying to dance with Gilmour to the Proclaimers' "500 Miles" was nothing short of masterful. And hilarious.
One particularly clever device was that the scenes didn't play out in chronological order, so we saw them first as children, then young adults, then back to teens, then slightly older adults and so on, while music marked scene transitions and the passage of time. From Aimee Mann's "Save Me" through David Gray's "Please Forgive Me" to a cover of REM's "Everybody Hurts," the music helped with the ten- and fifteen-year jumps the script made while providing time for the actors to change clothes onstage.
TheatreLab, you never cease to impress me.
As an added accompaniment to the theatrics we'd come to watch, throughout the production we also got a symphony of jackhammers blasting Broad Street just outside the Basement's door. It was the sound of the city desperately trying to finish up the Pulse construction for the touted completion date and while the cacophony was superfluous to the story, it did add a certain city grittiness.
Punk photographs, an emotional tour de force of a play and an unexpected chance to catch up with two favorite couples along the way. Exactly what a city woman needs after languishing at the rivah for a few days.
And by languishing, I mean having the time of her life.
Let's call tonight an evening of deja-vu in the Ward.
When I saw there was a touring pop-up photo exhibit at Black Iris Gallery, I considered starting my evening there. When I saw that it was an exhibit of large-format black and white photographs by Bill Daniel, the deal was sealed. That's because back in the dark ages of 2010, I'd gone to Gallery 5 to watch Daniel show a trove of lost and found music acts filmed between 1965 and 1987 and it had been fascinating.
As much as I'd enjoyed that, why wouldn't I want to see his photographs of skateboarders, punk bands, graffiti and the like from the past 35 years?
That's a rhetorical question, by the way.
The photographs were such snapshots in time, from the airborne skater with a Circle Jerks sticker on the bottom of his board to the punk singer - Fender guitar slung to the side and guitar pick between his bad teeth - playing the cowbell. Or put another way: it was an era when so many punk musicians were wearing Black Flag t-shirts to prove their cred.
Daniel captured the punk ethos in photo after photo, never more so than in a shot of a dingy music club door with a handwritten "NO MOHAWKS!" sign on it, in front of which was a mohawked guy in mid-jump in front of it. Another showed an old VW van modified with three sails atop it, presumably to increase the van's infamously slow pace.
Gawking at a photo of two '80s show-goers (her shoulder pads and bangles, his eyeliner and piercings), I heard my name and turned to see my favorite artist/DJ couple. After chatting about the exhibit and her new baby chicks (one of which she said likes to ride on the back of a full-grown chicken like it's a pony or something), we reverted to our favorite topic: what we're reading.
After mentioning Roberto Bolano, she asked if I'd ever read the English novelist Angela Carter, a new favorite of hers. Negative, I said and we launched into one of our standard procedure book talks (like we do) that involved her recommending Carter highly for her feminist, magical realistic style of writing. Sounds right up my alley.
But it was when she asked what was new with me that I had that moment. Where do I start when I run into friends I haven't seen for a while? In this case, I may have mentioned the update to my relationship status and having just returned from a long weekend at the river.
"Ooh, I like a man with a house on the river," she enthused with a knowing smile, since they live in his house on the Chickahominy River, a charming place, complete with chickens, that I'd visited last year. So she knows.
When I departed Black Iris, it was for some theater at the Basement, where I immediately ran into Foto Boy and his betrothed, an actress/director who was looking fabulous and theatrical in a way I could never pull off. Our first stop was at the bar in search of alcohol for her, caffeine for him and sugar for me. Hey, whatever gets you through the play, right?
We were all there for the preview of TheatreLab's production of "Gruesome Playground Injuries," a play with which I had some familiarity, having seen a staged reading of it back in 2011. I said it was a night of deja-vu, after all.
Despite the intervening years. its poignant yet disturbing story had stayed with me. Imagine two kids who meet in the school infirmary at the tender age of eight; she's throwing up non-stop and he's ridden his bike off of the school's roof. Because boys are dumb.
The hook is that they immediately bond over shared maladies, touching each other's wounds and scars, while over the next thirty years, they continue to see each other periodically, always due to one or the other's sickness or injury. And to be clear, it's a story with many, many funny moments despite the gruesome injuries.
A dungeon is a place where people can go to languish.
They're both damaged souls and whether it's a fireworks accident that causes Doug to lose an eye or Kayleen's self-medicating and cutting, the two continue to share an increasing bond of personal pain throughout their friendship/love.
I don't want my first kiss to be with you. AND I just threw up.
When I'd first seen it, I kept hoping that they would acknowledge their feelings for each other, but there were always hospital beds and comas and psychiatric institutions keeping them distracted from their true feelings.
The top ten things anyone has ever done for me were all done by you.
As with any two-actor production, it's all about the chops and chemistry of the actors and Jeffrey Cole and Rachel Rose Gilmour nailed their characters in all their dysfunction and tragedy. Cole singing in a thick Scottish brogue while trying to dance with Gilmour to the Proclaimers' "500 Miles" was nothing short of masterful. And hilarious.
One particularly clever device was that the scenes didn't play out in chronological order, so we saw them first as children, then young adults, then back to teens, then slightly older adults and so on, while music marked scene transitions and the passage of time. From Aimee Mann's "Save Me" through David Gray's "Please Forgive Me" to a cover of REM's "Everybody Hurts," the music helped with the ten- and fifteen-year jumps the script made while providing time for the actors to change clothes onstage.
TheatreLab, you never cease to impress me.
As an added accompaniment to the theatrics we'd come to watch, throughout the production we also got a symphony of jackhammers blasting Broad Street just outside the Basement's door. It was the sound of the city desperately trying to finish up the Pulse construction for the touted completion date and while the cacophony was superfluous to the story, it did add a certain city grittiness.
And by languishing, I mean having the time of her life.
Friday, February 5, 2016
It Only Hurts When I Kiss
I can brag if I want to.
Evening found me back at VCU Cabell Library for the second night in a row to hear comic artist Keith Knight talk on the subject of "They Shoot Black People, Don't They?" (did anyone under 40 get the reference?) but before he even took the stage, my entertainment was the people around me and there were lots of them. The lecture was packed.
"I realize that I become an artist between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m.," the student behind me told his friends in all seriousness. "I write myself notes but when I look at 'em the next day, I realize they'd take too long to execute so I don't bother."
In other words, being an artist is haaaard.
The clutch of students on the other side were grilling a girl with multiple piercings. "Doesn't that one hurt when you get kissed?" a boy who sounded like he wanted to kiss her asked. "It's just, like, pressure," she answered. "But that one hurt the most to get." Nods and murmurs of empathy.
The guy in front of me, not a student, suddenly began thrashing around, looking under his chair, in his coat pockets, everywhere. "I can't find my phone!" I watched as he checked under chairs within a six foot radius, all the while looking desperate.
"I hate that so much of our lives are in these little devices," he said, looking at me for affirmation.
Not for me, I don't have one, I told him. "Don't brag!" he commanded, sort of smiling. Or was that just what jealousy looks like?
Tonight's speaker, Keith Knight, took the podium looking as hip as you'd expect an ex-San Franciscan to look and announcing that he'd discovered Sally Bell's all by himself this afternoon, enjoying a cupcake. "I just found it!" he said, clearly marveling at his luck. "Okay, if I've won all those awards he just mentioned, how come you haven't heard of me?"
It was a damn good question once he began talking and sharing his work. Like one about the benefits of black men having a male blow-up doll.
Five black men standing on a corner = a gang. Five black men standing on a corner with a white blow-up doll = basketball team and coach. That sort of commentary.
Or one called, "If signs told the truth" with a picture of a Denny's sign with the sub-head, "Serving blacks since 1997," sadly a fact brought about by a D.C. Denny's that refused to serve black Secret Service agents. In 1997.
Washington is my hometown. Are you kidding me?
His single-panel comics were as sharp and funny, just pithier. A TV screen announces that they have a picture of the man who's been terrorizing downtown. The brown guy thinks, "Please don't let him be Middle Eastern" and the black guy thinks, "Please don't let him be black" and the white guy thinks, "Ha, ha, they'll never catch me."
Funny and tragic at the same time.
Interesting as it was to see examples of his 20 years of artistry, the most compelling part of his talk was his plea for the races to really talk. "We need to talk about race until whites get uncomfortable so we can get beyond it."
Despite his geeky, mild-mannered persona, even he has been stopped by police. He was on Fulton Street in San Francisco, hanging posters with a staple gun for his band's upcoming show when he was surrounded by police who claimed to be on the lookout for a 6' black male robber.
A white friend of his happened to be riding by on the bus and noticed that his friend was surrounded by cops, so he jumped off the bus and charged the scene, hoping to clear his friend. Did the cops react to a white guy running at them the way they had to a black guy using a stapler? They did not. "That's white privilege," Knight said. "It's time for whites to start using their white privilege for good."
Another comic read, "All Lives Matter* (*restrictions apply, see skin color for details).
"You can't just be non-racist anymore, you've got to be actively anti-racist," Knight implored.
He talked for almost two hours, showing comics, telling stories and, like Reverend Campbell earlier in the day at the Historical Society, reminding people that right now is our Civil Rights movement and if we don't participate, history will be worse for it.
Impressive as the new library's third floor terraces and kitchen facilities are, it's already apparent that the level of programming they're bringing in is the real game-changer. I can't wait to see what's next.
My plan had been to go to Black Iris' opening afterwards, but the talk had gone long and I wasn't sure it was still happening. Of course, that didn't stop me from walking over there from campus, where I found a room buzzing with familiar faces to see Mickael Broth's "La Voie Sacree," a meditation on a World War I battle in Verdun, France and the supply line (la voie sacree) to that embattled town.
I knew of Broth from his wizard mural at the bus depot, but I hadn't known that he'd come to Richmond to be a graffiti artist, only to be arrested and jailed for ten months as a result of it.
Much of the work in this show was shiny and colorful and, at first glance kind of abstract, but looking more closely revealed elements of the war and how it shattered lives and perceptions. Buildings crumble, artillery flies through the air and, of course, being WW I, noxious clouds of gas hang over it all. A large scale sculptural installation in the back further drew the viewer in.
A friend suggested that the exhibit would be an excellent choice for a French museum devoted to that era. Another, whom I'd seen two of the past three nights at events, talked about similar sculptural work by a local puppet maker. I ran into a comic artist/VCU prof who had also been at the Keith Knight talk and been as blown away as I was. I chatted with the artist who's now 25 months sober about how much great stuff is happening this weekend alone.
When they finally threw us out, I walked down the block to Maple and Pine to join the Man About Town for a drink. So much walking in the cold, damp night air had me asking for a cup of tea and our bartender obliged with Quirk's special lavender blend, a tea that smelled more feminine than I do (not the tea's fault) and the ideal antidote for my cold insides.
Meanwhile, the MAT regaled me with stories of his current acting job as Ben Franklin for a FOX series ("That's right, Bill O'Reilly is signing my paycheck!"), a gig that's had him on set off and on since September. He even pulled out photos to show me how they've aged him from a younger man to an 81-year old.
All around us, Maple and Pine was hopping, with tables full of revelers and hotel guests (who was that handsome guy at the bar?) bustling throughout the restaurant and lobby. Being a late night type, I love how lively that space stays long after other places flag.
Not that I have pictures to prove it because, well, I have no cell phone and not because I misplaced it.
And, yes, that's bragging.
Evening found me back at VCU Cabell Library for the second night in a row to hear comic artist Keith Knight talk on the subject of "They Shoot Black People, Don't They?" (did anyone under 40 get the reference?) but before he even took the stage, my entertainment was the people around me and there were lots of them. The lecture was packed.
"I realize that I become an artist between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m.," the student behind me told his friends in all seriousness. "I write myself notes but when I look at 'em the next day, I realize they'd take too long to execute so I don't bother."
In other words, being an artist is haaaard.
The clutch of students on the other side were grilling a girl with multiple piercings. "Doesn't that one hurt when you get kissed?" a boy who sounded like he wanted to kiss her asked. "It's just, like, pressure," she answered. "But that one hurt the most to get." Nods and murmurs of empathy.
The guy in front of me, not a student, suddenly began thrashing around, looking under his chair, in his coat pockets, everywhere. "I can't find my phone!" I watched as he checked under chairs within a six foot radius, all the while looking desperate.
"I hate that so much of our lives are in these little devices," he said, looking at me for affirmation.
Not for me, I don't have one, I told him. "Don't brag!" he commanded, sort of smiling. Or was that just what jealousy looks like?
Tonight's speaker, Keith Knight, took the podium looking as hip as you'd expect an ex-San Franciscan to look and announcing that he'd discovered Sally Bell's all by himself this afternoon, enjoying a cupcake. "I just found it!" he said, clearly marveling at his luck. "Okay, if I've won all those awards he just mentioned, how come you haven't heard of me?"
It was a damn good question once he began talking and sharing his work. Like one about the benefits of black men having a male blow-up doll.
Five black men standing on a corner = a gang. Five black men standing on a corner with a white blow-up doll = basketball team and coach. That sort of commentary.
Or one called, "If signs told the truth" with a picture of a Denny's sign with the sub-head, "Serving blacks since 1997," sadly a fact brought about by a D.C. Denny's that refused to serve black Secret Service agents. In 1997.
Washington is my hometown. Are you kidding me?
His single-panel comics were as sharp and funny, just pithier. A TV screen announces that they have a picture of the man who's been terrorizing downtown. The brown guy thinks, "Please don't let him be Middle Eastern" and the black guy thinks, "Please don't let him be black" and the white guy thinks, "Ha, ha, they'll never catch me."
Funny and tragic at the same time.
Interesting as it was to see examples of his 20 years of artistry, the most compelling part of his talk was his plea for the races to really talk. "We need to talk about race until whites get uncomfortable so we can get beyond it."
Despite his geeky, mild-mannered persona, even he has been stopped by police. He was on Fulton Street in San Francisco, hanging posters with a staple gun for his band's upcoming show when he was surrounded by police who claimed to be on the lookout for a 6' black male robber.
