evening shots

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Friday

Have a Great Weekend!

The Night Has 1000 Eyes, John Coltrane vs. Bobby Vee

The combo I'm coaching at school is playing this piece on their concert next month. I had to submit the tune list to the head of the department today and I decided that I should double check all of the composers of the tunes my combo is doing. The Night Has 1000 Eyes is in a fake book we use which is called, rather ironically, the Real Book. This book is well known amongst jazz musicians for being full of errors and the composers that were listed for this song somehow didn't seem right to me. I thought I should double check.

So I did my research the fast and easy way, using Google, and found out who the correct composers were for this tune, which happens to be the title song from a 1948 movie. It has become a jazz standard as a result of John Coltrane's rendition:

In addition, I discovered that there is in fact another song by the same name and the composers are the ones that are incorrectly listed in the Real Book. This song is from 1963 and was a hit for Bobby Vee. The video is hilarious:

empty nest syndrome

It has been a year since my beloved cat Ted passed away. I had been planning to write one final post about him would include a few baby pictures that we found, but I don't have it in my heart to do that right now. Ted was the closest thing to a child that we ever will have and we still miss him alot. It has been awful not having him around anymore although we had him for a good long time. He was 18 when he died last year.

Now a very good friend of mine is going through the same thing. Her 18 year old cat Tom died on Sunday night. I feel sad all over again. I really liked Tom a lot. Doug and I stopped in to visit him one last time on our way home Saturday night. He was very thin and very weak, but still just as friendly as he could possibly be. I'm glad we got to see him although it makes me miss Ted all over again. And now Tom as well.

R.I.P. Tom Handsome

lots and lots of music

The weekend has barely gotten started and I'm exhausted already. Hopefully by the time it's over, I'll be exhilarated. I've been back at work over at the foamcorefantasy house now that I can wear an actual pair of shoes, but I've really gotten used to not working on the house during the past seven weeks. We're still putting up siding, and the backyard "pets" are still in abundance.

Tonight I heard a wonderful concert featuring vocalist Gretchen Parloto and bassist/vocalist Esperanza Spaulding. They were both amazing, but Esperanza completely blew me away. She is phenomenal and inspiring.

Tomorrow morning I'm subbing on a Sweeney Todd rehearsal, putting up some more siding, playing another little gig, then I'm going to try to make David Sanborn's late set at Blues Alley if they put me on the list. (I know someone in the band - ha ha ha, actually I know at least 3 people in the band!)

Sunday I've got my brunch and then I'm heading down to Twins to hear pianist Leslie Pintchik. She's great and so is her bass-playing husband. Then I'll probably stay up really late getting ready for my class on Monday.

A Medley for Change

We did a quick little recording session yesterday and it's on YouTube already! Here's the link to it on YouTube in case the thing here doesn't work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5i2S5A-x0Ig

jazz for barack obama

Look at the groovy campaign button somebody gave me today!

One Last "Summer" Getaway

I am never ready for summer to be over. When I broke my foot we had to cancel our little 3 day trip to the beach because I could barely walk and the sand would be much too challenging. Also I didn't want to get my cast any dirtier than necessary during the six weeks that I was going to have to wear it. Since I'm almost done with this ordeal (I hope!) I figured it was time to take the make-up trip.

I don't know why this is, but Doug has a thing for bed and breakfasts. I'm more of a hotel person, but it's pretty cool staying in a really old house like the Merry Sherwood. Supposedly it's even haunted. I was very happy to learn that they were serving breakfast at 8:30 which is a relatively reasonable time. I hate having to drag myself out of bed at an unnaturally early hour to eat an incredibly delicious meal before I'm even awake enough to appreciate it.

It was raining cats and dogs the day we left and the Merry Sherwood was looking pretty gloomy. Our room was also kind of gloomy, but cozy at the same time. We slept under this extremely ornate chunk of wood:

The entire house is completely filled with amazing antiques. The transom and side lights around the front door are pretty unusual.

