Archive for April, 2006
22 items.
Marty’s had the pleasure this week of–via recording sessions with jazz pianist, Takana Miyamoto–working with koto player Junko Takeo. I wanted to witness some of this, and she had invited me to come down, but never could sync things up with H.o.p. to get down there. I had hoped, but…and now he is playing some of the tracks. Beautiful. And Marty says she was just the most exceptional person with whom to work. An incredible experience not just musically but personally.
Marty was hopeful for a couple of pics but the camera battery was running down. He may have gotten one.
Zach Pride was on bass and Quentin Baxter was on drums. Marty has worked with Zach several times and says he’s a great bassist and wonderful person. Feels like he made a new friend with Quentin, who he met for the first time this week. And Marty says Takana, as always, is Takana, “…which is a very good thing”. With her and for her, making music is not technical, it’s spiritual.
(There were a couple of copies of “Unending Wonders of a Subatomic World” down at the studio, and Quentin got a glimpse of it and the book to read while flying to China. Hope he enjoys it.)
”Comment
Here again is the information on the Carllile concert tomorrow night. I’ve seen the set list. They will be performing several of my favorite songs.
To mention a few selections:
Virginia will be singing “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry”, which she sang at Thumbs’ wake years ago. And will be singing over old tracks of Thumbs.
They’ll be performing Virginia’s “The Loser”, “Indian Boy/Indian Girl”, and “I Guess I was born this way”. She had the hit with “Indian Boy/Indian Girl” years ago. Thumbs was on guitar, Les Paul was on bass and Mary Ford was singing back-ups and Les’ son Gene was playing drums.
They’ll also be performing “It Don’t Worry Me”, which I’ve written about recently here, some thoughts on it and Altman. (As it turns out Virginia knows Ronnee Blakeley who starred in it.)
Another song will be Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”
What: The Carllile Family
When: Sunday, April 30th, 6 pm Doors
Where: 800 East Studios (800 East Avenue NE, Atlanta, GA 30312
off North Highland Avenue, between Freedom Parkway and Randolph
(www.800east.com)Cost: $25 for seated, $18 for standing. All ages welcome. Tickets available at www.ticketalternative.com.
Carpooling is encouraged.Light food and beverages will be available for cash.
PRESS RELEASE:
“Four Lady Thumbs: A Musical Evening with Three Generations of Carllile Women: Virginia, Kathy, Tammy and Calli”
When Virginia, Tammy, Kathy and Calli take the stage at 800 East Studios it will be a the first time that the late Thumbs Carllile’s wife, daughters, and granddaughter have shared the spotlight. Thumbs was a legendary guitar player known for his unique style. His legacy, however, will not overshadow the talent of these women.
Virginia, 74, was already a successful vocalist when she met Thumbs in Germany in 1955. Coming from a strong blues and old country background, she is best known for her single Indian Boy/Indian Girl This event will be her first stage appearance since 1987.
Virginia¹s daughters, Tammy and Kathy, remember a childhood filled with music. Both followed their parents’ lead and chose careers in music. Tammy sang in the Cowboy Boogie Band in Las Vegas, and won Nashville’s Hall of Fame singing competition. She sang vocal tracks on albums with her dad and sang a duet with Michael Parks.
Kathy a devotee of Muscle Shoals blues was once winner of The Gong Show. She performed on the blues portion of the Monterey Jazz Festival, and had a hit song in the 1980s called Stay Until the Rain Stops. Atlantans will remember her as the lead vocalist for her band, Kathy Carllile & Tabasco.
“My father was always in the house playing,” Tammy remembers. “We didn’t realize we were being influenced, but we adapted quite a musical ear early on. Mom and Dad had us listening to everything from Sarah Vaughn and Dinah Washington to old country. Dad always said to learn every style there is, because you never know what style will be making money.”
Calli, 28, is establishing her reputation as one of Atlanta¹s finest contemporary jazz/blues vocalists. She is frequent backing vocalist for respected Atlanta songstress and Rock Star:INXS finalist, Heather Luttrell.
On April 30, the four women will sing a variety of favorites some accompanying the other with harmonies. Look for songs as diverse as ZZ Top’s I Need You Tonight, Randy Newman’s Guilty, and Aretha Franklin’s Skylark. Thanks to studio wizardry, Virginia will also sing with Thumbs backing her on guitar..
“When my father performed at the Freight Room, everybody said it was like being in his living room,” Tammy explained. “That¹s the feeling we want to create. We want a very relaxed night, as if you had just dropped in for a visit.”