A white friend of his happened to be riding by on the bus and noticed that his friend was surrounded by cops, so he jumped off the bus and charged the scene, hoping to clear his friend. Did the cops react to a white guy running at them the way they had to a black guy using a stapler? They did not. "That's white privilege," Knight said. "It's time for whites to start using their white privilege for good."
Another comic read, "All Lives Matter* (*restrictions apply, see skin color for details).
"You can't just be non-racist anymore, you've got to be actively anti-racist," Knight implored.
He talked for almost two hours, showing comics, telling stories and, like Reverend Campbell earlier in the day at the Historical Society, reminding people that right now is our Civil Rights movement and if we don't participate, history will be worse for it.
Impressive as the new library's third floor terraces and kitchen facilities are, it's already apparent that the level of programming they're bringing in is the real game-changer. I can't wait to see what's next.
My plan had been to go to Black Iris' opening afterwards, but the talk had gone long and I wasn't sure it was still happening. Of course, that didn't stop me from walking over there from campus, where I found a room buzzing with familiar faces to see Mickael Broth's "La Voie Sacree," a meditation on a World War I battle in Verdun, France and the supply line (la voie sacree) to that embattled town.
I knew of Broth from his wizard mural at the bus depot, but I hadn't known that he'd come to Richmond to be a graffiti artist, only to be arrested and jailed for ten months as a result of it.
Much of the work in this show was shiny and colorful and, at first glance kind of abstract, but looking more closely revealed elements of the war and how it shattered lives and perceptions. Buildings crumble, artillery flies through the air and, of course, being WW I, noxious clouds of gas hang over it all. A large scale sculptural installation in the back further drew the viewer in.
A friend suggested that the exhibit would be an excellent choice for a French museum devoted to that era. Another, whom I'd seen two of the past three nights at events, talked about similar sculptural work by a local puppet maker. I ran into a comic artist/VCU prof who had also been at the Keith Knight talk and been as blown away as I was. I chatted with the artist who's now 25 months sober about how much great stuff is happening this weekend alone.
When they finally threw us out, I walked down the block to Maple and Pine to join the Man About Town for a drink. So much walking in the cold, damp night air had me asking for a cup of tea and our bartender obliged with Quirk's special lavender blend, a tea that smelled more feminine than I do (not the tea's fault) and the ideal antidote for my cold insides.
Meanwhile, the MAT regaled me with stories of his current acting job as Ben Franklin for a FOX series ("That's right, Bill O'Reilly is signing my paycheck!"), a gig that's had him on set off and on since September. He even pulled out photos to show me how they've aged him from a younger man to an 81-year old.
All around us, Maple and Pine was hopping, with tables full of revelers and hotel guests (who was that handsome guy at the bar?) bustling throughout the restaurant and lobby. Being a late night type, I love how lively that space stays long after other places flag.
Not that I have pictures to prove it because, well, I have no cell phone and not because I misplaced it.
And, yes, that's bragging.
Sunday, October 4, 2015
And a Past in Front of Me
I knew all the people would be in place tonight.
The Diamond Center was back after two years in Austin, playing a show at Black Iris. I'd have bet the farm I'd see certain people: the ferocious front woman, the best guitarist/grammarian I know, the red-lipped bass player, the bride-to-be, the hairdresser to the stars and I wasn't disappointed.
Big No were already playing when I got in, so I found a decent place to stand and watch their last couple songs. The show must have started on time and my tardiness had deprived me of their full set. Sounded like it was my loss.
A DJ friend and I got to talking about this weather and he labeled it as not good for much besides napping and cats. So what had he and his lovely curly-haired wife (her hair looking particularly fetching in this humidity tonight) done besides that today, I asked.
"We went grocery shopping, really grocery shopping," he told me, imbuing the words with genuine enthusiasm. Seems they'd taken their sweet time at the store, looking for new items, comparing prices, just taking every little detail in. Because they could and it was as enjoyable a way as any to spend the end of the wet afternoon.
"Then our friends came over for drinks and now we're here!" he said. "That's the whole day."
Well done, sir. His pleasure was still evident.
He got a pained look on his face when he realized he'd forgotten earplugs, so I was a hit when I reached in my bag and pulled out a fresh pair still in the wrapper. His eyes got big and he reached out and gave me a bear hug, I think before he even realized what he was doing.
Saving friends' hearing, two plugs at a time.
Another DJ replaced him for fresh conversation, this time about a person we had in common. He'd worked with this colorful character 20 years ago and I'd interviewed him last spring. My friend said he still remembered some of that guy's malapropisms, such as, "You got a helluva future behind you."
Come on, that's Yogi Berra-worthy, bless his heart.
Then the Diamond Center got started and things got groovy fast. They're touring behind their new album, "Crystals for the Brass Empire," and it was fantastic to hear them playing again.
Guitarist Kyle got the masses in the zone by saying, "Okay, everybody, at the same time, take a big breath," and you could hear a collective inhale, "and exhale saying "om."
When our room-sized "om" wasn't sufficient, he called out, "Louder!" and damned if we didn't get louder.
"Don't you feel better?' he grinned from stage. I don't know about the others, but I felt nothing but good vibes.
To my side, I spotted a friend paying more attention to social media than the show and suggested he live in the moment. He said, "I can't!" but it wasn't long before he finished trying to convince people to come out and just enjoyed the show himself.
Quaint, right?
I always heard the Diamond Center's music as psychedelic but listening to them tonight felt even trippier than it used to and several of the new songs were knockouts, Kyle's guitar chiming through the shifting soundscapes, Brandi's ethereal vocals nd Tim's distinctive drumming created an effect like every past Diamond Center show I recall on steroids.
During one section of a new song, the music was so winningly, optimistically '60s-sounding, you couldn't help but feel like all was right with the world and everything was possible. I let it wash over me.
Interestingly, later, chatting with the library worker, he described an early Diamond Center show as having had a moment when, "I've never felt so hippie-like in my life." I knew precisely what he meant.
"Come see us at the merch table," Kyle said near the end of their set. "We have lots of stuff. We have records. We have jewelry." There was a moment's pause.
"That's about all we have," he concluded, as if that wasn't plenty.
My favorite shorty regaled me with tales of her upcoming trip to London and Barcelona, with a side trip to the desert, even showing off photos of the low-slung, modern digs they'll be staying in there, complete with outdoor bath tubs.
Because why not in the desert?
In spite of loads of familiar faces (and conversations with all kinds of favorite, interesting people I don't see enough of), there were some new ones, too, and I wondered how many of them might be experiencing the Diamond Center for the first time. If so, Black Iris was a fine place to do it.
Long-time blissed-out fans wouldn't have missed being in place tonight.
The Diamond Center was back after two years in Austin, playing a show at Black Iris. I'd have bet the farm I'd see certain people: the ferocious front woman, the best guitarist/grammarian I know, the red-lipped bass player, the bride-to-be, the hairdresser to the stars and I wasn't disappointed.
Big No were already playing when I got in, so I found a decent place to stand and watch their last couple songs. The show must have started on time and my tardiness had deprived me of their full set. Sounded like it was my loss.
A DJ friend and I got to talking about this weather and he labeled it as not good for much besides napping and cats. So what had he and his lovely curly-haired wife (her hair looking particularly fetching in this humidity tonight) done besides that today, I asked.
"We went grocery shopping, really grocery shopping," he told me, imbuing the words with genuine enthusiasm. Seems they'd taken their sweet time at the store, looking for new items, comparing prices, just taking every little detail in. Because they could and it was as enjoyable a way as any to spend the end of the wet afternoon.
"Then our friends came over for drinks and now we're here!" he said. "That's the whole day."
Well done, sir. His pleasure was still evident.
He got a pained look on his face when he realized he'd forgotten earplugs, so I was a hit when I reached in my bag and pulled out a fresh pair still in the wrapper. His eyes got big and he reached out and gave me a bear hug, I think before he even realized what he was doing.
Saving friends' hearing, two plugs at a time.
Another DJ replaced him for fresh conversation, this time about a person we had in common. He'd worked with this colorful character 20 years ago and I'd interviewed him last spring. My friend said he still remembered some of that guy's malapropisms, such as, "You got a helluva future behind you."
Come on, that's Yogi Berra-worthy, bless his heart.
Then the Diamond Center got started and things got groovy fast. They're touring behind their new album, "Crystals for the Brass Empire," and it was fantastic to hear them playing again.
Guitarist Kyle got the masses in the zone by saying, "Okay, everybody, at the same time, take a big breath," and you could hear a collective inhale, "and exhale saying "om."
When our room-sized "om" wasn't sufficient, he called out, "Louder!" and damned if we didn't get louder.
"Don't you feel better?' he grinned from stage. I don't know about the others, but I felt nothing but good vibes.
To my side, I spotted a friend paying more attention to social media than the show and suggested he live in the moment. He said, "I can't!" but it wasn't long before he finished trying to convince people to come out and just enjoyed the show himself.
Quaint, right?
I always heard the Diamond Center's music as psychedelic but listening to them tonight felt even trippier than it used to and several of the new songs were knockouts, Kyle's guitar chiming through the shifting soundscapes, Brandi's ethereal vocals nd Tim's distinctive drumming created an effect like every past Diamond Center show I recall on steroids.
During one section of a new song, the music was so winningly, optimistically '60s-sounding, you couldn't help but feel like all was right with the world and everything was possible. I let it wash over me.
Interestingly, later, chatting with the library worker, he described an early Diamond Center show as having had a moment when, "I've never felt so hippie-like in my life." I knew precisely what he meant.
"Come see us at the merch table," Kyle said near the end of their set. "We have lots of stuff. We have records. We have jewelry." There was a moment's pause.
"That's about all we have," he concluded, as if that wasn't plenty.
My favorite shorty regaled me with tales of her upcoming trip to London and Barcelona, with a side trip to the desert, even showing off photos of the low-slung, modern digs they'll be staying in there, complete with outdoor bath tubs.
Because why not in the desert?
In spite of loads of familiar faces (and conversations with all kinds of favorite, interesting people I don't see enough of), there were some new ones, too, and I wondered how many of them might be experiencing the Diamond Center for the first time. If so, Black Iris was a fine place to do it.
Long-time blissed-out fans wouldn't have missed being in place tonight.
Thursday, June 18, 2015
Fortunate Daughter
Never let it be said that I can't take advantage of a last minute offer.
So when I saw at 7:45 that a friend had posted a couple hours earlier that he had some passes to see "White Rabbit Red Rabbit" at the Basement, I immediately messaged him to see if one was left. It was.
I'm more than a little proud to say that I put myself together, got over there and was in my seat by 7:59. No joke.
All I knew about the one-person play was that it lasted an hour and used a different actor for each performance. Once there, I learned that Keri Wormald had see it at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and decided that Richmond needed to stage it.
During the course of the play, we learned that the playwright, Nassim Soleimanpour, is an Iranian conscientious objector who refuses to do Iran's mandatory military service, so he's not allowed a passport and can't leave the country.
The play, his first written in English, is his way of getting his voice heard and having a presence in places he can't go. It's done with no set, no costumes, no director, no rehearsals. Just one brave person and an audience.
Our actor tonight was burlesque queen Deanna Danger in black and white striped pants, a long, red ponytail hanging almost to her waist. She opened the sealed envelope, began reading the script to us and immediately instructed us to count off by number. I was 24, one off my favorite number, 23.
Our numbers turned out to be the means by which the script could call someone else onstage to assist Deanna in telling the story (no, my number was not called). When she called number 5 up, she instructed her to pour one of the vials of poison on the table into one of two glasses.
So we were off to a most interesting start.
Over the course of the next hour, Deanna called others up, pretended to be a cheetah imitating an ostrich (she did a mean ostrich) and had us close our eyes so she could rearrange the glasses if she so chose. She also read out Nassim's e-mail address so that we could contact him if we so chose. "I promise to answer if I'm alive," he promised in the script.
It was a very cool construct; he'd written a play to future audiences, knowing he'd never see them or his play performed. Yet, his script was the reason people were gathered doing things he'd dreamed up, even taking notes and photographs in the process. "I make people do something," he wrote. That he did.
Near the end, Deanna read his 17 ways to commit suicide, adding that the 18th way was life, also an inevitable way to ensure death. "Luck is the key to flippancy," had to be his most brilliant line. So true.
Of course the play ends with the actor drinking one of the glasses and the audience has to presume? hope? that either it's the un-poisoned glass or that the poison wasn't real. It's all about the limits of obedience.
It was also one of the most compelling nights of theater I'd seen because of how it unfolded, completely in the voice of the man who wasn't there but had much to question. Keri Wormald had been right - Richmond did need to experience this.
With my evening's surprise over, I continued with my regularly scheduled evening, a show at Black Iris. The timing was perfect. Moments after I arrived, Nelly Kate took the stage, a groovy light show playing behind her and the rapt attention of the crowd in front of her.
If you haven't seen her, she's a master of looping, layering sound and voice to build up densely textured songs. Tonight she was doing a bunch of new material because she's about to leave on a summer tour. Not that we were her guinea pigs, but more like her devoted fans (and there were plenty of musicians in that group) eager to hear new music in her distinctive voice.
Each song built on itself until a blind man would've assumed there was more than one person onstage. Later, when I complimented the new stuff, she said that every night for months she'd written what she wanted to hear until she had all these gorgeous songs.
After her set, I said hello to the band photographer, the bridge builder, the Richmanian Rambler, the gallerist and the queen of booking bands. Later I ran into the poet who surprised me by saying she's gotten all domesticated and is buying a house in Goochland. Better her than me.
It took no time for California duo Them Are Us Too to set up and begin kicking ass and taking numbers.
Synth based with an incredible female vocalist (think Kate Bush or, yes, Elizabeth Fraser) who must have been listening to Cocteau Twins in utero (and played drums when necessary) and a guitarist (with both hair and a guitar sound deeply indebted to the Cure's Robert Smith) just as key, providing the reverb-laden counterpoint required to achieve the perfection of dreamy goth-pop.
I was in love with their sound midway through the first song. A friend came over and asked if I was having fun. Wordlessly nodding in response, he said, "They're amazing, aren't they? And she's singing through strep throat."
You'd never have known it as they created dreamscape after soundscape, her multiple octave vocals soaring through the shoegaze guitar of her partner, all of us in the room willing victims drowning in washes of sound.