So we had our delicious fancy breakfast and headed off to Assateague even though the weather didn't look too promising. As it turned out, we got in about three hours of beach time. The sun actually came out. Because there had been a really bad storm there a few weeks ago, all of the soft white sand had been pushed back into the dunes. The black sand that was left was very hard and flat and therefore very easy to walk on. Apparently the sand shifts from the storms every winter and the white sand comes back in the spring. After we had our afternoon at the beach I couldn't resist taking more pictures.

The ponies were nice and clean from the previous day's rain showers.

Bambi and his mom were also looking very fresh.

This is Miss Assateague. Isn't she pretty with her Veronica Lake hairstyle?

Here's a little video of a couple of big ponies and a very frisky little one:

All over the eastern shore the bean fields are beginning to turn yellow.

On the way home we stopped in Berlin at a wine store that is associated with the Atlantic Hotel. Doug bought some marinated anchovies, olives, and a couple of interesting cheeses. We couldn't find any decent bread in Berlin to complete our picnic spread, and it was raining really hard again so we stopped at the Panera in Salisbury, took our food in, bought a loaf of sourdough, and had our picnic inside the Panera. The anchovies were delicious and tasted really fresh - not anything like those awful dried things people sometimes put on pizza.

We got back Saturday in plenty of time for our gigs. On Sunday I played my brunch, did an orchestra rehearsal, and went to the Wayne Shorter concert at UMD. By then I was really far behind in my preparation for school the next day. So I guess that was the last hurrah of summer. I'm ready to accept that it is fall now. But I still might do one last day trip to the beach - I just can't help it!!!

Concerts this weekend

A fundraising cabaret-concert for the Obama campaign at the beautifully restored Atlas Theater, 1333 H Street, NE, will be held this Saturday, September 20. Bar opens at 7:00, concert is at 8:00. Noted local singer Steve Washington will perform with a 7 piece jazz band. Donations start at $35 and there are plenty of cool places to go on H street after the concert. Tickets can be purchased at the door or by visiting http://www.aconcertforchange.org/. Hope to see you there!

Steve Lippia, THE Frank Sinatra tribute singer, will be performing Frank's biggest hits with his band this Sunday at 2pm at the Weinberg Center in Frederick.

The Friday Morning Music Club Orchestra, conducted by Pablo Saelzer, will perform at Bradley Hills Presbyterian Church, 6601 Bradley Boulevard in Bethesda on Sunday at 5pm. The program will include the Strauss Emperor Waltzes and Brahms Symphony #2. Donations are appreciated, admission is free.

Invasion of the Crickets

The place where I am living right now is literally crawling with crickets. If it were any other kind of bug I would be totally grossed out, but I guess that whole Jiminy Cricket thing makes me think they are nice. Sort of. Thanks to Walt Disney they've risen above mere bug status in my mind.


Nice or not, they're kind of annoyingly loud at this hour. There's one over in the corner right now that I just yelled at a few times. It crawled about six inches each time I yelled at it. So they're not deaf - they know they're being loud at all hours. Sometimes I attempt to clear a few of them out, but I know it's basically pretty hopeless this month. I must admit that sometimes I get mad - I've stepped on a few because I'm a bully and an evil cricket murderer. But most of them get to be free-range crickets. I think in China they eat crickets. Or maybe it's the Phillipines. Or Africa? Somewhere I know they eat crickets. These crickets of mine should be grateful.

I don't know where all the crickets go in October but all of a sudden they disappear. They stop chirping. Does the end of cricket season mean that they've died? Do they go back outside? They must, because if they came inside to die I'd see piles of dead crickets lying around everywhere. Maybe they just come in to say goodbye. I should be a little nicer to them if that is the case.

This evening when I came home there were five crickets lined up on the stoop outside the door, just waiting for someone to open the door. I had my bass with me and because of my limited mobility with the foot cast and the wheel on my bass, I was not able to knock any of them out of the way. All five of them hopped in as soon as I got the door open. That's five additional crickets in the house right now. These crickets are driving me crazy!!!

It's Official....

I still love teaching! This is good news because it is my "retirement" plan, the only one I've got so far.

I started teaching piano when I was 14 years old. I hid that fact from my piano teacher because I thought she would be horrified. I only charged twice as much as I made from babysitting because I didn't want to rip off any of my poor guinea pig students. I went on to get a B.Mus. in piano performance with the intent of becoming a professional piano teacher.