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Thumbs Carllile was an innovative guitar player and songwriter. As a child, his thumbs were too short and fat to make it around the neck of a guitar, so he began playing it on his lap like a dobro, a style that eventually earned him the nickname Thumbs. He was discovered by Little Jimmy Dickens in the 40s, and went on to play with Dickens’ band, Bill Wimberley’s Rhythm Boys, Les Paul, Red Foley’s Troupe and the Wade Ray Five. A stint with Roger Miller in 1964 led to a signing with Smash Records (and eventually Capitol), where he released two albums with popular songs such as Let It Be Me, Blue Skies and High Noon. In the 1980s, he began playing on Sagebrush Boogie in Atlanta. He moved to the city officially in 1986, where he was a regular at venues such as the Freight Room in Decatur and The Point until his death the following year.
I'm older and wiser than you (digital painting)
April 28th, 2006 |Posted In: Art, Art-Paintings, Feature, General, H.o.p. art, My Browser Window, Art-Paintings, Salome and Friends
“I’m older and wiser than you,” she said twenty-five years ago (or) Salome’s Daughter
Digital painting with photo elements
20 h by 18.02 in w
2006
The story:
Tim and his robot Moby are chased by space aliens to the White House. The President isn’t there so they run around the place. Tim discovers Moby has wandered off. Then the President walks by. He’s the tour guide. Tim looks all over for Moby. Then Tim ran all over the White House yelling, “Moby! Moby!” But Moby was never found. Tim went to the President’s room and Moby wasn’t there. He went to another room and Moby wasn’t there either. Then Tim found Moby’s tracks. He followed the tracks and there were more tracks. He thought there would never be an end. But he was wrong, there was an end to the tracks but Moby wasn’t there. On the floor he found a little door and he touched it with his finger and it opened. He yelled, “Look out below” and jumped in. Tim won’t give up because he needs his friend. Then he found a big door and he said “Excuse me” as he pushed the door open. No one spoke. He discovered no one was there. Tim went inside anyway. Tim needed his friend Moby, he wasn’t going to give up. Then he found Moby in the President’s office, drinking from the President’s cup and touching his stuff and smooching on the President. Tim was so grossed out that his head fell off. The End
As you can tell, the story has been composed by an eight year old who loves robots and believes smooching is gross and funny stuff.
Kind of a mess here right now. Commenting ability is suddenly gone. Looking for fixes.
UJpdate: And now everything seems to be back in order, thanks to an individual with the same problem (Can’t open file: ‘wp_comments.MYI’ (errno: 144)) thinking to post the fix on their website. Thanks!
H.o.p.: “I want to be a turtle…I guess it’s a bad idea…Ow!”
Circumstance? Well, one of those small round trampolines isn’t always a trampoline. Who knew it could be a turtle shell? The transformation wasn’t as smooth as H.o.p. thought it would be, but he was determined and now I’m the mother of Turtle Boy.
Went to the Georgia Aquarium today.
It is quite an outing. A brother’s wife was with their daughter and picked us up. Then a sister of mine joined us down there with her children. So we were three adults and 8 children.
One has to first make reservations. And if you are planning an outing make sure to leave guns, knives, matches, lighters and all food and drink at home as none are permitted inside.
We used the garage for aquarium parking ($12 for four hours) and I was at least surprised to see it as full as it was, which was an indication of things to come. From the garage it’s about a four-minute walk to the aquarium entrance and the sidewalk was filled with people coming and going. At the aquarium are two entrances, one for those with season passes and those without and both are set up to be a maze of theme park waiting ques and I suppose if it’s a spectacularly busy day then these are full up but even with the number of people who were there we had no wait.
One goes through a security checkpoint where you toss items which don’t belong in the museum in a basket (so long my Bic, no big deal) and off you go through the metal detector. Some of the more pleasant security people I’ve ever seen and that was nice.
First entering, the aquarium seems overwhelming so we were lucky to be with my sister-in-law who had been several times before. Seems a good thing to do the first time is just start at your left, at the Georgia part of the aquarium, make your way around and end with the coral reef part of the exhibit. Essentially there is a central area/food court that is a couple of stories tall and all the exhibits are accessible from the central area.
At the entrance to the Georgia part of the exhibit is a large tank filled with small sting rays that one can touch. The rule with all hands-on exhibits is to use the index and third fingers extended and squeezed together, all other fingers and thumb folded back. A person on a mic gave a little info but largely was there to remind to use the two-finger touch and to also make sure the sting rays get a 15 minute break every hour. Needless to say, this exhibit is quite popular and H.o.p. and I stood around for about ten minutes before he was able to squeeze in to look at the sting rays.