I heard someone say they were both 21 and if that's true, they've been listening to all the '80s music I loved since they were in diapers, only to reinterpret it in a way that's reverential without being cluttered with other influences. They clearly know what they like and happily for me tonight, it's exactly the same stuff I loved the first time around.
Only problem? Their set was over way too quickly (or did it just seem that way?) when I could have easily listened to them go on for another hour.
Somehow I'd managed to take in a thought-provoking Iranian play and catch a show that would have been a sellout in a bigger city, all within the brief space of three hours.
Luck is the key to that kind of evening. I had it in spades tonight.
So when I saw at 7:45 that a friend had posted a couple hours earlier that he had some passes to see "White Rabbit Red Rabbit" at the Basement, I immediately messaged him to see if one was left. It was.
I'm more than a little proud to say that I put myself together, got over there and was in my seat by 7:59. No joke.
All I knew about the one-person play was that it lasted an hour and used a different actor for each performance. Once there, I learned that Keri Wormald had see it at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and decided that Richmond needed to stage it.
During the course of the play, we learned that the playwright, Nassim Soleimanpour, is an Iranian conscientious objector who refuses to do Iran's mandatory military service, so he's not allowed a passport and can't leave the country.
The play, his first written in English, is his way of getting his voice heard and having a presence in places he can't go. It's done with no set, no costumes, no director, no rehearsals. Just one brave person and an audience.
Our actor tonight was burlesque queen Deanna Danger in black and white striped pants, a long, red ponytail hanging almost to her waist. She opened the sealed envelope, began reading the script to us and immediately instructed us to count off by number. I was 24, one off my favorite number, 23.
Our numbers turned out to be the means by which the script could call someone else onstage to assist Deanna in telling the story (no, my number was not called). When she called number 5 up, she instructed her to pour one of the vials of poison on the table into one of two glasses.
So we were off to a most interesting start.
Over the course of the next hour, Deanna called others up, pretended to be a cheetah imitating an ostrich (she did a mean ostrich) and had us close our eyes so she could rearrange the glasses if she so chose. She also read out Nassim's e-mail address so that we could contact him if we so chose. "I promise to answer if I'm alive," he promised in the script.
It was a very cool construct; he'd written a play to future audiences, knowing he'd never see them or his play performed. Yet, his script was the reason people were gathered doing things he'd dreamed up, even taking notes and photographs in the process. "I make people do something," he wrote. That he did.
Near the end, Deanna read his 17 ways to commit suicide, adding that the 18th way was life, also an inevitable way to ensure death. "Luck is the key to flippancy," had to be his most brilliant line. So true.
Of course the play ends with the actor drinking one of the glasses and the audience has to presume? hope? that either it's the un-poisoned glass or that the poison wasn't real. It's all about the limits of obedience.
It was also one of the most compelling nights of theater I'd seen because of how it unfolded, completely in the voice of the man who wasn't there but had much to question. Keri Wormald had been right - Richmond did need to experience this.
With my evening's surprise over, I continued with my regularly scheduled evening, a show at Black Iris. The timing was perfect. Moments after I arrived, Nelly Kate took the stage, a groovy light show playing behind her and the rapt attention of the crowd in front of her.
If you haven't seen her, she's a master of looping, layering sound and voice to build up densely textured songs. Tonight she was doing a bunch of new material because she's about to leave on a summer tour. Not that we were her guinea pigs, but more like her devoted fans (and there were plenty of musicians in that group) eager to hear new music in her distinctive voice.
Each song built on itself until a blind man would've assumed there was more than one person onstage. Later, when I complimented the new stuff, she said that every night for months she'd written what she wanted to hear until she had all these gorgeous songs.
After her set, I said hello to the band photographer, the bridge builder, the Richmanian Rambler, the gallerist and the queen of booking bands. Later I ran into the poet who surprised me by saying she's gotten all domesticated and is buying a house in Goochland. Better her than me.
It took no time for California duo Them Are Us Too to set up and begin kicking ass and taking numbers.
Synth based with an incredible female vocalist (think Kate Bush or, yes, Elizabeth Fraser) who must have been listening to Cocteau Twins in utero (and played drums when necessary) and a guitarist (with both hair and a guitar sound deeply indebted to the Cure's Robert Smith) just as key, providing the reverb-laden counterpoint required to achieve the perfection of dreamy goth-pop.
I was in love with their sound midway through the first song. A friend came over and asked if I was having fun. Wordlessly nodding in response, he said, "They're amazing, aren't they? And she's singing through strep throat."
You'd never have known it as they created dreamscape after soundscape, her multiple octave vocals soaring through the shoegaze guitar of her partner, all of us in the room willing victims drowning in washes of sound.
I heard someone say they were both 21 and if that's true, they've been listening to all the '80s music I loved since they were in diapers, only to reinterpret it in a way that's reverential without being cluttered with other influences. They clearly know what they like and happily for me tonight, it's exactly the same stuff I loved the first time around.
Only problem? Their set was over way too quickly (or did it just seem that way?) when I could have easily listened to them go on for another hour.
Somehow I'd managed to take in a thought-provoking Iranian play and catch a show that would have been a sellout in a bigger city, all within the brief space of three hours.
Luck is the key to that kind of evening. I had it in spades tonight.
Saturday, February 28, 2015
Left to My Own Devices
It's been a day for the unexpected.
Driving out to the northern neck to visit my parents, I had no idea it would begin snowing, swirling all around the cars and on the road, much like sand does on a beach road after a storm.
Driving over the Rappahannock, I saw a frozen river below me, great chunks of snow and ice dotting the surface.
But as I always do when crossing a bridge, I had the window down to smell the wet air (or what a watery death smells like, I can'rt decide) while inside the car the Pet Shop Boys' "Being Boring" was blasting.With not a single boat on the river, no one but me heard.
I left Mom and Dad's in enough time to get home and ready for my girl date tonight, only to find a phone message awaiting me (I know, how old school, right?) from my friend canceling our plans because she'd been down with that stomach bug everyone's getting all day (no doubt picked up at the bar where she works).
Hadn't seen that coming.
So instead of our intended restaurant and bar crawl until the wee hours, I decided on the documentary screening at Black Iris Gallery of "Records Collecting Dust" about the origins and holy grails of vinyl collecting.
Arriving at Black Iris just as three guys did, we found the door locked. What the...? From inside, Steady Sounds's owner gestured for us to come back in 15 minutes.
Good thing I only live three blocks away.
On my return, I found the doors open and plenty of familiar faces in the chairs. Chatting with a WRIR DJ, we lamented how you can never believe a starting time on a Facebook event invitation. This one had said the showing began at 8 p.m., so we'd both rushed over only to find it really began at 8:30.
Can we have some truth in inviting standards, please?
The film's producer had planned to attend but yesterday's snow had thwarted that, so we got right down to the film which began with a host of record collectors recalling the first album they owned, typically bought when they were in elementary school.
Creedence Clearwater Revivals' "Pendulum." The Beatles' "Magical Mystery Tour." Grand Funk Railroad's "An American Band." Kiss' "Alive."
Several of the interviewees said that while their parents had been music lovers, their taste had run more to "hippie" music, so once these guys began bringing home hard rock and metal, a musical line in the sand had been drawn between generations.
Apparently no Mom was supportive of her son listening to Iron Maiden.
I could relate when one guy said he'd play a favorite 45 for fifty times in a row. No one who had 45s hasn't been guilty of that.
Another recalled his awe when he first heard Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. "You can do that and put it on a record? That blew me away," was his takeaway.
Several mentioned the thrill and uncertainty of taking a chance buying an album without knowing the band or anything about the record. That's a distinct thrill few millennials could even imagine in a music world so saturated by hype.
Everyone of a certain age related to the guy who said that he still had all his really good record finds, "Except all the really good stuff my ex-girlfriends stole." I know I lost more than a few great albums to breakups and poorly separated record collections.
One guy had a fascinating collection of civil rights-related records, stuff by Stokely Carmichael, Angela Davis, Bobby Seale and even Aretha's preacher father, Reverend C.L. Franklin. Who knew activists made albums?
It was too bad the producer hadn't made it because there could have been some terrific post-screening discussion had he been there.
The documentary had been unexpectedly compelling. When a friend called not long before I left to see it, I'd shared what I was going to see.
He was amazed. "You mean record collecting has already gone out of style and come back in enough that it's worthy of a documentary?" I could just imagine him shaking his head through the telephone line and he's got one of the biggest and best record collections I know (all original, of course).
Walking out of Black Iris, the filmmaker I'd had dinner with last week asked where I was off to, assuming correctly that my night wasn't over. My second stop was Savory Grain to see Shinola Brown play.
I had no idea about this band beyond that I knew the sax player and the invitation had indicated new and old soul music was their metier. It sounded plenty good to me.
Inside, I snagged a bar stool only to hear my name called and spot a friend at my side. He'd just come from seeing "5 Lesbians Eating a Quiche" at Richmond Triangle Players and was having a post-play drink with a friend.
According to him, I had to join them.
This was a surprise. I certainly hadn't expected company, just music. But his friend was delightful, they had stools right in front of the band and why the hell not?
The funny part is, I'd just invoked his name last night when talking to a friend about renting out her house during the bike race. I knew he'd done it and told her to talk to him. It was as if I'd conjured him up.
He and his friend told me about the play, about how he'd been called up on stage to eat quiche and how much fun he'd had. I heard about his recent engagement and how he worries people will think they're moving too quickly. I learned that Savory Grain is his neighborhood bar, his go-to place because he can walk home.
At one point, I ran my hand through my hair and both he and his friend reached over and did the same to me repeatedly. "I love your hair. It's so '80s," she raved. Exactly what I'm shooting for - Pet Shop Boys-era hair.
Shinola Brown turned out to be a scaled down version of the Hi Steps, a favorite local R & B cover band I've seen numerous times. With just five members, they took on songs as diverse as "You Really Got a Hold On Me" and "Something," all well-executed due to the guitarist and drummer both having great voices.
My friend pointed out that he'd made the draperies framing the alcove where the band was playing. His friend pointed out that she was the one who'd taught him to sew. I volunteered that I sew and we marveled at being three people who sew in a 21st century world where so few do.
There wound up being other friends at the bar. The bartender I know from storytelling and the trumpet player and his wife I'd just seen at the VCU game and Mardi Gras show. For someone who'd expected to listen to soul music alone, it had turned into a surprisingly social evening.
Late in, one of the bartender shrugged on a blazer and paused in front of us. "Where do you think you're going?" my friend's friend asked between seat dancing to Otis Redding.
"Home to f*ck my wife and go to sleep," he replied matter-of-factly.
"In that velveteen jacket?" she asked, invoking her fabric knowledge. The hysterical part of that is I'd just been thinking how much his blazer reminded me of one I'd sewn for my boyfriend back in college, which had been burgundy velveteen.
"Velveteen?" he yelled, laughing loudly, clapping his hands in delight and clearly having no idea that velveteen blazers were a thing.
Sure were. Just like record collections made up of bands you took a chance on. Endlessly picking up the needle and dropping it back on the same song.
And we were never holding back or worried that
time would come to an end
We were always hoping that, looking back
You could always rely on a friend
Cause we were never being boring
We were never being bored
And I'm not saying he stole it, but when my relationship ended with that velveteen blazer-wearing boyfriend, my copy of Badfinger's "No Dice" disappeared right along with him.
Talk about unexpected, you could do that? That blew me away.
Driving out to the northern neck to visit my parents, I had no idea it would begin snowing, swirling all around the cars and on the road, much like sand does on a beach road after a storm.
Driving over the Rappahannock, I saw a frozen river below me, great chunks of snow and ice dotting the surface.
But as I always do when crossing a bridge, I had the window down to smell the wet air (or what a watery death smells like, I can'rt decide) while inside the car the Pet Shop Boys' "Being Boring" was blasting.With not a single boat on the river, no one but me heard.
I left Mom and Dad's in enough time to get home and ready for my girl date tonight, only to find a phone message awaiting me (I know, how old school, right?) from my friend canceling our plans because she'd been down with that stomach bug everyone's getting all day (no doubt picked up at the bar where she works).
Hadn't seen that coming.
So instead of our intended restaurant and bar crawl until the wee hours, I decided on the documentary screening at Black Iris Gallery of "Records Collecting Dust" about the origins and holy grails of vinyl collecting.
Arriving at Black Iris just as three guys did, we found the door locked. What the...? From inside, Steady Sounds's owner gestured for us to come back in 15 minutes.
Good thing I only live three blocks away.
On my return, I found the doors open and plenty of familiar faces in the chairs. Chatting with a WRIR DJ, we lamented how you can never believe a starting time on a Facebook event invitation. This one had said the showing began at 8 p.m., so we'd both rushed over only to find it really began at 8:30.
Can we have some truth in inviting standards, please?
The film's producer had planned to attend but yesterday's snow had thwarted that, so we got right down to the film which began with a host of record collectors recalling the first album they owned, typically bought when they were in elementary school.
Creedence Clearwater Revivals' "Pendulum." The Beatles' "Magical Mystery Tour." Grand Funk Railroad's "An American Band." Kiss' "Alive."
Several of the interviewees said that while their parents had been music lovers, their taste had run more to "hippie" music, so once these guys began bringing home hard rock and metal, a musical line in the sand had been drawn between generations.
Apparently no Mom was supportive of her son listening to Iron Maiden.
I could relate when one guy said he'd play a favorite 45 for fifty times in a row. No one who had 45s hasn't been guilty of that.
Another recalled his awe when he first heard Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. "You can do that and put it on a record? That blew me away," was his takeaway.
Several mentioned the thrill and uncertainty of taking a chance buying an album without knowing the band or anything about the record. That's a distinct thrill few millennials could even imagine in a music world so saturated by hype.
Everyone of a certain age related to the guy who said that he still had all his really good record finds, "Except all the really good stuff my ex-girlfriends stole." I know I lost more than a few great albums to breakups and poorly separated record collections.
One guy had a fascinating collection of civil rights-related records, stuff by Stokely Carmichael, Angela Davis, Bobby Seale and even Aretha's preacher father, Reverend C.L. Franklin. Who knew activists made albums?