I put off getting a M.M. because I had become interested in going to law school. I took the LSAT and did pretty well on it so that was definitely a possibility. I also wanted to make sure that I liked teaching piano enough to spend the additional money on a masters degree because I knew it would undoubtedly be much more difficult to pay off student loans as a piano teacher than it would be as a lawyer. I also wanted to party like it was 1999, but that's another story. Fortunately that phase didn't last too long.

So I taught piano. And I loved it. I had 35-45 students most of the time. One year I had 55 but that was a little too much. I was involved with all of the local music organizations, and hosted 3 or 4 recitals per year for my students. I made sure that they got used to performing because it's supposed to be fun, right? Most of them seemed to enjoy it. They all did well in the various competitions they played in too, especially in the ensemble events.

Somewhere in there I took up the bass. It was my fun new hobby. I was teaching piano full time and playing bass here, there, and everywhere. I didn't practice much because I was too busy playing. Gradually I started getting gigs. After several years I got a call to do a road gig playing "Meet Me in St. Louis" for 3 months and that pretty much changed everything for me.

I spent a few years gradually easing out of teaching and I've pretty much just been a bass player for the past 10 years. Over all the money's not as good, but the experience has been well worth it. I love performing on the bass, especially in a group setting. Who knew? I wasn't particularly crazy about performing when I was a pianist. And I love the travel opportunities that have come my way. I'm missing that a lot right now, but if I go on the road my house will never get finished. On the very first day of school this year, I got a call about a 3 month gig with a piano player and singer at a hotel in Dubai. Way to rub it in, ye cursed forces of nature!

So I'm in school, and my teaching assistantship duties include teaching a beginning jazz theory and improvisation course and coaching a combo. And I have to say I love teaching just as much as I ever did. There's just something about it. So far it's my favorite part of being back in school.

I am especially overjoyed to realize that this is still true, after 10 years of not doing it, because we designed our house with a really nice set up for me to teach in. Once I become too old and decrepid to lug the bass and sound equipment around all over the place, I will go back to teaching piano, and maybe bass too. And I will probably do it until the day I die.

weekend end

I'm in school now. That's keeping me pretty busy and has reduced the quantity of random occurences that I tend to blog about. I don't have any photos this time either.
So this weekend I had a couple of gigs and then we went to the Silver Spring Jazz Festival on Saturday night. I heard Marcus Johnson who I enjoyed very much in spite of the fact that smooth jazz is not really my thing. But music is music and he put on a great show. Then the Mingus Big Band performed. The playing was fantastic, but they weren't able to do a sound check and it showed. The videography was outstanding. The temperature was pleasant and the full moon was beautiful. All in all it was a very nice evening.
Today we saw the Coen Brothers "Burn After Reading" and we both loved it. It is hilarious and clever and I highly recommend it, although it might not be for everyone. There was a lot of very lewd language, but it was completely appropriate for the characters . Tonight it is humid but there's a nice breeze too. It kind of feels like the air in Hawaii.
And now I have to do a bunch of work for school. See ya next weekend!

Burtonsville Fire Department Carnival

It's still summer! Since we are currently living in the extreme outer boondocks of Silver Spring, Doug thought it would be fun to attend the local fire department's annual summer carnival tonight. We had a blast! There weren't too many people there and it wasn't too large of an area for me to drag my foot around. We ate corn dogs. We rode the rides. We like rides.

My favorite was the kiddie bumper cars. I was so happy that all of the children I gleefully smashed into understood that it was all in fun. They smashed back. Sometimes the kids doing bumper cars get scared from all the mean driving, especially when it is done by big scary adults. But these kids squealed with laughter when the crazy lady came barreling towards them. Sometimes it's fun to pretend you're ten years old. Doug and I had a couple of nice head-on collisions as well.

For 18 bucks you can get a pass for unlimited rides for the entire day and it benefits the Burtonsville Fire Department. As both of us well know, fire departments are important and deserve our donations. And what this carnival lacks in sophistication, it more than makes up for in cuteness.

That's Brandi serving up those corn dogs. She says "hon".... a lot!



Funnel Cakes and Cotton Candy!

BALLOONS!!!