In the Georgia exhibit there were a couple of other hands-on things. And a station for you to disinfect your hands so you don’t pick up salmonella. The sea turtles are there. And there is a children’s play area where kids can work off some of their energy, and the whackiness that may come from all the stimulation. So bring socks for the kids to wear as they must remove their shoes in the play area.
Capacity in the building used to be 6000, which I read they kept cutting back as people were complaining it was too full. Now it is 4000. I don’t know how many people were there today. I do know that it wasn’t at capacity and still people were bumping into each other left and right. While there I must have collided with at least 30 people. All you had to do was be standing in one spot and turn in that one spot and bump there was another person you were running into or they were running into you. So turn…very…slowly…otherwise you might end up really getting whacked, like I did once. Bang in the head went mine with another woman’s and we motioned apologies several times and both gestured at the commotion in excuse.
Her male companion was a hoot. This was at the penguin exhibit where the kids can get in a line and go through a little tunnel where they stand in a little bubble in the middle of the exhibit. The man she was with was in charge of several children, some which must have been nieces, but eventually his gregarious, enthusiastic talk included all the children, asking them where the penguins were from and what penguins ate.
The aquarium really is wonderful and keeps kids fabulously entertained at every turn of the corner. Sea turtles and fish aand sea otters and penguins and fish and giant Japanese sea crabs and urchins and fish and jellyfish and beluga whales and fish and sea lions and finally the coral reef tank where you can just sit and watch thousands of fish swimming past. Not at its 4000 capacity, it was still crowded enough that I can’t imagine what it would have been like at 6000 people. Certainly no opportunity to stand and appreciate the views.
I read now that you can pick up a printed guide at the Information Desk for $2 and it would be worth doing as there’s not enough information available at the exhibit to be very informative, or there is always someone else standing in the way reading what’s there.
One thing I noted–numerous individuals in wheelchairs. I’ve often wondered where all the people in wheelchairs go in this city, and here finally they were evident and it was great to see. In fact there was a consultant there today, in his wheelchair, making his way through the exhibit with another woman taking notes on accessibility, his observations and suggestions.
If you go to the photo album I have some pics up of the turtles and whales and the Japanese giant crabs and the coral reef etc. Sorry but the photos are quite unspectacular.
H.o.p. had a great time and came home totally exhausted.
Another one of my pretty rock slices. Because I know people can’t get enough of them.
Pure unadulterated rock. (The earth makes some beautiful art, doesn’t it.)
Boingboing has a link to a video of San Francisco Ballet principal dancer Muriel Maffre performing “Ballet Mori”…conducted by the earth. It’s a “musical composition modulated line in real time by the fluctuations of the Earth’s movement as measured by a networked seismometer at the Hayward Fault”. The 3 minute dance was in commemoration of the 1906 San Francisco Quake.
The NY Times elaborates:
The seismic fluctuations are transmitted by a sensor at the Hayward Fault in California…a MIDI system programmed with a mix of natural sounds (rock slides, volcanic eruptions, thunderclaps) translates the fluctuations…
I called H.o.p. over as the ballet began and I asked him what the music was. He made several wrong guesses and I told him to stop and simply listen and I would tell him when the ballet was over. He watched a couple of seconds more and then he said, “Earthquake”.
Now I think that’s pretty cool that someone can listen to white noise and make that kind of a guess. Plus, I had the sound way down low (where it does seem pretty much like only white noise) so some elements couldn’t even be heard, such as water gurgles etc., which may have made it more confusing to hazard a guess actually if they could have been readily distinguished. Didn’t realize how low I had the sound until after the guessing game with H.o.p. when I later read around to see exactly how this was done and found mentions of the natural sounds that were used and that it was described as roars and crashes. Roars and crashes? So went back and turned up the volume loud and watched again.
I’m not impressed with the dance itself, at least what I could see in the video, which I know is far removed from the experience (reviews range from great and haunting to calling it unimpressive and “been there done that”) but H.o.p. enjoyed it and it made a good base for discussion on plate tectonics and seismometers and the “living earth”, a concept with which H.o.p. has obviously no problem.
Now, back to static electricity, I think. Yesterday, because of the mysterious event with the scotch tape, we did little science experiments with scotch tape demonstrating static electricity, magnetism etc. Had promised more of the same today.
I’m so disappointed. H.o.p. began last week a little story book called “The Rude Cayman” but never finished it.
He cut out the cardboard cover and drew the pic and cut out paper to fit inside and began drawing the pics and writing the story then pffft apparently ran out of steam and interest and that was that.
So now I will never know what happened with the rude cayman croc.