It was too bad the producer hadn't made it because there could have been some terrific post-screening discussion had he been there.
The documentary had been unexpectedly compelling. When a friend called not long before I left to see it, I'd shared what I was going to see.
He was amazed. "You mean record collecting has already gone out of style and come back in enough that it's worthy of a documentary?" I could just imagine him shaking his head through the telephone line and he's got one of the biggest and best record collections I know (all original, of course).
Walking out of Black Iris, the filmmaker I'd had dinner with last week asked where I was off to, assuming correctly that my night wasn't over. My second stop was Savory Grain to see Shinola Brown play.
I had no idea about this band beyond that I knew the sax player and the invitation had indicated new and old soul music was their metier. It sounded plenty good to me.
Inside, I snagged a bar stool only to hear my name called and spot a friend at my side. He'd just come from seeing "5 Lesbians Eating a Quiche" at Richmond Triangle Players and was having a post-play drink with a friend.
According to him, I had to join them.
This was a surprise. I certainly hadn't expected company, just music. But his friend was delightful, they had stools right in front of the band and why the hell not?
The funny part is, I'd just invoked his name last night when talking to a friend about renting out her house during the bike race. I knew he'd done it and told her to talk to him. It was as if I'd conjured him up.
He and his friend told me about the play, about how he'd been called up on stage to eat quiche and how much fun he'd had. I heard about his recent engagement and how he worries people will think they're moving too quickly. I learned that Savory Grain is his neighborhood bar, his go-to place because he can walk home.
At one point, I ran my hand through my hair and both he and his friend reached over and did the same to me repeatedly. "I love your hair. It's so '80s," she raved. Exactly what I'm shooting for - Pet Shop Boys-era hair.
Shinola Brown turned out to be a scaled down version of the Hi Steps, a favorite local R & B cover band I've seen numerous times. With just five members, they took on songs as diverse as "You Really Got a Hold On Me" and "Something," all well-executed due to the guitarist and drummer both having great voices.
My friend pointed out that he'd made the draperies framing the alcove where the band was playing. His friend pointed out that she was the one who'd taught him to sew. I volunteered that I sew and we marveled at being three people who sew in a 21st century world where so few do.
There wound up being other friends at the bar. The bartender I know from storytelling and the trumpet player and his wife I'd just seen at the VCU game and Mardi Gras show. For someone who'd expected to listen to soul music alone, it had turned into a surprisingly social evening.
Late in, one of the bartender shrugged on a blazer and paused in front of us. "Where do you think you're going?" my friend's friend asked between seat dancing to Otis Redding.
"Home to f*ck my wife and go to sleep," he replied matter-of-factly.
"In that velveteen jacket?" she asked, invoking her fabric knowledge. The hysterical part of that is I'd just been thinking how much his blazer reminded me of one I'd sewn for my boyfriend back in college, which had been burgundy velveteen.
"Velveteen?" he yelled, laughing loudly, clapping his hands in delight and clearly having no idea that velveteen blazers were a thing.
Sure were. Just like record collections made up of bands you took a chance on. Endlessly picking up the needle and dropping it back on the same song.
And we were never holding back or worried that
time would come to an end
We were always hoping that, looking back
You could always rely on a friend
Cause we were never being boring
We were never being bored
And I'm not saying he stole it, but when my relationship ended with that velveteen blazer-wearing boyfriend, my copy of Badfinger's "No Dice" disappeared right along with him.
Talk about unexpected, you could do that? That blew me away.
Wednesday, April 9, 2014
Going as Far as You Need
And Dash makes four.
As in, Dash, the new restaurant in the middle of VCU is the fourth iteration of a restaurant I've visited in that space.
I also fainted there twice, but I've already told you that old chestnut.
And, I'll give them credit, it's a clean-lined, quick in and out space. although today the staff was sizable and the customer base small since they just opened, and that may have been a factor.
We'll see how speedy it is once the place gets discovered.
Six wines on tap (although no names, just the grapes listed on the paper on the wall, boo, hiss), two kombuchas (it's everywhere!) plus beer, but I chose Boylan Soda root beer and a Louisiana "lobster" roll of spicy crawfish salad on two New England-style split top rolls with a bag of Deep River kettle chips for a side, but only because they don't yet have the apple slaw I really wanted.
A server told me that once the dust settles, they'll have milkshakes and once they master milkshakes, they'll get liquor and then they'll have alcoholic milkshakes.
Oh, happy day, calories and intoxication in one glass! Count me in.
When I left there, it was for Black Iris Gallery again for night two of the pre-festival James River film fest screenings.
Pre-festival also means free and we know how I like that.
Walking over, I saw a friend getting out of his car and called out to him so we could walk together.
I knew he'd just seen the Kraftwerk reunion tour show in D.C. and I was curious to hear about it. We took seats in the third row and he told me all about the filmmakers' forum I'd missed and the controversy a couple of filmmakers had stirred up with their films.
We agreed that you never know what's going to offend people.
Showing tonight was the inoffensive black and white 1950 Jean Cocteau take on the myth, "Orpheus," set in post WWII Paris, considered one of his masterpieces and inspirational to the surrealists.
The opening credits were drawn by Cocteau himself (showoff!) and included such dated terms as "script girl." Because god knows in 1950 you wouldn't assign that lowly job to a boy.
Most interesting to me was seeing Juliette Greco's name listed since I'd only discovered the singer recently at the French Film Festival when I'd seen a documentary about the Parisian cafe scene in the '50s and here she was acting, too.
She's easy to spot - to me she looks like a young Cher with a better nose- but my Juliette Greco knowledge is increasing exponentially lately.
The movie began in the Cafe de Poets, a place I only dream could exist in the world where I live. I couldn't help but be fascinated by the world depicted, one where a poet was so popular that young women mobbed him for autographs on the street. Poetry comes through on a radio station.
When Orpheus' wife Eurydice is worried that her husband's head has been turned by another woman, she is reassured, "Yours is a perfect marriage but men can lose their heads."
Isn't that the truth?
Then Orpheus has to go and fall in love with Death, complicating everything. "I'd follower her to Hell," he whines. "You need not go that far," his spirit world guide assures him.
During the reel change, my friend leaned in and observed that it was funny how Cocteau's camera tricks had been recycled in the music videos of the early '80s. For that matter, the guards at the underworld tribunal where Death and Orpheus went on trial looked straight out of Daft Punk.
The entire cast was dazzlingly beautiful and handsome as if from the world of perfect people, but then the whole film came off like a dream, not far off since at the end Orpheus and Eurydice are sent back from the underworld to the real world with no memory of what they'd been through.
It was all very poetic and only slightly tragic. I loved every minute of it.
Sigh. I was born to be a poet's groupie.
As in, Dash, the new restaurant in the middle of VCU is the fourth iteration of a restaurant I've visited in that space.
I also fainted there twice, but I've already told you that old chestnut.
And, I'll give them credit, it's a clean-lined, quick in and out space. although today the staff was sizable and the customer base small since they just opened, and that may have been a factor.
We'll see how speedy it is once the place gets discovered.
Six wines on tap (although no names, just the grapes listed on the paper on the wall, boo, hiss), two kombuchas (it's everywhere!) plus beer, but I chose Boylan Soda root beer and a Louisiana "lobster" roll of spicy crawfish salad on two New England-style split top rolls with a bag of Deep River kettle chips for a side, but only because they don't yet have the apple slaw I really wanted.
A server told me that once the dust settles, they'll have milkshakes and once they master milkshakes, they'll get liquor and then they'll have alcoholic milkshakes.
Oh, happy day, calories and intoxication in one glass! Count me in.
When I left there, it was for Black Iris Gallery again for night two of the pre-festival James River film fest screenings.
Pre-festival also means free and we know how I like that.
Walking over, I saw a friend getting out of his car and called out to him so we could walk together.
I knew he'd just seen the Kraftwerk reunion tour show in D.C. and I was curious to hear about it. We took seats in the third row and he told me all about the filmmakers' forum I'd missed and the controversy a couple of filmmakers had stirred up with their films.
We agreed that you never know what's going to offend people.
Showing tonight was the inoffensive black and white 1950 Jean Cocteau take on the myth, "Orpheus," set in post WWII Paris, considered one of his masterpieces and inspirational to the surrealists.
The opening credits were drawn by Cocteau himself (showoff!) and included such dated terms as "script girl." Because god knows in 1950 you wouldn't assign that lowly job to a boy.
Most interesting to me was seeing Juliette Greco's name listed since I'd only discovered the singer recently at the French Film Festival when I'd seen a documentary about the Parisian cafe scene in the '50s and here she was acting, too.
She's easy to spot - to me she looks like a young Cher with a better nose- but my Juliette Greco knowledge is increasing exponentially lately.
The movie began in the Cafe de Poets, a place I only dream could exist in the world where I live. I couldn't help but be fascinated by the world depicted, one where a poet was so popular that young women mobbed him for autographs on the street. Poetry comes through on a radio station.
When Orpheus' wife Eurydice is worried that her husband's head has been turned by another woman, she is reassured, "Yours is a perfect marriage but men can lose their heads."
Isn't that the truth?
Then Orpheus has to go and fall in love with Death, complicating everything. "I'd follower her to Hell," he whines. "You need not go that far," his spirit world guide assures him.
During the reel change, my friend leaned in and observed that it was funny how Cocteau's camera tricks had been recycled in the music videos of the early '80s. For that matter, the guards at the underworld tribunal where Death and Orpheus went on trial looked straight out of Daft Punk.
The entire cast was dazzlingly beautiful and handsome as if from the world of perfect people, but then the whole film came off like a dream, not far off since at the end Orpheus and Eurydice are sent back from the underworld to the real world with no memory of what they'd been through.
It was all very poetic and only slightly tragic. I loved every minute of it.
Sigh. I was born to be a poet's groupie.
The Whole of Our Hearts
I'm getting to be a regular on the northern neck lately.
Today's road trip deposited me at my parents' house so I could help my father rearrange the furniture, which probably sounds odd, but isn't.
Growing up he regularly rearranged our bedrooms and the living room on a semi-annual basis and we just assumed all Dads did that, although I've since learned they don't.
The sweetest moment came when we arranged his and my mother's chairs on separate walls, hers near the glass door to the big porch and his closer to the stereo and TV. "Now how am I going to be able to hold your mother's hand?" he asked me.
Helluva romantic, that's all I can say.
Leaving there, I drove to Irvington to interview an artist who's lucky enough to have a light-filled studio in her house overlooking her sprawling garden and Carter's Creek.
She took me to the window and showed me the bend in the creek where people used to take their boats to get to services at Christchurch nearby.
Can't say I've ever known anyone who boated to church.
On the way back to civilization, I stopped at Parr's Drive-in in Tappahannock, where a statue of French Fry man holding a bouquet of flowers stands out front next to a phone booth (whether it's usable, I have no idea), eschewing fries for a hot fudge sundae, and ate it while chatting with a man named Robert who'd just gotten off work and was having a fish sandwich with tartar sauce on both sides of the bun (they asked and he specified).
I was in no rush to get back because I didn't really have any plans, not that I wasn't going out, but I had no time constraints. Or so I thought.
Once home, I saw an e-mail letting me know that it was pre-festival screening night for the James River film fest where they were showing surrealistic silent short films.
Best part was, it was at Black Iris Gallery, three blocks from home, so it was practically effortless to pull myself together and saunter over there.
James River Film Society grand poobah Mike Jones got things rolling by teasing the upcoming screenings and talking about how post post-modern it was to have actual printed program booklets (in addition to the online listings) and how we were going to see tonight's shorts like our grandparents did, listening to the clatter of a 16 mm projector.
Heaven knows, my grandparents were probably holding hands while they watched movies like these.
He talked about how the French surrealist crowd used to gather as a group and go to a theater, watch 15 minutes of a film, get up and go to another film en masse to watch 20 minutes of something else and do this all evening to ensure they had a disjointed surrealistic experience.
Or maybe just early signs of French ADD.
The surrealistic smorgasbord ranged from an early D.W. Griffith film with prehistoric special effects (a hawk awkwardly stole a baby) to "Dream of a Rarebit Fiend," a cautionary tale of what happens when you eat too much cheese covered bread and wine and try to sleep afterwards.
It did contain some magnificent footage of Greenwich Village circa 1906 beneath film of the glutton flying through the skyline in his bed.
In between films while the new reel was put on, Mike would talk film history to us, sometimes to hilarious results given the age range of the audience.
"The 'Great Train Robbery' was the 'Jaws' of its time," he said in all seriousness before realizing that 90% of the room hadn't been born when "Jaws" came out. "You could call it the 'Avatar' of its time," he said to knowing nods.
Know your audience, Mr. Jones.
He showed a 1913 gangster film prototype called, "The Musketeers of Pig Alley" with a very young and beautiful Lillian Gish playing the Little Lady who is in love with a musician who must go off and make money.
Charlie Chaplin's "Easy Street" had the audience feeling his pain, moaning "oooh!" and "ouch" when bad things happened to heads, which was almost constantly.
Our finale was Buster Keaton's 1923 "The Balloonatic," a back woods romance that began on a summer day at an amusement park, as so many romances do.
After trying the fun house and a hot air balloon, Buster retreats to the woods to canoe, fish and battle bears and there he meets a pretty girl who fishes better than him, cooks out far better than he does (although he lights a fire in his canoe, not the best idea) and even swims better.
The funniest part for me wasn't onscreen, it was a guy in the back row who chortled, "Oh, ho, ho!" at every calamity Buster faced. It was a distinctive laugh.
In once scene, Buster comes upon a squirrel and takes out his shotgun to kill it, causing several girls in the room to worry loudly about the squirrel's future. No one was ready to see a squirrel die, although I heard no complaints when Buster accidentally shot a bear.
As Mike had warned us, by this point in the film industry, audiences were already expecting happy endings, so this short finished with Buster and the girl flying through the air in his canoe but attached to a hot air balloon so when they went over the waterfall, they didn't crash.
Surrealistic or not, I'm pretty sure they were holding hands.
Today's road trip deposited me at my parents' house so I could help my father rearrange the furniture, which probably sounds odd, but isn't.