(and no, that's not me - she's a "carnie")

Also, I just ate the most amazingly delicious peach. It came from O'Keefe Orchards way out on New Hampshire Avenue in Cloverly. The O'Keefe family has been growing fruit there for 67 years.

So it's not all bad living this far out of town. You just have to find the fun!

Kind of in a lull right now....

I think I've been bored with blogging. I'm still reading all my favorites, but I'm kind of bored with myself and I don't really have much to say.

Last Friday was my three week anniversary of having a broken foot. So I only have 3-5 more weeks of wearing this damn cast. Then hopefully I'll be able to walk like a normal person again and do the things I need to do like work on the house and mow the grass. I know that there are plenty of people out there who are far worse off than I am, but that just makes me feel even worse about feeling so sorry for myself.

We cancelled our little three day trip to the beach because I can't walk on sand in this condition. We don't have a couch or any comfortable chairs, or even a TV in our rental house, so I decided to accompany Doug the following week on his trip to NY. That way I could rest my foot all day long, get a whole bunch of TV watching out of my system, and practice bass in the, believe it or not, more pleasant environment of the Microtel.

On the way up we got off at Exit 4 on the turnpike so that Doug would have a chance to experience Forno Pizzaria and Grille which I had stumbled upon with some friends a few weeks ago coming home from NYC. We were looking for something better than rest stop food and boy did we find it! Their pizza is amazing and the gelato is out of this world. The people behind the counter speak Italian to one another. It's as good as anything I've had in NYC or even Italy for that matter.

So my foot feels much better now. It was not getting the rest it needed before. Since I was already most of the way there, I drove up to Connecticut one day to visit my roommate from college who had been residing at Yale University Hospital for the past three weeks. Jennifer is my hero. She is amazing, and she is totally going to recover from her stem cell transplant and get back to teaching soon. But she has to work really hard to get her strength back and get her health restored. What in the world am I complaining about with my poor little foot? Anyway, she is going to get better because we have plans to go to our college reunion next spring and to the bass convention next summer. The opportunity to visit Jennifer again was the real reason I went on this trip. I'm so glad I was able to make it up there.

For the past few years Doug has gone up to an Labor Day weekend event known as the Honda S600 Gathering. The S600 was in production for a few years, from the mid-1960s through the early 70s. Jay Leno has one of these vintage cars in his collection and he has on occasion had Brian Baker, the founder of the Honda Gathering, come out to LA to work on his car. Doug also has two of these cars that he hopes to finish restoring one day. He has a bunch of the other early pre-Civic Hondas too. None of them run. He used to supplement his income working on these cars back when people actually drove them.

This is Doug and his new project

(as if he needs a new project...in New York no less)

This video shows Brian Baker and a fan driving off in his meticulously restored Honda S600.

Blueberry Fields Forever...

Since we seem to be living indefinitely at our temporary home in the outer boondocks of Silver Spring, we are becoming well acquainted with nearby Ashton and all it has to offer.

Dempsey's is a great place to get excellent breakfast all day long. After our breakfast for lunch Doug wanted to go pick blueberries since Blueberry Gardens was just down the road on Route 108. At Blueberry Gardens they offer pick-your-own organic blueberries, massage, acupuncture, and yoga and QiGong classes. How handy is that? Very handy if you live in Cloverly, Sandy Spring, or Ashton.

Since I am somewhat immobile these days I decided to stay back and take some pictures of my foot on the hood of the car. At least I can still do that. It's just wonderful having to hobble around on something that looks and feels exactly like a ski boot.

The last time we went blueberry picking was about 15 years ago in Oregon, near Mt. Hood. We picked quarts and quarts of them and ate them all that day. The next day we both had green pee.

Doug was back in about 15 minutes with these yummy petite organic blueberries. It's the end of the season now, but they still taste good!

The other good thing about today is that our real house, or fantasy house depending on how you look at it, is starting to somewhat resemble a house at the beach. I kind of like that.