Growing up he regularly rearranged our bedrooms and the living room on a semi-annual basis and we just assumed all Dads did that, although I've since learned they don't.
The sweetest moment came when we arranged his and my mother's chairs on separate walls, hers near the glass door to the big porch and his closer to the stereo and TV. "Now how am I going to be able to hold your mother's hand?" he asked me.
Helluva romantic, that's all I can say.
Leaving there, I drove to Irvington to interview an artist who's lucky enough to have a light-filled studio in her house overlooking her sprawling garden and Carter's Creek.
She took me to the window and showed me the bend in the creek where people used to take their boats to get to services at Christchurch nearby.
Can't say I've ever known anyone who boated to church.
On the way back to civilization, I stopped at Parr's Drive-in in Tappahannock, where a statue of French Fry man holding a bouquet of flowers stands out front next to a phone booth (whether it's usable, I have no idea), eschewing fries for a hot fudge sundae, and ate it while chatting with a man named Robert who'd just gotten off work and was having a fish sandwich with tartar sauce on both sides of the bun (they asked and he specified).
I was in no rush to get back because I didn't really have any plans, not that I wasn't going out, but I had no time constraints. Or so I thought.
Once home, I saw an e-mail letting me know that it was pre-festival screening night for the James River film fest where they were showing surrealistic silent short films.
Best part was, it was at Black Iris Gallery, three blocks from home, so it was practically effortless to pull myself together and saunter over there.
James River Film Society grand poobah Mike Jones got things rolling by teasing the upcoming screenings and talking about how post post-modern it was to have actual printed program booklets (in addition to the online listings) and how we were going to see tonight's shorts like our grandparents did, listening to the clatter of a 16 mm projector.
Heaven knows, my grandparents were probably holding hands while they watched movies like these.
He talked about how the French surrealist crowd used to gather as a group and go to a theater, watch 15 minutes of a film, get up and go to another film en masse to watch 20 minutes of something else and do this all evening to ensure they had a disjointed surrealistic experience.
Or maybe just early signs of French ADD.
The surrealistic smorgasbord ranged from an early D.W. Griffith film with prehistoric special effects (a hawk awkwardly stole a baby) to "Dream of a Rarebit Fiend," a cautionary tale of what happens when you eat too much cheese covered bread and wine and try to sleep afterwards.
It did contain some magnificent footage of Greenwich Village circa 1906 beneath film of the glutton flying through the skyline in his bed.
In between films while the new reel was put on, Mike would talk film history to us, sometimes to hilarious results given the age range of the audience.
"The 'Great Train Robbery' was the 'Jaws' of its time," he said in all seriousness before realizing that 90% of the room hadn't been born when "Jaws" came out. "You could call it the 'Avatar' of its time," he said to knowing nods.
Know your audience, Mr. Jones.
He showed a 1913 gangster film prototype called, "The Musketeers of Pig Alley" with a very young and beautiful Lillian Gish playing the Little Lady who is in love with a musician who must go off and make money.
Charlie Chaplin's "Easy Street" had the audience feeling his pain, moaning "oooh!" and "ouch" when bad things happened to heads, which was almost constantly.
Our finale was Buster Keaton's 1923 "The Balloonatic," a back woods romance that began on a summer day at an amusement park, as so many romances do.
After trying the fun house and a hot air balloon, Buster retreats to the woods to canoe, fish and battle bears and there he meets a pretty girl who fishes better than him, cooks out far better than he does (although he lights a fire in his canoe, not the best idea) and even swims better.
The funniest part for me wasn't onscreen, it was a guy in the back row who chortled, "Oh, ho, ho!" at every calamity Buster faced. It was a distinctive laugh.
In once scene, Buster comes upon a squirrel and takes out his shotgun to kill it, causing several girls in the room to worry loudly about the squirrel's future. No one was ready to see a squirrel die, although I heard no complaints when Buster accidentally shot a bear.
As Mike had warned us, by this point in the film industry, audiences were already expecting happy endings, so this short finished with Buster and the girl flying through the air in his canoe but attached to a hot air balloon so when they went over the waterfall, they didn't crash.
Surrealistic or not, I'm pretty sure they were holding hands.
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Honey, You Can Get Lost in the Music
Everything about the evening sang.
Part of it was the superb meal I had at Aziza's, alone at the bar for tapas Tuesday with two servers to talk to until the dining room began to fill up. One looked at the other, observing, "Well, I guess we got our wish."
Clearly that wish had been to for things to get bustling.
Starting with Chincoteague oysters on the half shell with cider vinegar mignonette, I moved on to a salad as colorful as a box of crayons: deep green arugula, bright red pomegranate, deep purple roasted beets and the delicately pastel orange of smoked salmon, all lightly dressed in a citrus vinaigrette.
The music was poking along with James Taylor and 10,000 Maniacs, when all of a sudden it rocketed into the here and now with Boy and Bear's wistful, California rock-wannabe "Southern Sun," not a complaint since I own the album.
But it was surprising to hear after the dated stuff that had preceded it so I asked what the station was.
"Coffeehouse," she replied. "You're the second person who just asked."
I'd been taking my time ordering courses and all of a sudden I realized the time and that I had plans shortly, so I kept up my maritime theme with panzanella fruit de mer, a succulent plate of scallops, shrimp, octopus, marinated bread, tomato, cucumber, lemon, olives and feta.
All I can say is, I have tasted no more beautifully cooked octopus in this town than Chef Philip Denny's and for all those people who think they don't like octopus, you need to taste how this man cooks it.
And if you want to taste it at Aziza's, you better get moving, since he told me tonight that he's leaving in two weeks, moving on to the Hotel John Marshall's pool hall restaurant coming in early May.
When I talked to him, he sounded as excited as a kid about finally getting the chance to open a restaurant, a first for him in his career. Since the HJM is even closer to my house, I think it's a fabulous move for both of us.
I hate to leave Aziza's without a cream puff, but Jonathan Russell of the Head and the Heart was playing a show at Black Iris Gallery and I didn't want to miss a minute of it.
With just enough time to greet a few familiar faces, I found a place along the wall only a couple of people back to watch a man in a somber-looking black hat, coat and pants play mournful songs interspersed by funny, running commentary.
There had been some mention of perhaps closing the bar while he played, but Jonathan was having none of that.
"Everyone knows bar service is not closed when I play," he joked. "Now let me take my phone out and turn it off or my Mom will text me all night long."
He began with the pragmatic "No One to Let You Down" ("When you got no one, there's no one one to let you down") and got sadder from there.
"All these songs are so f*cking heavy," he joked."I wish I knew some Jimmy Buffet songs." No, no, no, the crowd shouted. "I guarantee if I do one, you'll all be singing it in your head. I used to sit in my room and play congas to Buffet, but I also grew up in Florida. There's no taste in Florida."
After doing the sadly longing "Shake," he said, "Let's just 'cheers' and drink for a second. This is what's nice about playing alone. You can do whatever you want." Taking his beer in hand, he leaned back in his chair.
After a short break where I discussed with a stranger whose wife went outside to smoke how unpleasant it is to kiss smokers, chatted with a graphic designer about how it only takes two beers to get her trashed and said hello to The Hat, Jonathan was back and the lights were dimmed ("Could be dimmer," Russell said and they were).
Harry and I agreed we looked fantastic in the low light.
Saying he only knew one cover song, Jonathan began playing Bill Withers' "Ain't No Sunshine," and giving everyone in the room goosebumps in the process. He'd been right, the room needed to be barely lit for that one.
Explaining that the Head and the Heart had been touring for three years and never once played his home state of Florida, it's now on the upcoming tour schedule, so he's planning to add another cover to the set list.
After going out to bars with a Florida cousin, "I wanna learn CCR's 'Cotton Fields' after I saw my cousin do his hick dance to that song in a bar."
It boggles the mind to imagine a whole venue full of Floridians doing a hick dance to that song.
After a drink break with a one minute warning, Jonathan did the title song from the new album, "Let's Be Still," a personal favorite.
You can get lost in the music for hours
Honey, you can get lost in a room
We can play music for hours and hours
But the sun will still be coming up soon
Unsure about the time, he crowd sourced how many more songs he should play and the answers ranged from one to many, so he concluded that that was a bad idea and did one called "Virginia."
Saying, "Okay Justin," he launched into the familiar "Down in the Valley" with its distinctive plea, "Lord, have mercy on my rough and rowdy ways."
"I'm gonna play one more because I'm starting to get drunk. That's very un-rock and roll, but I don't understand how people get shit faced and perform." He paused, clearly pondering the subject.
"Now you can get drunk and write songs all day. That works." I'm sure most poets would agree with him on that.
He concluded with a song about Texas ("Texas is better than you think") and sunsets, observing, "I'm too much of a romantic."
Jonathan, there's no such thing when it comes to men. Romanticize on.
Fact is, it had been romantic just to be in Black Iris' tiny bar with fifty or so people hearing this man's beautiful and emotive voice sing for a hushed crowd.
And speaking of romance, from there I went to Balliceaux to meet a date to see Imarhan Timbuktu, a trio from Mali who promised sinuous guitar lines, hand drumming and mesmerizing rhythms.
Walking in, I found the scientist, a surprise since I haven't seen him out in months, the sax player, lots of guitarists, several WRIR DJs and a crowd of unfamiliar faces drawn out on a cold, Tuesday for world music.
My date soon arrived, a bottle of Vino Verdhe was obtained and we took seats right up front for the spectacle.
Dressed in traditional Mali garb including head dresses but with the lead singer carrying a Fender Stratocaster, they had a different look than most bands you see in the back room.
In French, the singer explained that they were from the desert and that it was very cold here (the rhythm guitarist translated). He had to be freezing, he had on sandals. He also said they were very happy to be here.
The music was fascinating and the fact that it was being sung in a language we didn't understand mattered not at all.
Despite the language and garb, the singer made all the international guitar faces as he wailed on his instrument.
They had a fourth member whose job seemed to be to get the crowd clapping and induce them to dance, two jobs he handled ably.
The female drummer/traditional singer sat on the stage and was difficult to see once the trance-like music got the crowd up and dancing.
Before long it was a full on dance party, even if a lot of people had trouble finding the beat when clapping.
The singer looked to be having as good a time as the dancers, frequently asking, "Are you happy?"
From where I sat, hearing those guitar lines and watching backsides wriggle in front of me, I know I was.
It was a long way from where the evening had begun and all three parts had been especially terrific tonight.
The world's just spinning a little too fast
If things don't slow down soon, we might not last
So just for a moment, let's be still
But just for a moment.
Part of it was the superb meal I had at Aziza's, alone at the bar for tapas Tuesday with two servers to talk to until the dining room began to fill up. One looked at the other, observing, "Well, I guess we got our wish."
Clearly that wish had been to for things to get bustling.
Starting with Chincoteague oysters on the half shell with cider vinegar mignonette, I moved on to a salad as colorful as a box of crayons: deep green arugula, bright red pomegranate, deep purple roasted beets and the delicately pastel orange of smoked salmon, all lightly dressed in a citrus vinaigrette.
The music was poking along with James Taylor and 10,000 Maniacs, when all of a sudden it rocketed into the here and now with Boy and Bear's wistful, California rock-wannabe "Southern Sun," not a complaint since I own the album.
But it was surprising to hear after the dated stuff that had preceded it so I asked what the station was.
"Coffeehouse," she replied. "You're the second person who just asked."
I'd been taking my time ordering courses and all of a sudden I realized the time and that I had plans shortly, so I kept up my maritime theme with panzanella fruit de mer, a succulent plate of scallops, shrimp, octopus, marinated bread, tomato, cucumber, lemon, olives and feta.
All I can say is, I have tasted no more beautifully cooked octopus in this town than Chef Philip Denny's and for all those people who think they don't like octopus, you need to taste how this man cooks it.
And if you want to taste it at Aziza's, you better get moving, since he told me tonight that he's leaving in two weeks, moving on to the Hotel John Marshall's pool hall restaurant coming in early May.
When I talked to him, he sounded as excited as a kid about finally getting the chance to open a restaurant, a first for him in his career. Since the HJM is even closer to my house, I think it's a fabulous move for both of us.
I hate to leave Aziza's without a cream puff, but Jonathan Russell of the Head and the Heart was playing a show at Black Iris Gallery and I didn't want to miss a minute of it.
With just enough time to greet a few familiar faces, I found a place along the wall only a couple of people back to watch a man in a somber-looking black hat, coat and pants play mournful songs interspersed by funny, running commentary.
There had been some mention of perhaps closing the bar while he played, but Jonathan was having none of that.
"Everyone knows bar service is not closed when I play," he joked. "Now let me take my phone out and turn it off or my Mom will text me all night long."
He began with the pragmatic "No One to Let You Down" ("When you got no one, there's no one one to let you down") and got sadder from there.
"All these songs are so f*cking heavy," he joked."I wish I knew some Jimmy Buffet songs." No, no, no, the crowd shouted. "I guarantee if I do one, you'll all be singing it in your head. I used to sit in my room and play congas to Buffet, but I also grew up in Florida. There's no taste in Florida."
After doing the sadly longing "Shake," he said, "Let's just 'cheers' and drink for a second. This is what's nice about playing alone. You can do whatever you want." Taking his beer in hand, he leaned back in his chair.
After a short break where I discussed with a stranger whose wife went outside to smoke how unpleasant it is to kiss smokers, chatted with a graphic designer about how it only takes two beers to get her trashed and said hello to The Hat, Jonathan was back and the lights were dimmed ("Could be dimmer," Russell said and they were).
Harry and I agreed we looked fantastic in the low light.
Saying he only knew one cover song, Jonathan began playing Bill Withers' "Ain't No Sunshine," and giving everyone in the room goosebumps in the process. He'd been right, the room needed to be barely lit for that one.
Explaining that the Head and the Heart had been touring for three years and never once played his home state of Florida, it's now on the upcoming tour schedule, so he's planning to add another cover to the set list.
After going out to bars with a Florida cousin, "I wanna learn CCR's 'Cotton Fields' after I saw my cousin do his hick dance to that song in a bar."
It boggles the mind to imagine a whole venue full of Floridians doing a hick dance to that song.
After a drink break with a one minute warning, Jonathan did the title song from the new album, "Let's Be Still," a personal favorite.
You can get lost in the music for hours
Honey, you can get lost in a room
We can play music for hours and hours
But the sun will still be coming up soon
Unsure about the time, he crowd sourced how many more songs he should play and the answers ranged from one to many, so he concluded that that was a bad idea and did one called "Virginia."
Saying, "Okay Justin," he launched into the familiar "Down in the Valley" with its distinctive plea, "Lord, have mercy on my rough and rowdy ways."
"I'm gonna play one more because I'm starting to get drunk. That's very un-rock and roll, but I don't understand how people get shit faced and perform." He paused, clearly pondering the subject.
"Now you can get drunk and write songs all day. That works." I'm sure most poets would agree with him on that.
He concluded with a song about Texas ("Texas is better than you think") and sunsets, observing, "I'm too much of a romantic."
Jonathan, there's no such thing when it comes to men. Romanticize on.
Fact is, it had been romantic just to be in Black Iris' tiny bar with fifty or so people hearing this man's beautiful and emotive voice sing for a hushed crowd.
And speaking of romance, from there I went to Balliceaux to meet a date to see Imarhan Timbuktu, a trio from Mali who promised sinuous guitar lines, hand drumming and mesmerizing rhythms.
Walking in, I found the scientist, a surprise since I haven't seen him out in months, the sax player, lots of guitarists, several WRIR DJs and a crowd of unfamiliar faces drawn out on a cold, Tuesday for world music.
My date soon arrived, a bottle of Vino Verdhe was obtained and we took seats right up front for the spectacle.
Dressed in traditional Mali garb including head dresses but with the lead singer carrying a Fender Stratocaster, they had a different look than most bands you see in the back room.
In French, the singer explained that they were from the desert and that it was very cold here (the rhythm guitarist translated). He had to be freezing, he had on sandals. He also said they were very happy to be here.
The music was fascinating and the fact that it was being sung in a language we didn't understand mattered not at all.
Despite the language and garb, the singer made all the international guitar faces as he wailed on his instrument.
They had a fourth member whose job seemed to be to get the crowd clapping and induce them to dance, two jobs he handled ably.
The female drummer/traditional singer sat on the stage and was difficult to see once the trance-like music got the crowd up and dancing.
Before long it was a full on dance party, even if a lot of people had trouble finding the beat when clapping.
The singer looked to be having as good a time as the dancers, frequently asking, "Are you happy?"
From where I sat, hearing those guitar lines and watching backsides wriggle in front of me, I know I was.
It was a long way from where the evening had begun and all three parts had been especially terrific tonight.
The world's just spinning a little too fast
If things don't slow down soon, we might not last
So just for a moment, let's be still
But just for a moment.
Friday, March 7, 2014
Selfies and Absent Sea
Exploring tho unlikely was tonight's theme.
So to get started on that, I went to the bathroom for art.
The best little bathroom art show on Grace Street, "Shrinky Dink Selfie Portraits," was being hosted by TMI Consulting where thirty five 2 x 2 plastic portraits of local people hung across from the toilet on a sunny yellow wall.
I'd been lured not just by the idea of a bathroom exhibit, but because of the artist, Tiffany Glass Ferreira. Back in the dark ages of 2008, I'd met her and gotten one of her 2 x 2 painted canvases, "Scatter X," which now hangs on my wall with all the other local art.
Back then, she painted on miniature canvases and now she draws on shrinkable plastic that then goes into the toaster oven to reduce from 4 x 4 to an even dinkier 2 x 2. She showed me a video of a few shrinking.
I recognized more than a few of the subjects, several from the theater world, a couple from the restaurant world, even some from my own past.
And while I won't lie, I'd love to have a shrinky dink selfie by Tiffany, I like to think that I started collecting her back before she was all the rage or some such nonsense.
After talking to Tiffany and spending considerable time in the bathroom, where she explained that her work would get lost in the scale of a regular gallery, I moved on to an unlikely place for music.
Playing at Bistro 27 tonight for First Fridays was John Greenberg's Jazz Warriors, a quartet of piano, sax, upright bass and singer.
Before they began, I chatted with the well-dressed gentleman sitting next to me at the bar, only to hear about his stint as the maitre d' at the Hotel John Marshall decades ago.
He told me he'd begun as a busboy, quickly been promoted to server and within just as short a time been made maitre d', much to his delight.
I heard stories about some of the famous guests he met - Fats Domino, Chuck Berry - and how that shaped his passion for music, which is why he was at 27 tonight.
When the Jazz Warriors were ready to start, the sax player took up residence not with the band in the big front window, but midway down the room amongst the diners.
He started blowing his horn New Orleans-style and completely captured everyone in the room as he made his way around the room divider and up the other side of the dining room.
Only once he got back to join the band did the other instruments kick in.
They did jazzy takes on songs like "Bye, Bye, Blackbird," "On the Street Where You Live' and "All of Me," as people continued to come in the door to have a drink and hear music.
It really is a great space for hosting music, roomy, high-ceilinged and visible to anyone passing by on Broad Street.
Granted, it's only once a month at this point, but, hey, it's a start.
Toward the end of their second set, I left to go hear more music, this time a band stopping by Black Iris Gallery.
You'd think parking would be an unlikely place to run into friends, but before I could get out of the car, I saw a couple waving furiously at me and rolled down the window. It was my favorite '60s DJ and his lovely main squeeze, just having come from seeing Brandi Price's art show at Steady Sounds.
When I asked if they were also headed to Black Iris, they looked sheepish, admitting they were on their way to the Daily.
"We know the crowd sucks and we wouldn't be going there except we're doing a cleanse diet and they have organic food and even Ellwood-Thompson doesn't," he said.
With the two of them bending over at half mast to chat through my car window, that led to a lively discussion of eating out, eating properly and the pitfalls of going to a place where you're around annoying people.
On the plus side, they suggested that once they finish cleansing they contact me not only for restaurant recommendations, but so that we might all get together for a shared meal out.
Meanwhile, a trio walked down the street and one yelled my name in greeting. So apparently parked on Broad Street is a likely place for me to run into friends.
They left for Carytown and I crossed the street to see the band kind enough to make a stop in Richmond as a warm-up for their upcoming NPR Tiny Desk concert.
I found it unlikely as hell that Matthew and the Arrogant Sea were going to play three blocks from my apartment, even more so after listening to their music and falling madly in love with it.
"Black Dresses," absolutely transcendent.
But, alas, it was not meant to be and arriving at the back room speakeasy at Black Iris, I'd just missed the official announcement that Matthew had had a family emergency and the band was already en route back to Texas.
In a situation like this, where everyone from Benjamin, Black Iris' curator and booker, to all of us who'd come to hear some beautiful music, were majorly disappointed, there's not a thing anyone can do about it.
Stiff upper lip and all that.
Benjamin had arranged for a bluegrass duo to entertain us in the Sea's absence but it's tough to make do with two when you were expecting a much bigger band and sound that melds pop, country, psychedelic and folk.
But it was still well-executed music and the banjo and fiddle players had clearly played together a lot, making for a satisfying, albeit different end to my evening than I'd expected.
Unlikely, you might say.
So to get started on that, I went to the bathroom for art.
The best little bathroom art show on Grace Street, "Shrinky Dink Selfie Portraits," was being hosted by TMI Consulting where thirty five 2 x 2 plastic portraits of local people hung across from the toilet on a sunny yellow wall.
I'd been lured not just by the idea of a bathroom exhibit, but because of the artist, Tiffany Glass Ferreira. Back in the dark ages of 2008, I'd met her and gotten one of her 2 x 2 painted canvases, "Scatter X," which now hangs on my wall with all the other local art.
Back then, she painted on miniature canvases and now she draws on shrinkable plastic that then goes into the toaster oven to reduce from 4 x 4 to an even dinkier 2 x 2. She showed me a video of a few shrinking.
I recognized more than a few of the subjects, several from the theater world, a couple from the restaurant world, even some from my own past.
And while I won't lie, I'd love to have a shrinky dink selfie by Tiffany, I like to think that I started collecting her back before she was all the rage or some such nonsense.
After talking to Tiffany and spending considerable time in the bathroom, where she explained that her work would get lost in the scale of a regular gallery, I moved on to an unlikely place for music.
Playing at Bistro 27 tonight for First Fridays was John Greenberg's Jazz Warriors, a quartet of piano, sax, upright bass and singer.
Before they began, I chatted with the well-dressed gentleman sitting next to me at the bar, only to hear about his stint as the maitre d' at the Hotel John Marshall decades ago.
He told me he'd begun as a busboy, quickly been promoted to server and within just as short a time been made maitre d', much to his delight.
I heard stories about some of the famous guests he met - Fats Domino, Chuck Berry - and how that shaped his passion for music, which is why he was at 27 tonight.
When the Jazz Warriors were ready to start, the sax player took up residence not with the band in the big front window, but midway down the room amongst the diners.
He started blowing his horn New Orleans-style and completely captured everyone in the room as he made his way around the room divider and up the other side of the dining room.
Only once he got back to join the band did the other instruments kick in.
They did jazzy takes on songs like "Bye, Bye, Blackbird," "On the Street Where You Live' and "All of Me," as people continued to come in the door to have a drink and hear music.
It really is a great space for hosting music, roomy, high-ceilinged and visible to anyone passing by on Broad Street.
Granted, it's only once a month at this point, but, hey, it's a start.
Toward the end of their second set, I left to go hear more music, this time a band stopping by Black Iris Gallery.
You'd think parking would be an unlikely place to run into friends, but before I could get out of the car, I saw a couple waving furiously at me and rolled down the window. It was my favorite '60s DJ and his lovely main squeeze, just having come from seeing Brandi Price's art show at Steady Sounds.
When I asked if they were also headed to Black Iris, they looked sheepish, admitting they were on their way to the Daily.
"We know the crowd sucks and we wouldn't be going there except we're doing a cleanse diet and they have organic food and even Ellwood-Thompson doesn't," he said.
With the two of them bending over at half mast to chat through my car window, that led to a lively discussion of eating out, eating properly and the pitfalls of going to a place where you're around annoying people.
On the plus side, they suggested that once they finish cleansing they contact me not only for restaurant recommendations, but so that we might all get together for a shared meal out.
Meanwhile, a trio walked down the street and one yelled my name in greeting. So apparently parked on Broad Street is a likely place for me to run into friends.
They left for Carytown and I crossed the street to see the band kind enough to make a stop in Richmond as a warm-up for their upcoming NPR Tiny Desk concert.
I found it unlikely as hell that Matthew and the Arrogant Sea were going to play three blocks from my apartment, even more so after listening to their music and falling madly in love with it.
"Black Dresses," absolutely transcendent.
But, alas, it was not meant to be and arriving at the back room speakeasy at Black Iris, I'd just missed the official announcement that Matthew had had a family emergency and the band was already en route back to Texas.
In a situation like this, where everyone from Benjamin, Black Iris' curator and booker, to all of us who'd come to hear some beautiful music, were majorly disappointed, there's not a thing anyone can do about it.
Stiff upper lip and all that.
Benjamin had arranged for a bluegrass duo to entertain us in the Sea's absence but it's tough to make do with two when you were expecting a much bigger band and sound that melds pop, country, psychedelic and folk.
But it was still well-executed music and the banjo and fiddle players had clearly played together a lot, making for a satisfying, albeit different end to my evening than I'd expected.
Unlikely, you might say.
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
People of This Generation
The cool people just keep dropping by Jackson Ward.
Tonight's was Bill Ayers, educator, agitator, activist and generally fascinating guy and author of his second book, "Public Enemy: Confessions of an American Dissident."
When I got to Black Iris Gallery, the place was already buzzing with people checking out the new exhibit, "Public Eye: A Civil Rights Case Study," looking at mug shots and film footage from '60s and '70s-era protests.
The man about town was the first to greet me - with a compliment no less - followed by the couple I've been seeing around town a lot lately ("What amazing event will we see you at next?"), who introduced me to the UR professor, saying that the gamelan orchestra was his ("Let me know if you want to borrow it").
Interesting people abounded.
While we were chatting about Sun Studios (because of the Elvis bio I'm reading), the evening's speaker Bill joined our little group to chat, telling us about his recently replaced knee, how he was the oldest one in the room and about his plans to go to Charlottesville tomorrow to see Monticello.
Then we all took seats, mine in a second row seat to listen to a man who helped shape history by putting his beliefs on the line and protesting what he felt was wrong or unjust.
The evening was part reading, part talk, part answering questions and all fascination.
He began by talking about the importance of independent spaces like Black Iris, places where people can meet and share ideas. To illustrate that, he told us his first book, "Fugitive days: A Memoir" had been reviewed by the New York Times on September 11, 2001.
When the world as we knew it ended that day, his planned book tour began to fall apart as many universities canceled his appearance for fear of protests and issues about his dissident past.
"Not a single independent book store canceled on me," he said. And that's why we need them.
We listened as he read the prologue from his new book about the 2008 controversy when during the Presidential debates, his name had been brought up as someone with whom Obama was in contact.
In an odd twist, he'd had a bunch of graduate students at his house that night and when someone turned on the debate, it was the students' first inkling of his past with SDS and the Weather Underground.
It wasn't all serious business, though, and he joked that for a change, no one had organized a picket of tonight's event. "Maybe someone should go outside and protest," he suggested.
In the middle of the talk, a phone went off, funny mainly because it was his.
I found it particularly profound when he began talking about the notion of different generations. Quoting his SDS card, he said that, "We are people of this generation. Get over the generation idea. Get over the idea that there was one perfect moment."
He spoke to the young people in the room, telling them that their impression of the '60s as the best time - the best music, the best scene, the best sex - was mistaken.
We heard about his first arrest for a sit-in at a local draft board that got him ten days in the clink. "You see the world differently after you've been arrested," he said. Likewise going door to door as a community organizer against the Vietnam war affected him deeply.
During the Q & A, he would not only answer people's questions but share other thoughts and issues that had occurred to him as he was listening to the questions.
He was especially compelling on the subject of child rearing, a topic that took up much of his book, and surveillance, the fact that technological society has outstripped ethical society.