More Clarinda

Okay this is the last one, I promise! I was recently sent this link to a 10 minute TV feature about the Jack Million Band's trip to play at the Glenn Miller Festival in Clarinda Iowa. It took place during all of the flooding and tornados back in June. It is quite interesting to hear all of this described in Dutch, and also to see some of the recreational activities the locals decided to share with the visiting musicians from Europe. I didn't know about the guns - that must have been the day I was out exploring on foot. Anyway this clip is highly entertaining, at least it is to me - because I'm in it!

sometime it's okay and sometimes it's not

Last week we took down a whole bunch of the lower branches on our birch tree so that it would be easier to mow under and so that it no longer looked like an enormous bush. It is beautiful now.

When we came back from taking the branches to the recycling area at the dump we continued to work on the siding. We've made pretty good progress, but it's not going nearly as fast as we'd like.

Towards the end of the day my left foot suddenly started hurting a lot in one spot just above the arch. I'd sprained my right foot a few days earlier and since it was almost all better, with the help of an ankle support, I was back working at the house again. I guess my left foot had been working extra hard to accomodate my sprained right ankle.

I iced it when I got home. It continued to hurt all night so the next day I went to a podiatrist. The x-rays showed that I have a couple of extra bones in my foot and that apparently the one above my arch has a rather pointy chip sticking out that looks like it might be a little fracture. She sold me a $275 boot that I'm supposed to wear for six weeks.

That means I can't climb a ladder, or go for walks, or play bass standing up, or mow the grass, or do anything else that I need to do, for SIX WEEKS. The timing of this is absolutely horrible. We have so much work to do on the house and now I'm totally useless. I'm starting back at UMD this fall too. That's going to be fun.

That was Friday. And I had to cancel out of a gig Friday night, which totally sucked. On Saturday Doug had a gig in Wilmington that included a hotel room. Since I wasn't working that night, I went along so that I could sit on the bed and watch TV all evening, giving my foot some rest and elevation. In our temporary place we don't have a TV or a couch so it's not that much fun hanging around the house. I can only take so much time in front of the computer.

On Sunday we had to get up at six to make it back down to DC for my brunch gig. I took a stool and it was fine. And I could walk about twice as fast as I could the day before. But it's still really slow with this boot thingy. Anyway here's a view from our hotel room in Wilmington at 6AM Sunday morning:

How do you like them apples?

The apple tree is producing a huge quantity of excellent apples this year. They are so crisp, tart, and juicy. Yum! I love McIntoshes. And there are plenty for the deer and for us. I just hope they don't learn our trick of shaking the tree to get the ripe ones to fall off.

Beautiful Day

Wasn't the weather today just perfect? We were putting up siding and it just felt great to be outside all day long. Look what we did. The front is well underway.

The clouds today were amazing.

And here's a little backyard rabbit action.

We worked until 8:30 and then went to see "Bottle Shock" at Bethesda Row. Delightful movie. Very tired now. Must sleep. More siding tomorrow, then a gig.

Assateague

On Friday we took the day off to celebrate passing our inspection and headed down to the beach for the day. I love Assateague because it is usually uncrowded, the scenery is beautiful, and it's fun to see the horses.

Unfortunately there a ton of flies, more than I've ever seen down there, and they were biting. We ended up spending the whole time in the water, which was actually an excellent way to spend the day.

Assateague is a very narrow island.

The flies were driving the horses crazy too!!!

The sea gulls were handling it okay though.

On the way home we did our usual stops for crab cake sandwiches at the Assateague Market, and eastern shore veggies and goat feeding at Wright's Market. We picked up a few bargains at the outlet mall in Queenstown and headed across the Bay Bridge. The sky looked like a giant crab crossed with a bat.

There is two-way traffic on the Westbound span on Friday nights.

The End

Dupont Circle

I have been seeing way too much of this image recently. We have nearly finished covering our house with Tyvek this week. Then we can finally put up the siding and Foam Core Fantasy will finally begin to look like a real house that might one day actually be finished.

" FOAM CORE FANTASY "

Summer Weekend

I had a nice variety of gigs this weekend. Friday night I subbed for Man of La Mancha at the Church Street Theater. The regular guy left his bass for me to use so I took Metro down. It was great not having to haul a bunch of equipment for a change. Things were really jumping at the Dupont Circle Metro on the way home.