Once he'd given a class an assignment to bring in or photograph things that were watching them. When two women tried to film the security cameras at a mall, security men told them to stop because "watching us watch you" wasn't allowed.
Scary.
When asked about his age (70) and bad knee (upcoming surgery on the other one) keeping him from his life's work speaking out against what he felt was wrong, he dismissed the thought. "I'll be on the barricades in my walker."
Listening to his passion and his past, there was no reason not to believe him.
Entreating the people in the room to follow their beliefs to make a difference, he concluded, "You're living in history. History is not over."
Right on. Witness how it was being made in Jackson Ward tonight as the many listened to a man who's still fighting the good fight.
Hopefulness is a politics, he told us. I like the sound of that.
Tonight's was Bill Ayers, educator, agitator, activist and generally fascinating guy and author of his second book, "Public Enemy: Confessions of an American Dissident."
When I got to Black Iris Gallery, the place was already buzzing with people checking out the new exhibit, "Public Eye: A Civil Rights Case Study," looking at mug shots and film footage from '60s and '70s-era protests.
The man about town was the first to greet me - with a compliment no less - followed by the couple I've been seeing around town a lot lately ("What amazing event will we see you at next?"), who introduced me to the UR professor, saying that the gamelan orchestra was his ("Let me know if you want to borrow it").
Interesting people abounded.
While we were chatting about Sun Studios (because of the Elvis bio I'm reading), the evening's speaker Bill joined our little group to chat, telling us about his recently replaced knee, how he was the oldest one in the room and about his plans to go to Charlottesville tomorrow to see Monticello.
Then we all took seats, mine in a second row seat to listen to a man who helped shape history by putting his beliefs on the line and protesting what he felt was wrong or unjust.
The evening was part reading, part talk, part answering questions and all fascination.
He began by talking about the importance of independent spaces like Black Iris, places where people can meet and share ideas. To illustrate that, he told us his first book, "Fugitive days: A Memoir" had been reviewed by the New York Times on September 11, 2001.
When the world as we knew it ended that day, his planned book tour began to fall apart as many universities canceled his appearance for fear of protests and issues about his dissident past.
"Not a single independent book store canceled on me," he said. And that's why we need them.
We listened as he read the prologue from his new book about the 2008 controversy when during the Presidential debates, his name had been brought up as someone with whom Obama was in contact.
In an odd twist, he'd had a bunch of graduate students at his house that night and when someone turned on the debate, it was the students' first inkling of his past with SDS and the Weather Underground.
It wasn't all serious business, though, and he joked that for a change, no one had organized a picket of tonight's event. "Maybe someone should go outside and protest," he suggested.
In the middle of the talk, a phone went off, funny mainly because it was his.
I found it particularly profound when he began talking about the notion of different generations. Quoting his SDS card, he said that, "We are people of this generation. Get over the generation idea. Get over the idea that there was one perfect moment."
He spoke to the young people in the room, telling them that their impression of the '60s as the best time - the best music, the best scene, the best sex - was mistaken.
We heard about his first arrest for a sit-in at a local draft board that got him ten days in the clink. "You see the world differently after you've been arrested," he said. Likewise going door to door as a community organizer against the Vietnam war affected him deeply.
During the Q & A, he would not only answer people's questions but share other thoughts and issues that had occurred to him as he was listening to the questions.
He was especially compelling on the subject of child rearing, a topic that took up much of his book, and surveillance, the fact that technological society has outstripped ethical society.
Once he'd given a class an assignment to bring in or photograph things that were watching them. When two women tried to film the security cameras at a mall, security men told them to stop because "watching us watch you" wasn't allowed.
Scary.
When asked about his age (70) and bad knee (upcoming surgery on the other one) keeping him from his life's work speaking out against what he felt was wrong, he dismissed the thought. "I'll be on the barricades in my walker."
Listening to his passion and his past, there was no reason not to believe him.
Entreating the people in the room to follow their beliefs to make a difference, he concluded, "You're living in history. History is not over."
Right on. Witness how it was being made in Jackson Ward tonight as the many listened to a man who's still fighting the good fight.
Hopefulness is a politics, he told us. I like the sound of that.
Saturday, February 8, 2014
Perfect Amount of Art and Awkward
Just another Friday night that starts with a makeshift disco and ends with strippers.
A photographer friend and I were walking to dinner when he spied some interesting tile work on a building and paused to take a picture.
Next thing we know, the owner of the building, a charming Mexican, comes out and invites us in for a tour of the building he is renovating for his construction company.
I'm sure my mother would disapprove of going into a stranger's building with him, but I figure my sturdy male friend is my insurance against bodily harm.
Inside, the owner tells us that the building was a laundry for 75 years, showing off massive sliding metal doors, huge exhaust fans and an abundance of windows to let out the hot, steamy air.
Everywhere but the front of the building is still a work in progress, with part of the floor torn up in one place and a walkway over the hole.
When we get almost to the back, though, we find an intact floor, finished walls and where, wait for it, he says nonchalantly, "Here is my discotheque," while hitting a switch which starts the mirror ball turning and myriad strobe lights flashing along the roof line.
He says this is where they dance when he holds employee parties. It was about the last thing on earth I'd expected when we'd walked in the building.
That said, if he'd put on some music, I might have tried it out and I bet my friend would have, too.
Neither of us could get over the unexpected invitation followed by a peek inside a building we would otherwise never have seen.
While we were eating dinner afterwards, we caught up with each other's lives, the best part being when I asked how his relationship is going. I'd guessed that since he never has time to get together, it must be going quite well.
He affirmed how happy he was, saying, "She's smart, she likes to talk, she's good company and she used to be a cheerleader so she's flexible."
A man couldn't really ask for much more than that, could he?
The icing on the cake was when he surprised me by saying, "Since I won't be seeing you on Valentine's day, I have a present for you," pulling out a large pink eraser shaped like a diamond ring. "Anyone who doesn't put a ring on it is a dumbass."
Clearly he didn't want to be among that group. It was my first pink eraser diamond ring and although I'm not a jewelry person, I wore it all night.
Our next stop was Glave Kocen gallery to See "Click III," a biannual invitational photography show with the theme "From Mountains to Sea."
We both recognized several of the photographers' names while taking in a fascinating array of photography styles from photo montage to pinhole Polaroids to photo-journalism to abstractions. Our post-gallery discussion involved how the best digital photographs look like they were shot on 35 mm.
We parted ways in the arts district since I had First Fridays artwalking to do and he had other plans.
My first stop was at Black Iris gallery to see "Public Eye: Civil Rights Case Study," a series of photographs and videos shot for surveillance purposes during the '60s and '70s in Richmond.
The mug shots looked like Joe Average people, a comment I made to a woman who responded, "Yea, there's one of my sister."
I'm willing to bet if you're of an age and were in Richmond during the days of protests and demonstrations, you might recognize some young person's mug in the exhibit, too.
Projected on the back wall was a series of film clips, like a 1970 busing protest on Belvidere, a memorial for Martin Luther King at the state capital in 1968 (with women in white gloves and hats), a KKK parade and a Black Panther meeting on Laurel Street.
Of course Laurel Street. Where else but Oregon Hill would you expect to find Black Panthers and anarchists?
A black and white no-frills look at a period in RVA's history I missed, presented without political agenda or bias. As in, just the facts, ma'am. Definitely worth checking out.
From there, it was just a short walk to the Renaissance for WRIR's annual "party for the rest of us" to celebrate their ninth birthday.
I made a point to get there early enough to see River City Taiko, a group that plays traditional Japanese drums, which I have to assume means one person on either side of the drum playing different rhythms because that's what these people were doing, sometimes two at a time and sometimes the entire group at once.
The Colloquial Orchestra was next and while I've seen them many times, that's meaningless because the orchestra is defined as Dave Watkins on dulcitar and anyone else he asks to play with him, so never the same.
It can be a three piece, a six-piece or, like tonight, a 14-piece: two drummers, six guitarists (one acoustic), bass, trumpet, keyboard, violin,and a late-arriving sax player.
Improvising for a half hour, they wove elaborate soundscapes around the bass and drum center, creating what one first-timer described to me as sounding like "bagpipes on acid."
Changing rooms to catch some storytelling courtesy of Secretly Y'All, I heard the inimitable Herschel tell a tale of falling hard for a girl after hearing her laugh because, "it was the best laugh I ever heard."
Now there's a hell of a compliment.
He accompanied himself on ukulele when he sang a song partially based on their interaction.
Justin's story was about moving from Powhatan and an outdoor-centered life to Church Hill and having to push himself "to get off my ass and go outside," and his song was called "Silver and Diamonds."
Patrick's story was about a girl joining his group traveling Europe and after spending 24 hours with her, knowing he was deeply in love. Two months here went great but six weeks in Berlin made it painfully obvious she'd lost interest. His heartbreaking tribute was called "Waltz to Noel."
No one had mentioned that tonight's theme would be "guys with sad stories."
Milling about between bands, I ran into the DJ who works at WPA and had made all the lovely birthday cakes for tonight's party. I had him give me a rundown on what kind of cake was inside each since they all looked different.
Chocolate coconut and caramel chocolate seemed to hold the most promise for me. I took a swipe of icing just to be sure, alarming a DJ.
That's an annual tradition for me at this party, my friend. Just ask Andrew.
The one band I wanted to make sure I caught tonight was Hypercolor and walking into the ballroom as their set began, I knew in an instant that they were right up my alley.
A ruby-throated female lead singer playing guitar ("She's not your typical lead, she's even doing some finger-picking," the guy behind me whispered to me), two other lush-sounding guitars including one of the guys from Avers whom I'd just seen and the bassist from Fear of Music (also just seen last weekend) who together with the drummer kept everyone from wandering off into psychedelic bliss.
I kept moving closer and closer to the front to watch and listen to the impressive execution and well-written songs. I'll need to see them again soon.
The Silent Music Revival was presenting the avant-garde 1947 film "The Cage" with improvised soundtrack by Snack Truck and their thunderous rock was a fine match for the falling eyeballs, nude women running, leek stealers and other assorted oddities of the silent movie.
I could tell that a lot of people watching had never seen a SMR presentation before as they focused solely on the band and ignored the movie.
Guys, guys, guys.
Back in the main ballroom, the Ar-Kaics had morphed from a trio to a quartet since I'd last seen them at Steady Sounds but hard and fast ear-splitting garage rock was still their metier.
For something completely different, I crossed rooms to hear the RVA Squares, a bluegrass band with a dance caller.
Eight couples took the challenge, including three all girl couples (one of each was given a tie to make her easier to identify as the male) and squared off as Grant Hunnicutt, hat, microphone and all, proceed to call out the square dancing instructions.
Gents go round the outside line
Pass your partner one time by
Pick a new girl on the fly
Swing her round
Step right back and watch her strut
Step back up and bump your butt
I'm not sure those are the same square dancing calls I heard when we square danced in elementary school, but they seemed to elicit much the same results.
It really did look like fun and while I'm sure I would have made a mess of it, I'd have tried square dancing for the first time since elementary school if someone had asked.
But they didn't, so I accepted an invitation from my favorite J-Ward couple to leave for Gallery 5 and the last of their evening of burlesque and boylesque.
The place was packed and we heard major hooting and hollering from outside, so I found a place by the radiator and stood on tip-toe to see the ample Dante the Inferno gyrate and strip down.
"That was just the perfect amount of awkward," host Parker said afterwards while scantily clad women were sweeping up the stripping droppings of Dante.
The lovely and zaftig Ellie "Iron Lady" Quinn was next and her red and gold costume zipped off while she danced provocatively to reveal a gold bikini top and gold thong with tassels .
The crowd ate it up, cheering her on until she removed her bikini top and it was just pasties with tassels, which she then proceeded to twirl like a pro, shimmying wildly.
Buster Britches was introduced as "the cream show Casanova" and Parker instructed us to make a path down the center of the room "cause he's gonna be coming from the back, just the way he likes it."
In a short floral robe and carrying an umbrella, the ample Buster strutted onstage to Billie Holiday's "He's a Tramp," dropped the robe and then spent the rest of the time adding clothes back on.
The night ended with Deanna Danger, not only a burlesque performer but a teacher ("You, too, can be up here taking your clothes off!" Parker said by way of introduction) in a fabulous gold and black dress with a slit skirt that got twirled and swirled overhead before being removed to reveal the tiniest of pasties and leopard briefs.
The audience was practically salivating and clearly disappointed that the evening's stripping was over.
Not me. Despite the fact that I hadn't danced at the discotheque, hadn't square danced, hadn't danced while taking my clothes off and no one's writing a "Waltz to Karen," tonight was a terrific lot of fun.
Not only am I wearing the latest in pink eraser jewelry, but I was told me that I always add laughter to a room.
A woman couldn't really ask for much more than that, could she?
A photographer friend and I were walking to dinner when he spied some interesting tile work on a building and paused to take a picture.
Next thing we know, the owner of the building, a charming Mexican, comes out and invites us in for a tour of the building he is renovating for his construction company.
I'm sure my mother would disapprove of going into a stranger's building with him, but I figure my sturdy male friend is my insurance against bodily harm.
Inside, the owner tells us that the building was a laundry for 75 years, showing off massive sliding metal doors, huge exhaust fans and an abundance of windows to let out the hot, steamy air.
Everywhere but the front of the building is still a work in progress, with part of the floor torn up in one place and a walkway over the hole.
When we get almost to the back, though, we find an intact floor, finished walls and where, wait for it, he says nonchalantly, "Here is my discotheque," while hitting a switch which starts the mirror ball turning and myriad strobe lights flashing along the roof line.
He says this is where they dance when he holds employee parties. It was about the last thing on earth I'd expected when we'd walked in the building.
That said, if he'd put on some music, I might have tried it out and I bet my friend would have, too.
Neither of us could get over the unexpected invitation followed by a peek inside a building we would otherwise never have seen.
While we were eating dinner afterwards, we caught up with each other's lives, the best part being when I asked how his relationship is going. I'd guessed that since he never has time to get together, it must be going quite well.
He affirmed how happy he was, saying, "She's smart, she likes to talk, she's good company and she used to be a cheerleader so she's flexible."
A man couldn't really ask for much more than that, could he?
The icing on the cake was when he surprised me by saying, "Since I won't be seeing you on Valentine's day, I have a present for you," pulling out a large pink eraser shaped like a diamond ring. "Anyone who doesn't put a ring on it is a dumbass."
Clearly he didn't want to be among that group. It was my first pink eraser diamond ring and although I'm not a jewelry person, I wore it all night.
Our next stop was Glave Kocen gallery to See "Click III," a biannual invitational photography show with the theme "From Mountains to Sea."
We both recognized several of the photographers' names while taking in a fascinating array of photography styles from photo montage to pinhole Polaroids to photo-journalism to abstractions. Our post-gallery discussion involved how the best digital photographs look like they were shot on 35 mm.
We parted ways in the arts district since I had First Fridays artwalking to do and he had other plans.
My first stop was at Black Iris gallery to see "Public Eye: Civil Rights Case Study," a series of photographs and videos shot for surveillance purposes during the '60s and '70s in Richmond.
The mug shots looked like Joe Average people, a comment I made to a woman who responded, "Yea, there's one of my sister."
I'm willing to bet if you're of an age and were in Richmond during the days of protests and demonstrations, you might recognize some young person's mug in the exhibit, too.
Projected on the back wall was a series of film clips, like a 1970 busing protest on Belvidere, a memorial for Martin Luther King at the state capital in 1968 (with women in white gloves and hats), a KKK parade and a Black Panther meeting on Laurel Street.
Of course Laurel Street. Where else but Oregon Hill would you expect to find Black Panthers and anarchists?
A black and white no-frills look at a period in RVA's history I missed, presented without political agenda or bias. As in, just the facts, ma'am. Definitely worth checking out.
From there, it was just a short walk to the Renaissance for WRIR's annual "party for the rest of us" to celebrate their ninth birthday.
I made a point to get there early enough to see River City Taiko, a group that plays traditional Japanese drums, which I have to assume means one person on either side of the drum playing different rhythms because that's what these people were doing, sometimes two at a time and sometimes the entire group at once.
The Colloquial Orchestra was next and while I've seen them many times, that's meaningless because the orchestra is defined as Dave Watkins on dulcitar and anyone else he asks to play with him, so never the same.
It can be a three piece, a six-piece or, like tonight, a 14-piece: two drummers, six guitarists (one acoustic), bass, trumpet, keyboard, violin,and a late-arriving sax player.
Improvising for a half hour, they wove elaborate soundscapes around the bass and drum center, creating what one first-timer described to me as sounding like "bagpipes on acid."
Changing rooms to catch some storytelling courtesy of Secretly Y'All, I heard the inimitable Herschel tell a tale of falling hard for a girl after hearing her laugh because, "it was the best laugh I ever heard."
Now there's a hell of a compliment.
He accompanied himself on ukulele when he sang a song partially based on their interaction.
Justin's story was about moving from Powhatan and an outdoor-centered life to Church Hill and having to push himself "to get off my ass and go outside," and his song was called "Silver and Diamonds."
Patrick's story was about a girl joining his group traveling Europe and after spending 24 hours with her, knowing he was deeply in love. Two months here went great but six weeks in Berlin made it painfully obvious she'd lost interest. His heartbreaking tribute was called "Waltz to Noel."
No one had mentioned that tonight's theme would be "guys with sad stories."
Milling about between bands, I ran into the DJ who works at WPA and had made all the lovely birthday cakes for tonight's party. I had him give me a rundown on what kind of cake was inside each since they all looked different.
Chocolate coconut and caramel chocolate seemed to hold the most promise for me. I took a swipe of icing just to be sure, alarming a DJ.
That's an annual tradition for me at this party, my friend. Just ask Andrew.
The one band I wanted to make sure I caught tonight was Hypercolor and walking into the ballroom as their set began, I knew in an instant that they were right up my alley.
A ruby-throated female lead singer playing guitar ("She's not your typical lead, she's even doing some finger-picking," the guy behind me whispered to me), two other lush-sounding guitars including one of the guys from Avers whom I'd just seen and the bassist from Fear of Music (also just seen last weekend) who together with the drummer kept everyone from wandering off into psychedelic bliss.
I kept moving closer and closer to the front to watch and listen to the impressive execution and well-written songs. I'll need to see them again soon.
The Silent Music Revival was presenting the avant-garde 1947 film "The Cage" with improvised soundtrack by Snack Truck and their thunderous rock was a fine match for the falling eyeballs, nude women running, leek stealers and other assorted oddities of the silent movie.
I could tell that a lot of people watching had never seen a SMR presentation before as they focused solely on the band and ignored the movie.
Guys, guys, guys.
Back in the main ballroom, the Ar-Kaics had morphed from a trio to a quartet since I'd last seen them at Steady Sounds but hard and fast ear-splitting garage rock was still their metier.
For something completely different, I crossed rooms to hear the RVA Squares, a bluegrass band with a dance caller.
Eight couples took the challenge, including three all girl couples (one of each was given a tie to make her easier to identify as the male) and squared off as Grant Hunnicutt, hat, microphone and all, proceed to call out the square dancing instructions.
Gents go round the outside line
Pass your partner one time by
Pick a new girl on the fly
Swing her round
Step right back and watch her strut
Step back up and bump your butt
I'm not sure those are the same square dancing calls I heard when we square danced in elementary school, but they seemed to elicit much the same results.
It really did look like fun and while I'm sure I would have made a mess of it, I'd have tried square dancing for the first time since elementary school if someone had asked.
But they didn't, so I accepted an invitation from my favorite J-Ward couple to leave for Gallery 5 and the last of their evening of burlesque and boylesque.
The place was packed and we heard major hooting and hollering from outside, so I found a place by the radiator and stood on tip-toe to see the ample Dante the Inferno gyrate and strip down.
"That was just the perfect amount of awkward," host Parker said afterwards while scantily clad women were sweeping up the stripping droppings of Dante.
The lovely and zaftig Ellie "Iron Lady" Quinn was next and her red and gold costume zipped off while she danced provocatively to reveal a gold bikini top and gold thong with tassels .
The crowd ate it up, cheering her on until she removed her bikini top and it was just pasties with tassels, which she then proceeded to twirl like a pro, shimmying wildly.
Buster Britches was introduced as "the cream show Casanova" and Parker instructed us to make a path down the center of the room "cause he's gonna be coming from the back, just the way he likes it."
In a short floral robe and carrying an umbrella, the ample Buster strutted onstage to Billie Holiday's "He's a Tramp," dropped the robe and then spent the rest of the time adding clothes back on.
The night ended with Deanna Danger, not only a burlesque performer but a teacher ("You, too, can be up here taking your clothes off!" Parker said by way of introduction) in a fabulous gold and black dress with a slit skirt that got twirled and swirled overhead before being removed to reveal the tiniest of pasties and leopard briefs.
The audience was practically salivating and clearly disappointed that the evening's stripping was over.
Not me. Despite the fact that I hadn't danced at the discotheque, hadn't square danced, hadn't danced while taking my clothes off and no one's writing a "Waltz to Karen," tonight was a terrific lot of fun.
Not only am I wearing the latest in pink eraser jewelry, but I was told me that I always add laughter to a room.
A woman couldn't really ask for much more than that, could she?
Saturday, August 10, 2013
Saturday, So What?
Sometimes all I want is a simple Saturday night.
No high culture, no trendy foodstuffs, no company required.
Chalk it up to yet another of my eccentricities, but I just don't see the last day of the week as the highlight.
So instead of trying to think of what fabulous things I might enjoy tonight, I considered how to have a low-key evening alone.
Step one: dinner at Garnett's.
After claiming a counter stool, I went to the window and rifled through the newspaper box, extracting all the New York Times arts sections.
Back at the counter, I ordered a grilled Gouda with tomato and bacon, the pig-sporting cousin of my favorite sandwich at Ipanema.
Sans company, I was able to read and eat without conversational responsibility.
I read a review of "Lovelace," since I'd just seen the preview at Bowtie two days ago.
I read a piece called "Marriage is Yard Work" about a San Diego couple who have spent four years turning the backyard of the house they rent into an outdoor room, building most of the furniture themselves.
And then a couple sat down at the counter, having just come from the Sound City festival down at Tredegar.
Okay, so I hadn't gone out for conversation, but when it drops in my lap, what's a poor girl to do?
So I inquired. They liked that it wasn't particularly crowded. They were there early enough that the beer-pouring staff didn't yet know to pour half-full cups, so they got two full beers before someone caught on.
They thought the James Badfellows used too many cuss words (her term) for 2:00 in the afternoon. They wondered if El Vez really had an accent. They enjoyed Leagues.
And they didn't stay for the Breeders.
I knew everything I needed to and I could continue with my reading.
After finishing my deliciously gooey sandwich, I returned the newspaper to the box, thanked my server and headed home.
Step two: Warren Hixson.
Keeping it simple, I then walked three blocks to Black Iris Gallery for music.
It's the space that used to be Sound of Music and although I'd been to shows when it was SoM, I'd never gone beyond the front room.
Tonight the girl who took my money told me to head to the back "because there's beer there," and while I don't drink beer, I was curious about the unknown parts.
It was nothing like what I expected.
The room with the bar had beautiful wood wainscoting all the way around and it made me think of those walls where you touch a hidden button and the wall opens and allows you into a secret passage.
A mounted deer head over the bar, which in some ways resembled a rec room set-up.
Tall, narrow staircases continued up a few flights and this is apparently where the recording studios were.
So now I knew.
People continued to arrive, get beer and mingle until finally it was decided that we'd reached critical mass and the show could begin.
Frequenters of music shows knowingly refer to this as "Richmond time."
Nelly Kate, one of the organizers, made the point that Richmond needs to start shows when they say they will or else it's not fair to punctual arrivees.
My friend Dave Watkins often makes the same point.
So they didn't start on time, but it wasn't all that long before Warren Hixson took the stage in the front room.
As they began to play, I heard an annoying sound behind me and turned to find someone's iPod plugged into a small speaker and still playing.
Unnecessary, I deemed, and pulled the plug as if I were in charge.
It's so easy to take control sometimes.
Every time I see these guys (and girl, since Nelly's in the band), I hear how their sound has evolved even further.
Take one part garage rock, add in some almost grunge-like guitar, killer keyboards and before you know it, it's a pastiche with no discernible genre beyond their own.
Every time I think they're veering too close to classic rock for my taste, they start sounding groovier, a tad psychedelic and I am sucked in again.
And it wasn't just me; everyone I could see was dancing in place or bopping along to the sonic delights.
During one extended jam, a girl near me broke free of the crowd, went to the back of the room and began doing the hippie dance, catching non-existent butterflies with her eyes closed.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Maybe she was just looking to steer clear of company.
Sometimes that's a perfect Saturday night.
No high culture, no trendy foodstuffs, no company required.
Chalk it up to yet another of my eccentricities, but I just don't see the last day of the week as the highlight.
So instead of trying to think of what fabulous things I might enjoy tonight, I considered how to have a low-key evening alone.
Step one: dinner at Garnett's.
After claiming a counter stool, I went to the window and rifled through the newspaper box, extracting all the New York Times arts sections.
Back at the counter, I ordered a grilled Gouda with tomato and bacon, the pig-sporting cousin of my favorite sandwich at Ipanema.
Sans company, I was able to read and eat without conversational responsibility.
I read a review of "Lovelace," since I'd just seen the preview at Bowtie two days ago.
I read a piece called "Marriage is Yard Work" about a San Diego couple who have spent four years turning the backyard of the house they rent into an outdoor room, building most of the furniture themselves.
And then a couple sat down at the counter, having just come from the Sound City festival down at Tredegar.
Okay, so I hadn't gone out for conversation, but when it drops in my lap, what's a poor girl to do?
So I inquired. They liked that it wasn't particularly crowded. They were there early enough that the beer-pouring staff didn't yet know to pour half-full cups, so they got two full beers before someone caught on.
They thought the James Badfellows used too many cuss words (her term) for 2:00 in the afternoon. They wondered if El Vez really had an accent. They enjoyed Leagues.
And they didn't stay for the Breeders.
I knew everything I needed to and I could continue with my reading.
After finishing my deliciously gooey sandwich, I returned the newspaper to the box, thanked my server and headed home.
Step two: Warren Hixson.
Keeping it simple, I then walked three blocks to Black Iris Gallery for music.
It's the space that used to be Sound of Music and although I'd been to shows when it was SoM, I'd never gone beyond the front room.
Tonight the girl who took my money told me to head to the back "because there's beer there," and while I don't drink beer, I was curious about the unknown parts.
It was nothing like what I expected.
The room with the bar had beautiful wood wainscoting all the way around and it made me think of those walls where you touch a hidden button and the wall opens and allows you into a secret passage.
A mounted deer head over the bar, which in some ways resembled a rec room set-up.
Tall, narrow staircases continued up a few flights and this is apparently where the recording studios were.
So now I knew.
People continued to arrive, get beer and mingle until finally it was decided that we'd reached critical mass and the show could begin.
Frequenters of music shows knowingly refer to this as "Richmond time."
Nelly Kate, one of the organizers, made the point that Richmond needs to start shows when they say they will or else it's not fair to punctual arrivees.
My friend Dave Watkins often makes the same point.
So they didn't start on time, but it wasn't all that long before Warren Hixson took the stage in the front room.
As they began to play, I heard an annoying sound behind me and turned to find someone's iPod plugged into a small speaker and still playing.
Unnecessary, I deemed, and pulled the plug as if I were in charge.
It's so easy to take control sometimes.
Every time I see these guys (and girl, since Nelly's in the band), I hear how their sound has evolved even further.
Take one part garage rock, add in some almost grunge-like guitar, killer keyboards and before you know it, it's a pastiche with no discernible genre beyond their own.
Every time I think they're veering too close to classic rock for my taste, they start sounding groovier, a tad psychedelic and I am sucked in again.
And it wasn't just me; everyone I could see was dancing in place or bopping along to the sonic delights.
During one extended jam, a girl near me broke free of the crowd, went to the back of the room and began doing the hippie dance, catching non-existent butterflies with her eyes closed.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Maybe she was just looking to steer clear of company.
Sometimes that's a perfect Saturday night.
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