On Saturday night I had my favorite kind of summertime outdoor gig. It was a backyard party on Capital Hill with the Stateside Steel Band. I just love the playing calypso music with a steel drum band outside where everybody is having a good time. That's what summer is all about.

Sunday I played my usual brunch gig at Lia's in Chevy Chase. It's a jazz duo with bass and guitar. And I get to eat what usually ends up being my favorite meal of the week. The food is excellent.

National Arboretum

Today we went to the National Arboretum out on New York Avenue to do some research on crape myrtles. We want to plant some eventually and we had heard that they have a rather impressive array of them there.

The first thing we saw was the Capital Columns. They were moved from the Capital in 1958 to make way for an addition. I had no idea that I'd be seeing them. In the distance they look like ancient ruins.

Then we saw the Giant Log Monster wandering through the underbrush.

Finally we located the Crape Myrtles. They were magnificent.

Some of them were quite huge.

They came in all sorts of colors.

They have tons of crape myrtles, azaleas, magnolias, and other stuff there just growing wild. The grounds of the Arboretum are huge. You can't really walk around and see everything unless you spend the entire day walking. A lot of it has a slighty abandoned quality which is unusual for something that has "National" in its name. But the slightly independant character is kind of fitting in a way. They also have a pretty large formal Chinese garden which we didn't really have a chance to look at. We'll check it out next time.

Dancing Headless Work Uniforms

I have noticed that my blog, which began as a somewhat articulate (or so I think) description of certain miserable events, has recently devolved into random and utterly meaningless frivolity. I guess I'm just trying to keep myself amused and entertained while I wait for whatever is coming up next. Anyway, here is what amused and entertained me today on the way to the dump:



It looks like the guys in the back of the Washington Gas truck are just getting warmed up here.



Now they're starting to get their groove on.


They're going wild!

In other news, the quantity of deer under my apple tree has now doubled.

If I get Lyme Disease.....

It will be because of this apple tree. Granted it's a nice tree and produces delicious slightly wormy organic McIntosh apples, but it is a real pain to mow the grass under it and my head always brushes against the lower branches. It's going to be difficult to spot that bulls-eye rash when it finally appears under my hair. There are always deer under this tree and that's where the ticks come from. I remain hopeful that my eventual demise as a result of Lyme disease is just a hypochondriatic delusion. Wish me luck!

At least this one is actually eating his apple. Most of them take one bite and drop the rest on the ground. And I don't have a very nice attitude toward these deer now do I? I'm just grouchy because I had to mow the grass today.

The King of Jazz

On Tuesday evening we went down to the Library of Congress to see a screening of the 1930 movie "The King of Jazz" starring the very appropriately named Paul Whiteman. He is not the first person that most people would think of as being jazz royalty, but he was definitely one of the most successful early bandleaders who played "jazzy" music. This movie is a spectacularly entertaining example of the musical revues that were popular back in the 1930's. It features singing, dancing, novelty numbers, and some very elaborate costumes and scenery.

The Library of Congress might consider placing this movie on the National Film Registry, which means that they would then be able to preserve it and repair some of the blurriness and scratchiness that exists on the original. If you are interested in the restoration and preservation of this movie let them know by writing to:
National Film Registry Public Review Process
M/B/RS Division, Library of Congress
Washington, DC 20540

Here are some clips from the movie that I found on YouTube.
This first clip is the cartoon prologue:



This one has some amazing dancing:


George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" was written as a result of a commission by Paul Whiteman. This is one of the earliest performances.

Man of La Mancha at Church Street Theatre

Last weekend I subbed on bass for Man of La Mancha at the Church Street Theater, AKA Keegan Theatre, in Dupont Circle. It was a nice production and apparently this review will appear in the Alexandria "Metro Herald", whatever that is. Anyway, this theater is a great place to see a show because it is so small that there are no bad seats. I won't be there, but I thought I'd mention it anyway.

One of the best things about this particular gig is that the regular bass player left his bass there for me to use, so I didn't have to haul all of my stuff down there. It was pretty nice to be able to just walk in, pick up the bass, and play the show.

Shameless Self Promotion

So I learned a new blogging skill today. (see above) The drummer is the amazing and incredible Brooks Tegler. The bass player is me. The trombone player is kind of cute, isn't he?